WBG Score: 7.5
Player Count: 1-5
You’ll like this if you like: Lords of Waterdeep, Viticulture, Cytosis
Published by: Genius Games
Designed by: John Coveyou, Steve Schlepphorst
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here
What happens when Cytoplasm, Chloroplasts and Mitochondria get in trouble? They get put behind a Cell Wall! Trust me that joke is gonna go down a storm with the plant experts out there. Right, let’s get to the root of this plant cell game.
How to build a cell wall
Set up by laying the main board on the side appropriate to your player count and then laying the roots and shoots board next to it. Give everyone their flasks in their player colour and place each players coloured discs on the roots and the shoots track. Place either on or two of the grey flasks on the central vacuole depending on player count and then determine a start player and give everyone an amount of water determined by where they are in the turn order.
At the start of each round there’s going to be a sunrise phase. Here each player will take resources on the roots and the shoots tracks depending on where their tokens are.
Next is the daytime phase. On your turn you’ll place one of your flasks on to one of the spaces on the board and take the action. At the end of your turn, you'll have the opportunity to play a card if you can afford to. The majority of the spaces will have a single space that only one player's flask can go on. They’ll also have an open space that anyone can go in but only one of each colour flask can go in there.
Some spaces are nice and simple, you just place a flask and gain the number of resources. The water space will get you an amount of water depending on where the water marker is on the track. Once you take water, move the water maker down one space. When you take this action, you’ll also have the choice to place up to three water into the central vacuole. If the track reads zero then you can’t take this action. You’ll also do that when you use the “collect Co2” space, but you can still take this action if the water track is at the bottom. One space will let you convert resources to make a cell wall piece. Another will then let you use that piece to add to the cell wall. When you do, place it on the leftmost empty space on the cell wall and then take the points depicted on it. There’s a space that will let you move your tokens on the roots and shoots tracks for a cost and these spaces will sometimes net you one-time bonuses.
One more space of note is the cards. Place your flask on the space of the card you want in the row and pay the cost. The first card in the row is always free.
When all the players are out of flasks you’ll move onto the evening phase. First add one carbohydrate to the cell wall, this will act as a semi game timer. Then reset the water track. Lastly check the central vacuole. The player with the most water here will discard their water from here, move their marker up on the points track and take the grey flask. This is their extra worker for the next round. In higher player counts there’ll be two flasks up for grabs here. The players who didn’t win will leave their water there. When the cell wall is complete the round and end the game.
Should you place or plant your workers?
At its core (I would say root but I’ve already used a root pun earlier) Cellulose is a good, solid worker placement game. In fact, it actually serves as a good introductory worker placement game if you’ve got any friends or family that you’re wanting to pull down the rabbit hole of worker placement games, or board games in general. After all, it's always nice to have others to share in our financial turmoil.
The reason it works as a first foray into worker placement games is that it’s not quite as tight as others in the genre in terms of available spaces. The majority of the spaces are pretty open allowing all players to go there at least once in a round if they want to. Even though it is more open it does have some nice touches to keep some race element to those spaces. The ever-dwindling water track feels like a constantly ticking timer and has the potential to drop massively even in just one round. Most spaces have a single spot for one player with a slightly better benefit to the regular space. They aren’t always a huge difference but that one or two extra proteins could go a long way.
What I really like about the openness of the spaces is the rule they’ve applied that says “only one of each colour per space” It may not sound very restrictive (and in most cases it’s not) but when you get the opportunity to nab an extra grey flask or take one of your workers back it could serve to limit where you can go. Although, the fact that there are opportunities to get extra workers or take yours back for extra turns again serves to open things up.
Do you want to build a cell wall?
In a game where a big chunk of points comes from building the cell wall you’d assume that the minute you build a Chloroplast you’ll want to build the cell wall as quick as you can right? Well not necessarily. The ever-changing points values means that building too soon may not be ideal and it then becomes a bit of a stand-off as players wait each other out to see who’s going to cave first and just take the points. However, since a new piece is placed on the wall at the end of the round then setting yourself up to place first in the next round could be the way to go.
The game does throw another tempting way for you to spend your hard-earned chloroplasts in an attempt to lure you away like the plant equivalent of a Siren. Again, it feels counterproductive not doing the thing that the game has told you is the goal but ATP’s are part of the currency you’ll need to play cards and cards are worth just as much, and sometimes even more points than the cell wall track.
The cards are possibly my favourite part of the game with the enzyme cards being the stand out. You get the usual bonus when you play one, but, if you have others in play at the time then you can spend a protein for each one to activate their abilities. It’s really satisfying when you get to trigger a few of these on a turn and watch the resource’s flood in... I suppose grow would be the better term here, the last thing you want is to flood a plant.
The game does a good job of ramping up. You'll be scrambling for resources at the start even going so far as wondering if this plant will ever start to grow, which is frighteningly close to my own experience with plant growing. Soon though you'll start to find you have resources in abundance, especially as you race up (or down in the case of the roots track) the roots and shoots track which gives you increasing amounts of resources each morning phase of the game. The roots and shoots track is a great part of the game and it’s always fun to see those resources appearing in front of you. The problem is that once you've reached as far as you can on both, you instantly make two spaces on the board redundant for you. The roots and shoots space and the enzyme space where the only use for them is to pay to advance on that track. You could argue that it makes the game a bit tighter as you head towards the endgame but I don’t like the idea that spaces are completely cut out.
The central vacuole is another fun element . It’s a bit of area control at the end of each round. The points swing almost seems like it isn’t worth it at first but the points do ramp up as you get further round. But it's gaining that extra worker for the round that is worth more, especially in a game we're having that one extra turn could make all the difference.
Learning is fun?
Genius Games are all about making fun games whilst also making them scientifically accurate and hoping that people learn more about the subject on the table. Now of course how invested you are or how much this draws you in is completely subjective but the great thing about Genius Game is that they provide you with an extra book to teach you about the subject behind the game which is fantastic. Personally, I didn’t feel particularly enamoured to follow up this particular game with reading up on it but again this is just me. A friend who played this game is a horticulturalist and had he had the chance would have absolutely dived into that book. Regardless of if you do or don’t get into the science of it you can be safe in the knowledge that it’s accurate. I’d definitely use this game as an aid if my kids were learning this particular subject. In fact, one of their previous games, Periodic, was a big help when the kids were learning about the periodic table at school and I actually found myself learning in that one as well.
If or how much you are willing to learn from this game doesn’t detract from the fact that it is a fun, solid worker placement game. If you're a worker placement fan who enjoys the tightness of a lot of the games in the genre then maybe this may not grab you as much as others. However if you’re looking for a good fun game that will give you that worker placement fix that could help you introduce people into that world then this could be the one for you.