If you go down to the woods today...

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Have you ever wanted to skip merrily down an enchanted forest path, looking for your next elven house only for your dream woodland des res to be RIPPED MERCILESSLY AWAY FROM YOU BY AN EVIL GNOME? If so, Uwe Rosenburg’s latest outwardly relaxing yet inwardly ruthless offering could be for you; welcome to the pretty cutthroat world of Fairy Trails.

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Before I begin, cards on the table time (literally!); Fairy Trails is not a “weighty” game in terms of component bang-for-your-buck. No gloriously tactile wooden mythological meeples tumble across the table, and no life-size cardboard trees (thank you, Everdell!) lay waiting for you under the lid; you get cards and you get gems. No more, no less. Nor is Fairy Trails on the same complexity scale as Uwe’s legendary gaming euro big-hitters Agrciola, Caverna, and Le Havre. But, the magical crunchiness this little box can cause two people in around 15/20 minutes, most definitely belies its diminutive size.

So, how does it work?

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Take me home, country roads!

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At its core, Fairy Trails is a straightforward tile laying game albeit using small, square cards which can placed anywhere so long as they are orthogonally adjacent to other cards and continue or complete the paths printed on the those next to which they are placed.

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Each card contains both yellow and pink paths and a potential combination of houses, path continuations, and route-ends. During a game, each player (one donning their metaphorical pink Elf ears and the other pulling on their Gnomish yellow wellies) takes it in turns to lay a card in an attempt to complete paths and occupy houses represented by their corresponding coloured gems. Like that gaming granddaddy, Carcassonne, if a path is completed by placing a card, whichever player has a finished route can place a gem on each of their houses located along it. Play continues and the cards grow to form a winding and beguiling central tableau until a player lays their final gem and is declared the winner.

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Simple……or is it?

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Highway to hell!

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I will admit that this game surprised me. Whilst it has a simple central mechanic, the decision-making process becomes complex. In your head, the order of events is clear and relaxed; lay a card, complete a route, claim a house…..easy. But then, that other sudden, wide-eyed, skin prickling, cold sensation slams into you like an ice-cream truck; whilst you have been frolicking elfishly amongst the moss and toadstools picking up a bijou house here and there, the gnome has gone for the slow-burn and surreptitiously built up a 16 gem route over a series of seemingly innocent turns. In a single card placement, you have unwittingly completed this path and sealed the Gnome’s victory without you even realising it!

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Argh!

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And that is where the deliciously mythological magic (or torture) lies. On each turn you face a trade-off; do you place a card to your own advantage or sacrifice progress to guarantee your opponent’s detriment? The choices between extending an existing path to secure a building bonanza on subsequent turns, closing off a smaller route now, or hate-placing to block or branch off your opponent’s routes is brain burn on a level this little box kept quiet.

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A big think in a small package.

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Wrecking ball. For your brain!

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As a fan of Uwe’s other games and being obsessed with tile layers generally, Fairy Trails had a lot to live up to when I cracked that seal, and overall it did not disappoint. Although analysis paralysis can descend like an early morning mist, the momentum of the game is relatively even throughout and replayability is high through the randomness of the luck of the draw. Furthermore, the artwork is beautiful – the paths becoming almost hypnotic the more you look at them. But, for the same reason, it can also be difficult to distinguish paths as the woodland area expands. And, for me, this game would have been better with real tiles; something more tactile and substantial than the thin, small square cards which we found slipped around the table whilst in play and refused to riffle.

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Don’t get me wrong, Uwe isn’t blazing a Fairy Trail here in terms of innovative game play or never-before-seen mechanics but neither does this game simply feel like a pared down version of larger grand dames of the tile laying genre. This game has a sneaky sting in its tail; pay attention to your fairy tale foe because if you merrily romp along in multiplayer solitaire mode, you will lose hard and you will lose fast.  

 

Ultimately, as a quick, strategic, 2 player game, Fairy Trails works well and I finished wanting to play again; searching for that sweet spot between obsessing over my opponent’s woodland estates and revelling in the selfish beauty of my own glorious paths.