Tend Flip & Write Review - Jim's view!
WBG Score: 8.5
Player Count: 1-6
You’ll like this if you like: Your flip & writes to have some real bite and substance!
Published by: IV Studio
Designed by: Max Anderson, Zac Dixon, Austin Harrison, Toby Sarnelle
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here
There is something slightly intimidating about opening Tend for the first time. The box is big, heavy and packed with sheets, dice, scratch cards, pencils and boards, while the rulebook spends a good amount of time explaining concepts before you even reach setup. It gives the impression that you are about to learn some sprawling farming simulation when, in reality, the core of Tend is much cleaner than that first encounter suggests.
That contrast became one of the things I liked most about it. Tend is a classic case of easy to learn, hard to master, not because the individual systems are especially difficult, but because there are so many perfectly valid things you could be doing. The challenge is learning to ignore most of them.
We have already covered Tend once on What Board Game in Steve’s View, where he digs into areas such as the neighbour system, fishing, price, replayability and the slightly overwhelming first impression. Rather than simply repeat those points, this is Jim’s View, focusing more on how Tend teaches you to specialise, how those satisfying chains of bonuses develop, and why the game somehow manages to feel both busy and rather relaxing at the same time. This game is too good for just one review!
What Is Tend?
Tend is a simultaneous flip-and-write played over 12 rounds, with everyone developing their own farm, projects and cargo while choosing from the same evolving display of task cards. Each round, players choose two of five available task cards, resolve them independently, then move through the game’s other phases involving growth, neighbours and seasonal scoring.
The four main tasks are Tend, Chop, Mine and Fish. Tending lets you plant and water crops or prepare soil, while chopping and mining involve scratching through forests and mines to reveal resources and bonuses. Fishing uses dice and different fishing locations to determine what you can catch, with upgrades widening the area available to you.
Everything feeds into everything else. Resources can be used to complete projects, buy upgrades, purchase animals, build your farm, gift to neighbours, sell for coins or fill your Cargo Manifest. Crucially, you cannot simply hoard them for later, because resources must be used when they are gained. That one rule keeps the game moving and forces decisions immediately, rather than letting you build a giant stockpile and work it all out later.
The Biggest Lesson: Stop Trying To Do Everything
The rulebook and teaching material make one point very clearly: you cannot do everything in one game. That is not a warning buried in the small print either, it is probably the single most important strategic lesson Tend has to teach.
My first game became dramatically easier once I accepted that. I focused almost entirely on mining and chopping, which are mechanically similar enough that I only really had to learn one style of play twice. Instead of staring at the entire farm sheet and wondering what every icon meant, I had a clear purpose and could largely ignore huge sections of the game.
That was not just useful for learning the rules. It made my strategy clearer too. I knew which cards I wanted, which upgrades mattered to me and what resources I was hoping to uncover, so each round became a much simpler decision.
Later games then became opportunities to branch out. I could focus on a different area, learn how that system scores, understand how its upgrades interact and work out whether I actually enjoyed that route. It makes learning Tend feel almost modular, with each play teaching you another piece of the bigger picture.
Easy Rules, Difficult Choices
Once you understand the basic flow, Tend really is quite straightforward to teach. Choose two cards, perform those tasks, use resources immediately, improve your engine and gradually fill your sheets with marks, crops, animals, projects and cargo. The complexity comes from the number of options, not from obscure rules.
That distinction matters because Tend initially looks considerably heavier than it plays. The huge number of printed sheets in the box adds to that intimidating first impression, even though the reality is simply that the publishers have given you plenty of consumable copies. You only use one farm sheet and one cargo sheet during a game, but lifting a weighty box full of paper does not exactly scream “easy teach”.
Once you have played a few times, however, the difficulty starts to shift. You now understand all those systems, which means you suddenly want to use more of them. Ironically, Tend can therefore become more mentally demanding as you get better, because the temptation to chase three, four or five different ideas grows enormously.
That is where discipline becomes important. You still need to pick your main focus and perhaps one secondary route, even when you know perfectly well how to exploit everything else. The game constantly whispers, “you could do this too”, and succeeding often means learning to say no.
Combo Time
The reward for that planning comes when Tend starts chaining things together.
You cross off one requirement, which completes a row, which gives you a reward, which lets you finish another project, which unlocks something else, which gives you another resource, which suddenly means you can complete something you were not expecting to touch this turn. Those moments are fantastic.
Steve makes a similar point in his review, noting that Tend can produce satisfying cascades of choices and bonuses, even if every round will not explode in quite the same way. When the stars do align, though, Tend becomes enormously satisfying because one modest action can suddenly turn into a much larger sequence.
There is a downside. Keeping track of everything can become surprisingly difficult.
The game gives you a nice simple round tracker so you know whether you have taken zero, one or both of your selected tasks, but the bonuses inside those tasks can spiral. Once you start triggering extra resources, extra tasks, upgrades and project rewards, it becomes easy to wonder whether you have already taken something, forgotten something, or accidentally resolved something twice.
Oddly, this does not necessarily improve with experience. In some ways it gets worse because experienced players create bigger chains. Your turns become more efficient and more exciting, but therefore also harder to mentally audit.
Scratch That
The scratch-off forest and mine are one of Tend’s most charming ideas. Scratching away a square and revealing a resource, bonus or upgrade opportunity is just intrinsically satisfying. It is a physical little moment of discovery that you rarely see in modern board games, and it suits the exploration theme beautifully. The box gives you plenty of scratch cards, more can be purchased, and there is also a free digital alternative if you prefer not to use the physical ones.
I do have two annoyances with them.
First, the squares are small enough that you have to be quite careful while scratching. If you reveal the edge of a neighbouring square, you may not be able to see exactly what it contains, but seeing whether that adjacent box is shaded can still give away whether an upgrade is hiding there. It is not game-breaking, but I would rather be able to scratch enthusiastically and move on. Second, the debris goes everywhere.
I am one of those people who wants the gaming table to stay neat, and tiny scratch-off flakes scattered across felt are absolutely not my idea of a relaxing evening. I will happily use Tend on a normal tabletop or with a protective covering underneath, but I would not put those physical scratch cards directly onto my felt gaming surface.
A Very Pleasant Place To Spend 60-90 Minutes
Despite everything going on, Tend has a surprisingly calm atmosphere. There is something inherently pleasant about filling in your farm, growing crops, developing animals, scratching through forests and slowly colouring your sheets with progress. The simultaneous structure also means there is very little conventional downtime, because everyone is usually working through their own puzzle at roughly the same time.
The scoring helps too. Cargo, badges, neighbours and seasonal objectives give you different ways to generate points, while the Cargo Manifest itself has a satisfying spatial element because resources occupy different shapes and certain stalls can change their value. You are constantly looking for ways to make the next little decision work harder for you.
I also have the upgraded marker set, which is absolutely not essential but does improve the physical experience for me. Instead of colouring with the pencils from the base game, you can press down neat little coloured icons in one satisfying stamp, leaving the finished sheet bright, orderly and vibrant. It is a small thing, but Tend is exactly the sort of game where watching your sheet gradually fill up is part of the pleasure.
Pros
Huge strategic variety without especially complicated individual rules.
Specialising in different systems makes repeated plays genuinely rewarding.
The cascading combo turns can be incredibly satisfying.
Scratch-offs, colourful sheets and the whole farming presentation give the game a wonderfully tactile, relaxing feel.
Cons
The first learn looks far more intimidating than the actual game deserves.
Bigger combo turns can become difficult to track accurately.
Scratch-off squares are fiddly, and the debris gets everywhere.
The sheer number of tempting routes can make later games surprisingly overwhelming if you refuse to specialise.
Final Thoughts
Tend is one of those games that gets much friendlier once you stop looking at the whole thing at once. The box, rulebook and enormous sheets suggest a monster, but the game itself is really a collection of fairly simple systems joined together by one key decision: what are you actually going to focus on this time?
That is also why I am so keen to keep playing it. My first game taught me mining and chopping, later games let me explore the other systems, and every play gives me a better understanding of where points can come from and which routes I enjoy most. It creates that lovely feeling where you finish a game already thinking about what you would do differently next time.
There are rough edges, especially around tracking larger combos and the physical scratch-off system, but neither comes close to spoiling what Tend does well. It is clever, satisfying, colourful, surprisingly peaceful and full of little rewards that make progress feel constant.
I am giving Tend 8.5/10. It is very close to a nine for me already, and I am particularly keen to try the expansions. If they add meaningful variety without overcomplicating what is already here, I can easily see Tend making that final jump.
