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Hanabi Deluxe WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: The Crew, Decrypto, The Mind. Published by: Cocktail Games Designed by: Antoine Bauza, Gérald Guerlais Hanabi was first published in 2010. It was one of the first games to popularise the idea of not looking at your cards, rather concentrating on the other players. Since then, Hanabi has seen many different releases. This is the one to get though. Want to find out how it plays and why this is the definitive edition? Let's get it to the table and find out. Set Up Shuffle the cards and deal out five face down to each player. Four cards in a four or five player game. With this edition of Hanabi we are also provided with card holders which you can give out at this point, which makes looking at other peoples cards a lot easier. It also avoids the temptation to look at your own as you pick them up. Each player will place their cards into their card holder so that they are facing outwards. They must not look at their own cards as they do this but they can look at the other players cards. Then lay out the eight clue tokens and the three error tiles placed face down. You are now ready to play. How to Play Players will now take it in turns to carry out one of the three possible actions. You can either give information to one other player about their cards. Play a card of your own, or discard a card. At the start of the game you will have no idea what cards you have, so the only option available to you will be to give information to another player. In Hanabi, you are looking to collectively play the cards in sequential order, one to five, in the five colours available. A perfect first move would be to play a one from your hand. So, telling another player if they have a one, that they have a one, is a great way to start! When you play a card or discard a card you will draw back up to the hand limit from the deck, adding the new card into your hand facing away from you like the other cards. When you give information to other players you can tell them about a certain number or a certain colour. Never both. You can point to the cards you are referring to and they can then rearrange their cards so they can try and remember what they have been told. But remember without ever looking at the front of the cards themselves. When you give a clue like this you must spend one of your eight clue tokens. When they are all spent you cannot give anymore clues. The only way to get them back is by discarding. When you discard a card you can take one clue token back after you discard. But be careful not to discard a card you need to play. There are three of each coloured number one card, two twos, two three's, two four's, and only one five. If you discard the wrong card, you may then not be able to complete your firework display. If you ever complete one of the colours, laying the final five on top of the one, two, three, and four, you can claim back a clue token if available as a bonus. Laying all five colours, one to five without making too many mistakes will win you the game. If you ever play a card that is not directly in the correct ascending sequence then you will loose one life and be forced to flip over one of the three error tiles. If you ever have to flip the third tile over, you will all loose the game. You can still score points based on the highest number of each colour, and hopefully still had some fun. The rule book will give you an indication of how well you have done based on your score. But really, let's face it, you lost! Rack 'em up and try again! This time, going for the full fireworks show. Expansions In this version of Hanabi we have three expansions to play with. First, the Colour Avalanche add on, which brings in these ten colourful cards, shuffled into the deck at the beginning of set-up. With these cards added, you now have to make a sixth firework display, with the same rules as the other five. The only change is in how you give information to other players. You can still tell other players about the numbers for these cards. But not the colours. As they have no single colour, and you cannot say you have one or more multi-coloured cards. But you must include them in the other colours when you give information. For example, if someone had one white and one multi-colour, you have to then say "you have two whites." As the multi-coloured card counts as a white. It counts as every colour. It gets very tricky! Black Power Add On This add odd introduces ten more black cards. These cards work a little differently and need to be played in reverse order from five back down to one. Similarly to the multi-coloured cards, you cannot give direct information about the colours, only the number. At the end of the game, you will score a little differently. You will remove one point for each card missing from the black display. So the maximum points is the same as the base game, despite having ten extra cards. 5 Flamboyants Add On. This final expansion introduces six bonus tiles. Shuffle them up and place them face down next to the deck in a pile during set-up. Whenever you complete a firework display by placing the fifth card down in any colour, you can reveal a bonus tile instead of taking a clue token. The tile is immediately activated and then discarded. The top left token lets you take a card previously discarded and add it into your fireworks display so long as it fits the next number rule. The next tile lets you gain one clue back. The next one lets you gain a clue and flip over an error tile. The forth token lets you give one piece of colour information to one player. The next one lets you give one piece of number information. The final token lets you take a card from the discard pile and shuffle it back into the deck. Is it Fun Hanabi is one of my all time favourite card games, and this version just adds to the chaos. I love all the expansion although I regularly play the base game, as it is just so pure. But I like to have the options. Especially playing with more experienced players. The card holders are brilliant and are the main reason I would recommend this version. They are sturdy, fit the cards well, and do not fall over. Having card holders is not essential with Hanabi, but it certainly helps a lot. You can see other players hands a lot easier, and don't have to ask players to raise their hand, or turn it your way. And as mentioned, it stops you accidently looking at them as habit often takes over in Hanabi. People don't cheat, they are just so used to picking up cards and looking at them from playing other games where this is the norm. The clue tokens are nice and chunky too, and by far outstrip the small tokens in the regular version of Hanabi. As do the new error tiles, which offer a nice image of a fireworks display too. There is also a handy standee with the main rules and tokens explained. I would very much recommend this version of the game if you want to get Hanabi. But, do you want this game at all? Similar to games like The Mind, Hanabi relies very much on players getting in sync with each other. Understanding what people are telling you with limited communication is key to winning but also enjoying this game. A very basic example would be that if you have played four of the five ones so far and are only missing the yellow one, if someone had the yellow one, I would be inclined to tell them, "this is a yellow." I would then hope they would think, "hmmm, Jim told me this was a yellow, we need the yellow one still. I don't know what number it is, but I am gong to take a risk and play it as I assume he told me it was a yellow, right now, for a reason." Of course, I could have said "this is a one." But then if that was me, that would make me think I can discard it as we have four our of fives ones down, and the chances are this is one of the four we have already played. These nuances become key. If you can start to understand the information hidden within the clues, then you will really begin to enjoy this game. If the above example makes you think to yourself that you would never go there in your own mind, then perhaps this game will not be for you. But I would still suggest giving it a try and working out your groups little tells and tricks. It is more likely my style just didn't work for you. Because this game has been a hit for me 100% of the time. I cannot say that about many other games. But do not get me wrong. Hanabi is not about tricking your way to victory. It is about understanding what people are saying within the rules of the game. You cannot point at two cards and say something silly like "for once I can tell you with my five fingers, that these two cards are white." Emphasising the for and the five in your clue. Slipping in the number four and five to add numerical information to the colour. That is cheating. Although hilarious when done, and it is often done in early rounds with new players I have found. Hanabi is more about giving the right information at the right time such as the above example. If all the two's have been played, tell someone they have two's so they can freely discard them and get some clue tokens back. If you are still looking to play one and two for each colour, some don't tell others about any five's that they are holding, as they won't need to use that card for a while. And if someone has a few cards they can legally play but they don't know it, perhaps give them a clue that would encourage they to do so. Such as saying "these two cards are white" when they are both white twos and you need to play a white two. All this takes some time for each game to work out their own groups' manner of communication and understanding each others intentions. But when it works, of my! Does it feel good. There is an incredible tension bubbling under for every game of Hanabi. Playing the right card with limited information but getting it right feels great! Discarding the wrong card is frustrating but just adds to the tension. And remember, you have a few free goes at discarding the wrong card as each number has more than one version of it. Just don't discard any fives! Which is why some people do give information about fives early on. You may not be able to use it for a while, but you don't want to accidently discard it. But will you remember what it was fifteen minutes later!? Probably not. Which just adds to the laughter. You can ask, "What do you know about your hand" to a player to avoid giving them information twice, or perhaps to remind them if they have seemingly forgotten. And it never fails to raise a titter when a player who is sitting on the perfect card that they have been told about, but clearly forgotten, reply to this question with a timid "I forgot everything!" I would recommend this game to anyone. I love it so much and it firmly sits in my mind as a modern classic. I think it has a place in every persons collection and would happily play this game anytime with anyone.

Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition WBG Score: 9.5 Player Count: 3-6 You’ll like this if you like: Eclipse 2nd Dawn for the galaxy, Star Wars Rebellion, War of the Ring Published by: Fantasy Flight Games Designed by: Dane Beltrami, Corey Konieczka, Christian T. Petersen By Steve Godfrey Douglas Adams once wrote “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” Wise words of course from the great man himself but it’s clear to me that he obviously hadn’t seen an eight player game of TI set up on the table! Years ago when I first got into gaming, a friend told me about a game he really wanted to play. It was a big, sprawling, space game about war, politics, trade, negotiation and diplomacy that took anything from eight to twelve hours to play. I looked him firmly in the eyes and I said…………”well there’s now way I’m playing that!!” That was Twilight Imperium 3rd edition. The fact that I’m here now reviewing Twilight Imperium 4th edition and you’ve seen my score teaches me one lesson about gaming. Never Say Never!! How to control Mecatol Rex In Twilight Imperium you are all battling for control of the galactic council on Mecatol Rex. The player who reaches ten victory points first will win and claim control. Before a round starts each player, starting with the speaker, picks one of the game’s eight strategy cards (two in a four player game). These will give you a powerful ability and also determine turn order for the round. On your turn you will perform one action. You can play a faction ability or a card that says ‘action’. You can play your strategy card. This will let you use the main ability on it which will include things like letting you get tech, money, specific units you can only get from these cards and command counters. Once played every other player will be able to play the secondary ability on that card if they use a strategy token from their pool. These abilities are usually less powerful versions of the main ability but well worth using if you can. You can pass, but only if you’ve played your strategy card. The last action you can perform is going to be the main action you’ll be doing across the game. This is the tactical action. This action has five steps that you follow in order. Basically during this action you’ll activate a system using one of your command tokens then you can choose to move ships into that system following movement rules. Then any combat will take place, then invade the planet, then you can choose to produce in that system if you can. This may sound like a lengthy process and you will be forgiven for thinking that this is probably the reason the game takes so long but you won’t be doing every and you start to see moving and producing as almost separate actions and not part of one larger one. Production for example, is something you tend to do on its own so you just skip right to it. Once everyone has passed there’s a scoring phase. At the start of the game only two public objectives will be revealed. Here everyone can score one public objective and one secret objective as long as they qualify for it. Each player can only score three secret objectives per game. Then a new public objective is revealed. After scoring, as long as no one has won, one of two things could happen. Either a new round starts or, when a player takes control of the planet Mecatol Rex in the centre of the board, there will be an agenda phase before the start of each new round. In the agenda phase the player with the speaker token will draw an agenda from the deck and read it aloud. Players will then vote on it. These could include voting for laws to be put in place that will affect the game going forward. That’s a very basic rundown of how the game plays, I’ll get into a bit more detail of some of these in the rest of the review. However if you do want a full rules rundown I’d recommend checking out the brilliant RTFM rules video on youtube. It helped me learn the game and it's entertaining. If you want to see someone play TI4 with clones, it's well worth a watch and it's the shortest How to play video for TI4 out there. Send someone in to negotiate! When you look at the rules for Twilight imperium it’s easy to see this as another nuts and bolts, score objectives, build units and tech, area control game. Now while that is the case for the most part, especially since the original game was designed in 1997, there's so much more to it than that. There's one mechanic that elevates this game to so much more than that. Negotiation! I know that very word will strike dread into the hearts of some gamers and for good reason. It’s one of those mechanisms that requires you to bring in an outside skill that not everyone can do well with, like dexterity or making a soufflé. It's the mechanism that for me really opens this game up and lets it shine like a well lit war sun. Most area control games will see players building up fleets, taking areas by force and the biggest fleet usually wins the game. There’s absolutely nothing stopping you doing the same thing here of course? The beauty is that you don’t have to. Units are precious in this game, trade goods don’t exactly flow and planetary resources can just as easily be lost before you get a chance to spend them. So the last thing you want to do is spend more money on ships you lost trying to take systems from other players. So instead of going in all guns blazing you can turn to your opponents and make a deal. Deals can take many forms, like asking someone to play their strategy card action at a particular point, paying someone to not attack you or it could be giving someone money to move from a planet so you could move in. If all goes well no units are lost from either side. The other advantage of course is that no one’s forces are weakened for an unsuspecting attack from another player who’s waiting to move their fleet in as soon as the winner is left limping around the system. Deals don’t have to be friendly of course. If both sides of a deal don’t resolve immediately the other player could just as easily take the money and put it towards placing a big old war sun in a system instead and refusing to leave. For me this is the genius of it, just giving people that little nudge to engage with and talk to each other gives so much freedom. Rather than doing the customary thing of sitting and endlessly staring at your player board, this gives players an excuse to start a conversation. Whether it be about in game negotiations or just a chat about what everyone has been up to. It really paves the way for some great in game banter. This is the beauty of the game. Yes it’s eight plus hours, but because of a little bit of negotiation it's now an eight plus hour game that you get to play while having a laugh with your friends and that, above anything else is why this game really sings for me. It takes how long!? Let's talk about the big looming war sun in the room. The game length. If Twilight Imperium is famous for one thing it’s for how long it takes to play it. If you don’t set aside at least eight hours to play this game then you're either playing a three player game with experienced players, you’ve seen the big ole space lion on the cover and brought this game on a whim, or you’re just adorably optimistic. The best thing about TI though, is that in all my games, I’ve never felt the time, it’s always flown by. The main reason for that boils down to one thing. The player interaction. It’s such a simple thing but the way interaction works in this game just makes the time fly by (with caveats of course) I’ve only played Fourth Edition so I can’t speak for earlier editions but the whole game seems to have been designed to keep people talking and keep them engaged in the game. Whether it’s through table talk, using secondary actions on strategy cards or just the fact that when you're not planning your next turn, you're keeping an eye on the game itself, because sooner or later everything could have an effect on what you're doing and what your future plans are. Keeping your eye on your immediate neighbours is one thing but you’d do wrong to ignore that big fleet being built up on the other side of the table. I’ve not mentioned it in the rules, but wormholes and upgraded movement are a thing in TI. So just because they can’t get to you now, it doesn’t mean that they won't have their sights set on you in the future. I've lost the bleeps, I've lost the sweeps, and I've lost the creeps. So it seems like I’ve gone on about the interaction and negotiation for a while. But what about if you were to remove that from the game? Does it still hold up? Yes, absolutely! Twilight Imperium isn’t just about control. In the base game only eight of the 20 public objectives are based on controlling planets. The rest are either tech or resource based objectives. There are a few more within the secret objectives and a few combat focused ones but again these balance out with the others. Rather than all of these objectives being disjointed from each other everything feeds into everything else. So while you are gaining planets to get a control objective this will definitely help in working towards resource and tech objectives as some planets will give you tech symbols to use, these planets in turn will help give you resources or influence to help with those objectives. If there’s one thing you won’t be short of in this game it’s strategy. From round one you’ll have at least three possible objectives to shoot for and new public objectives being revealed each round, as well as any other secrets that you pick up during the game. How you do these and in which order is down to you but it opens up so much room for a variety of different strategies that you’re never really sure what your opponents are up to until they do it. If you haven’t guessed by now this game has a ton of replayability. We draft races each game and for the most part we try and pick ones we haven’t been before This means that every game is going to be different just based on the races alone. Your play styles will change, how you interact with other players and their races, what alliances you’ll make. Couple that with the map that changes every game we play and you're constantly kept on your toes in terms of strategy. What I like about this is that new players, while initially overwhelmed, have a better chance of keeping up since the chances are that the rest of us are trying to get a handle on how best to use this new faction. There’s sometimes nothing worse as a new player than playing against someone who has played the same faction time and again and who can play them and destroy you with them in their sleep. Space politics is boring!!! right? Right, I’ll admit it. Even when I was getting myself excited to try this game, this wasn’t a phase I was particularly looking forward to. I mean, it’s space politics and to anyone who’s seen the phantom menace, we all know how thrilling that is. Man was I wrong though. It’s not until you really get into this phase that you find out how much fun it is. As the speaker reads out the first agenda there’s more than likely going to be an audible ooooh! as everyone starts to plan which way they want to vote. Then the discussions start and the game turns into a mix of parliament, a reality tv show and dragons den. It will soon turn into a phase that you initially shrugged off to possibly being one of your favourite parts of the game. There’s a mix of cards that will see some ships getting destroyed, players earning points and also a few game changing events. Planning on using that wormhole to attack me next turn? Too late we’ve voted to close them all off! Witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational D10. Combat is, in essence, fairly straightforward. There are a few little steps such as firing cannons, anti fighter barrage and bombardment in between the main combat but all forms of combat involve you just throwing some dice. You each throw dice for the ships you have in the fight and each ship has a number by which it hits. Damage is assigned simultaneously and destroyed ships removed. If no one retreats then combat continues. You can upgrade ships and ground units to give them better abilities. It’s a really simple design and one that probably is reminiscent of when this game was designed. But it’s so much fun, yes some people will probably find it too random but there’s something so fun watching someone take their fairly sizable fleet into an opponent's pretty weak looking army and generally not knowing how it’s going to turn out. A huge fleet of fighters may look intimidating but given that they only hit on nines on a D10 means that they’re as much use as a stormtrooper in a sleep mask. Watching the underdog slowly chip away at the fleet is such a stand up and cheer moment for everyone around the table and and even bigger “aaahhh” moment when they lose. Yes it’s open to randomness, yes it may not be fun for the person who is slowly losing they’re hard earned army, but sooner or later the roles may be reversed and personally, whether it goes in my favour or not, I can’t help but have a lot of fun with it. There’s only one game that dares give me the raspberry. Unlike a popular movie franchise, sometimes, in space, people can hear you scream. That’s probably because this game isn’t for everyone and despite the high score I do concede that this game isn’t for everyone. As I said earlier, this is a long game and that’s going to cause what would normally be minor problems to be bigger ones. If the theme, the length in itself or any of the mechanics I’ve mentioned aren't something that you enjoy, even in a shorter game then I would advise you steer clear of TI4. I always want people to have fun when they’re playing games and not enjoying yourself in a short game is one thing, but in an eight hour plus game! I certainly wouldn’t want to put anyone through that. Something that you may not know is that TI4 has player elimination. Now before you run away let me just say that there is no reward for eliminating another player or is it encouraged at all by the game itself, it’s just something that is a possibility. In all my plays I’ve only seen it happen once and that was in the last couple of turns in the last round. You have to be really trying to do it to someone and it’s a pretty harsh thing to do to someone. So much so that I would be unwilling to play with someone who would go to those lengths to finish someone’s game like that. This leads onto another point. TI is kind of group dependent and to that end, you dependent as well. If you have a group that doesn’t do a lot of table talk then you may ot have a fun time. Similarly if you’re new to the game and you have an overly fighty group who are willing to take advantage of your newbie status then again you may not have the best of times. Twilight Imperium is an event game. Some groups (of whom I’m insanely jealous) get to play this game on the regular but for us it’s probably a bi-annual occurrence but when it happens we make the most of it and make it something to get excited about. We draft races a couple of weeks before, we build the map when we arrive and we just make a fun day out of it and we also find ourselves quoting one of the best space movies ever made…..Spaceballs. I’ll play at any player count but this is definitely a “the more the merrier” type game. This game is a beast in more than just box size but for me it’s one that highlights a lot of the things I love about playing board games. Its social, strategic, cheer inducing fun.

Meadow: Downstream Expansion WBG Score: 9 Player Count:1-4 You’ll like this if you like: The Networks, Everdell, Meadow Published by: Rebel Studio Designed by: Klemens Kalicki By Steve Godfrey This expansion has a cute otter on the box cover and an otter card. Nothing further, 10 out of ten, review done, have a great day everyone. So I’ve been told that my previous sentence probably doesn’t constitute a helpful or informative review. I did make the argument that a regular review from me is probably not that either and can’t I just fill the review up with pictures of Otters…….. so here is my Otter light review of Meadow: Downstream. Also if you want to know how Meadow works and my thoughts on it then head over to my review on the site here. Not a (L)Otter rules Set up Meadow as you would normally for your player count. Then pick a side of the new river board, either the lazy river or the wild rapids and add that to the campfire board. Then set that up depending on what side of the river you chose. Add the river deck to the new board and fill in the spaces from the deck. Give each player a double sided river watery ground card in addition to the regular ground card and give everyone their river trail token. Now you’re all set! The game plays out much the same as the base game. In terms of actions. Now though you have a river trail token that you can play. You can play this into a space on the river board and take any card from the row or column in which you placed it. If you’re playing with less than four and are using the wild path token then this can also be played on the river board. River cards will be played into your meadow as usual but they won’t score you any points at the end of the game. Instead of points these cards have oar symbols on them and they’ll each have a number of arrows in them. When you play these cards into your meadow you’ll move your kayaker the number of spaces on the river boards as per the number of arrows on that card. A number of spaces along the river will have bonuses on them. These will be things like playing more cards, taking extra cards or more road tokens. Each river has point values around it and at the end of the game you will score the highest one that your kayaker has passed. On the lazy river side of the board you will have sunset cards that will be placed in point order on the board. The first player to reach those spaces will take the highest pointed card to potentially play into their meadow. There will also be a couple of new goals you can claim if you can fulfil them when you pass that space. The wild rapids board plays out in a similar way but here you will have random tent and pier tokens that you’ll choose from when you get to those spots. The last addition to the game is two waterfall tokens. These are placed in the spaces between the rocks just before and after the hourglass space on the campfire board. When the round marker passes one of these simply replace all the cards on the river board. Wave to the Salmon on your way downstream. Okay, so I’ve taken off the Otter tinted glasses and I’ve been able to get into Meadow Downstream and review it for what it is, a really fun expansion. It may look like a really fun jaunt down a river but it really throws some new interesting decisions your way. At first the idea of the new cards not having points on them may seem a bit counter productive and almost not even worth taking them. Turns out there’s some great reasons to take them, twenty of them at first glance. Being able to get your kayaker to the end of the board for twenty points may be worth the effort alone but which route you take and how quickly you get there is where most of your decisions will come from. The bonuses are the other reason you’ll not want to ignore that board. I’d actually argue that these are the things that you really want to navigate it for. There were times in the base game that you’d take an action that felt almost unproductive. Maybe you’d take a road token bonus just for something to do or take a card that wasn’t helpful because other slots were taken. Now gaining say a road token or a card as a bonus actually feels really satisfying. They’re like the toys you used to get in with your cereal, they weren’t life changing but they were good enough that you just wanted to keep digging to get them. It now feels like you're getting more options on each round with downstream rather than just the base actions and I didn’t ever feel like a turn was wasted. You actually feel like you're getting turns back because there will be things that you’ll take that you otherwise would have had to use an action to get. How to balance a kayak. I love the balance of this expansion. Introducing an entirely new board could easily have gone one of two ways. Either taking the focus entirely from the main board and having people focus on the new shiny, or players would just ignore it because they wanted to focus on the main board because there’s too much going on on the new board. But this does a lovely job on making the new river boards just as important as the main board. First the new river tile means that you’ll need to take something from the river deck at least once per round anyway, so unless you're only going to use those cards for a two for one swap, you may as well put them to good use, after all, they’re bound to come in handy. But you’ll want to take the river cards because they’re going to help with contributing to your meadow. Apart from the fish symbol, all the symbols are the same as the base game so they're going to be useful in getting your base game cards played so they’re going to be equally worth your time getting them into your hand. Plus having six more cards to choose from is always a good thing to have. As I said previously, those bonuses and the victory points are too good to ignore and I imagine that once one player starts moving down that track then others will want in on the action, especially once they see them getting extras and potentially getting some extra victory points. That’s not to say that you can’t win if someone races to the end, they still have to score well from their meadow as well. Even though it’s a separate board it feels integrated. It feels like something you want to use but it never takes focus from the main game At the moment I think the wilds rapids side of the board is my favourite but it’s close. There is more of a race element to it to get to those first come, first served bonuses. Both boards though have those branching paths where you can decide to take the long way round and gather up the bonuses or take the shorter route and try and get those big points. The lazy river has its own little “who’ll get their first “ moment of tension but that certainty comes out more on the wild rapids board. You Otter know. With the addition to the new board and new cards and new token you will find that this does have an effect on the game length. How much this adds will depend on player count, player experiences and of course the dreaded AP. Being able to take from anywhere from a column or row on the river board speeds up that particular decision and if someone is taking a bonus then there may be a slightly longer turn for some people, but we’ve not found it to be an overwhelming amount but it’s something to keep in mind. One thing I was going to add to my “niggles” section was that the new card holder doesn’t fit into the main box or the expansion box without breaking it down. However, I did see someone suggest that you place it upside down into one of the spaces in the main box and it fits! (thank you YouTube comments section) Now rather than a niggle this is a public service announcement to say that it all fits into the base game box and now I can hang the expansion box lid on my wall! Meadow Downstream is one of those expansions that adds to the base game in such a way that I’ll always want to play with it if I can. It doesn’t complicate the rules and can be easily taught within a few minutes if you know the base game. I’d even go so far as to say that you could teach this to new players of meadow because, as I say, it's only a couple of extra rules. But I’d probably not just because the base game gives you enough to get your head round without introducing a second board into the mix. Perhaps after they’ve got a game of it under their belt then you can show them the wonders of the river. If you love Meadow and want to up the game a notch without complicating things then I think this expansion is well worth kayaking down to your FLGS for. Unless of course your game store doesn’t have river access then by all means find an alternative mode of transport.

Comment from the Editor We previously removed this post due to comments made by the designer. You can read more about that here. Tascini has since apologised for his actions and the publisher released an excellent statement on the matter here. After this, I was left unsure what to do about reposting this review. But decided in the end to go ahead with it. Ensuring I covered three points. I wanted you to have the above background. So you could decide if you want to read on. I wanted to make it clear that there are many people involved in the production of this game that do not deserve to be punished by one person's actions. I, and no one associated with WBG tolerate any form of racism or discrimination in the slightest. I find these situations abhorrent. With that said, it is your choice if you want to read on. Anyone with a view on any way I could handle this better I would welcome your feedback. By Nathan Coombs When you look at worker placement games, two of the big-hitters are Tzolk’in and Teotihuacan, both created by Daniele Tascini. At first glance they have many similarities and both are extremely well regarded. Some gamers look to Boardgamegeek for an assessment of their gaming choices. At the time of writing these two are ranked 38 and 62 respectively. The question though, if you enjoy worker placement games, is whether a love of this genre should make you consider one of these classics? Better still, is there room for both of these heavyweights in one house? Like a pair of heavyweight boxers, slogging it out in the ring for supremacy, these games have different strengths. Which one might be able to deliver a knockout punch? Will it go to points and judge’s decision at the final bell? This blog gives you a ring-side seat and chance to see these games trade blows from the initial weigh-in, through the first few rounds and then to the final bell. Sit back, enjoy the hype and imagine yourself at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas as we answer which of these two is worthy to raise their arm in victory. The Weigh-In Tzolk’in burst onto the scene eight years ago, announcing itself as a Euro heavyweight with its standard size box and bizarre stage name. [The name itself refers to a unit of time, the division of the 260-day cycle of the Mayan calendar. This civilisation originated in 1800BC, and peaked as the predominant culture in Central America from 250 to 900 AD]. This is a large game. It weighs 1.5kg and winner of the 2013 “Spiele Hit Für Experten” [Game for Experts] is plastered on the lid. The makers say it is suitable for 12 years + and a game lasts 90 minutes. In reality, this game has more stamina – probably nearer two hours for a four-player battle. That said, it is best for older children, teenagers and adults. Tzolk’in is not difficult to grasp but it does require persistent focus throughout play. Teotihuacan is the upstart. It is looking to muscle its way onto the gaming table and usurp his older brother. His training camp is further north in the Americas, hailing from the ancient pyramid city of that name that was taken over by the Aztecs in what is now, modern-day Mexico. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the games appear similar in size, but Teotihuacan weighs in at a massive 2.01kg. This game obviously packs some serious components. The box artwork is not as brash or colourful as Tzolk’in. There are no Lonsdale belts or Spiele des Jahres labels draped over the shoulders of the box. [For the record, Teotihuacan did get voted the best strategy game of 2018 by Dice Tower Reviews]. The slightly muted colours still draw the eye and depict wonder images of the ancient central American pyramids and temples. This game comes with a 14+ rating and will almost certainly take two hours to complete (as a four-player contest). What it does have as USP over its sibling is a solo game. It is like buying a couple of sets of boxing gloves and having a big punch-bag thrown for practice. The Opening Bell The first thing that confronts you in opening Tzolk’in is the gears. The game board is a mosaic of large, inter-connecting pieces, each of which contains a gear wheel. These fit together like a mechanical clock. The larger central cog meshes nicely with the five surrounding wheels at the sides. The board is bright and full of primary colours that depict different zones. Each of the five smaller cogs are named according to their activities. Players have some starting tiles from which they chose basic resources. Rather than raw eggs and high-protein supplements, this game is all about corn. Without corn you cannot survive in the Mayan civilisation that is Tzolk’in. Teotihuacan, not only carries more weight, but has a longer reach that its older rival. Unboxing this Aztec wonder reveals a huge board and components galore. This game demands plenty of space to work. Before any piece is placed it is as though this boxer is already in the middle of the ring demanding to get noticed. The board area is about 50% larger. For the Aztecs, their fighter is being fuelled by cocoa. This is the currency that enables you to work in this game. Pivotal to this game’s success is pyramid building. From the outset your eye is drawn to the half-finished pyramid of tiles in the middle of the playing area. Surrounding this 3D structure are eight working areas. The relative positions of these can be changed in every game just to keep opponents on their toes and improve replayability. Probing Punches At the beginning of every turn in Tzolk’in you have to make an initial decision – either send your workers out, or retrieve them. You may not do both and you cannot pass your turn. Your minions can be sent to one of the five areas depicted by the smaller cogs. Each one has their own workspace on the wheel and cannot be forcibly removed from it. The five key areas are; clearing jungle with corn harvesting, resource acquisition, developing technologies, spending time to appease the gods, and an amalgam of the other four zones. However, there are limits where your men may work. Placing workers will cost corn. The more you send out, the more corn it costs. If other players (or your own) are already occupying certain areas it will cost even more corn just to play. Sometimes, through other’s actions you might have insufficient corn funds to pay for all of your workers. It is a bit like a ticket-tout putting up the prices of any clandestine tickets as the day of the big fight draws near. If you have no corn to pay and play, you can always grab first player, save your corn and then take the first opportunity to take control by landing the first punch. At the end of each round the central wheel is turned by one notch. This moves the smaller cogs and advances your workers to more “profitable” areas. This is Tzolk’in’s party piece. The key to doing well and holding your own in this game is forward planning. You need to ensure that you align your workers in various gears so that they can be retrieved at an optimal time – a bit like a boxer landing a jab, a hook, then an upper-cut combo. Teotihuacan, at first, seems to have little in its armoury to offer. With only three worker dice per player, the choices on offer seem limited. Similarly, only one worker may be moved each turn, and then, by only a maximum of three spaces. This might seem like trying to fight with one hand tied behind your back. The Aztec workers are depicted by D6 dice, the number of pips showing the experience and efficiency of each worker. The one-two “sucker punch” of Teotihuacan is that you can align two or three workers in the same zone. Then they can work like a tag team, and with careful planning a huge number of resources or additional points might be gained. With each action your natives gain experience and “power-up” and increase their value. The pressure to earn cocoa is still there, but is not all consuming. Indeed the presence of cocoa appears to have little influence on gameplay. In Tzolk’in your actions could be determined by other’s gameplay; in Teotihuacan you are the playmaker. Your performance is fully dependent on your ability to plan your personal moves and optimise worker placement for resources etc. Going the Distance Pace yourself. These worker placement games are long. For Tzolk’in a whole game is determined by a complete rotation of the central cog (or 28 turns). At every quarter turn (seven rounds) all of your workers need feeding with yet more corn. This can mean that during preceding turns, your focus gets distracted by the quest for corn. Rather than leaving this to the last minute, this is best managed by a slow steady build up over many turns before reaping the benefits. The most effective punches are all about getting the foot placement right, having the correct stance and then throwing the punch, rather than a wild, desperate flailing of the arms. Teotihuacan is a similarly paced game. The length is about 30 turns. Victory points and rewards are gained at the first, second and final eclipse. Cocoa is required for worker payment, but these mid-break reckonings are more about rewarding good play decisions rather than a scramble for survival. The key for preparing for the eclipse is to optimise your ability to be handsomely rewarded for previous actions. Calling a Time-out In the same way that boxers need attention of their trainers between rounds, for Tzolk’in the natives need to take a break from harvesting or resource gathering. In both games workers can gain a reprieve, and instead gain the favour of their gods or even sit back and develop technologies. The gods reward them with victory points, bonus harvests or even make resource production more efficient. Religion and worship are also key in Teotihuacan. Workers can call time and jump off the treadmill of constant circulating around the board. They do this by locking themselves away with their god and seeing what rewards might be bestowed. Getting back in the game does cost cocoa but, as in life, taking time out to re-focus will bring greater long-term benefits as well as some short term bonuses. The Final Bell As we approach the final bell, neither game is able to deliver a knockout punch. Tzolk’in continues to pursue a relentless onslaught of corn collection to survive. If you have worked well and had an efficient “engine” going then the technologies and upgrades will work too. This allows you to have more favour with the gods. If the gods want you more than others then this is translated into additional victory points. Teotihuacan’s big weapon is the pyramid. The ultimate aim is to work together to complete a four-layered temple with embellishments. Every brick laid will score more favours (points).The taller the pyramid the greater the rewards. In the event that the pyramid is completed, the game ends immediately. This is uncommon. Instead, like its older brother, this game has a tenacity that will persist until the final bell (the third eclipse). At this day of reckoning, additional points are scored depending on how your community of workers have lived and contributed to the building projects. The Verdict There is no clear winner in this contest. Both games are evenly matched in terms of time commitment, table-top presence and even player engagement. The final outcome will have to go to a point’s decision by the judges. For this discussion I have enlisted the help of five other family members and together we played these two bruisers on consecutive days. Tzolk’in is much more dependent on other’s actions. With a three or four player count the others will have a greater influence on your options and choices. This means there is more of a shared playing experience. The key is to pre-plan your moves, anticipate other’s approach, defend your position and prepare to wait a turn or two to optimise your path to victory. Teotihuacan feels as though you are playing against the game. Whether it is with two, three or four players, there seems little change in your approach. This is not so much about survival but about gaining more victory points than others. There is some player interaction, depending on who wins the race to acquire certain technologies or who grabs certain pyramid pieces. Ultimately this is more of a mental workout in forward planning and using your personal workers together to achieve the best outcome. If you fancy a game that also offers a solo variant then this could be your choice. The family has been split straight down the middle (three: three). However, we are unanimous that both games should remain in our gaming collection. Both will be played (when time allows) and the choice will probably be determined by who shouts loudest at the time.

Meadow WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: The Networks, Everdell Published by: Rebel Studio Designed by: Karolina Kijak By Steve Godfrey It must be lovely to be able to take a long walk whenever you like and see all the wonderful things that nature has to offer. Living in the UK with our cliché amounts of rain however limits this…quite a bit. Luckily I now have Meadow to help me see what nature has to offer and I get to avoid the snakes, it’s a win-win situation…….in fact I may never leave the house again! Obey the laws of nature. Setup Meadow by placing the East, West decks on each side of the board and filling the spaces below them with cards the South deck will go in between and fill up the remaining two columns from that deck. Give each player their path tokens. Each player receives a starting ground card and a road token. Decide on a first player then, in turn order each player takes one row of cards from the board and then takes the top card of the North deck. This deck will come into play later in the game. The cards get replaced for the next player to take. On your turn you’ll play one of your path tokens either on the main board or on the campfire board. Each token has a number on the arrow end and a special ability on the other. When you play onto the main board you place the arrow end into one of the empty notches on the main board and then take the card that is the number of spaces away from your token as indicated by the number on the arrow. Next you get to play a card from your hand into your meadow. Each card will have a fantastic piece or art on it. (Seriously though you need to stop staring at it and pay attention otherwise we’ll never get through this review.) You’ll also have a symbol in the top left which will be the symbol the card gives you once it’s played. The ones underneath are the requirements you need to have on show in your meadow in order to play the card. You can then play that card in your meadow on top of one of the required symbols covering it up. There will also be landscape cards and these cards play pretty much the same but they will also require a road token. You start the game with one and can acquire more by using one of your path bonuses. You can also discard two cards from your hand to act as a requirement when playing a card. You can do this multiple times for one card but you can't do this for all requirements on that card, you need to be able to fulfil at least one from your meadow. When you play the token on the camp board using the square end of your path token you’ll trigger a special bonus. This could be letting you take any card on the board, playing two cards from your hand, take two road tokens or look at the top three cards from a deck and add one to your hand. Aside from the power that lets you play two cards, you won’t be able to play a card into your meadow when you use a bonus power. One other thing you can do when you play a bonus is you can claim a goal from the campfire board. These are tokens set out around the campfire board in a circle with symbols that match the ones on the cards. They create pairs and if you have both symbols of a pair showing in your meadow you can claim one by placing your lowest point marker in the space between them. This will mean that no one else can claim that particular pair. After half of the rounds have gone by, clear the board of all cards and swap out the south deck with the north deck and refill the board. The north deck will contain cards with higher point values. After a number of rounds score up the points from any goals you’ve claimed and the points from the cards in your meadow. Indiana Jones and the search for the Edible Dormouse. Meadow is a beautiful game, there’s no two ways about it. It’s one of those games that you could easily take off the shelf every now and then, shuffle through the cards, admire the artwork, then put it back without even having played it and still feel like you’ve got your money’s worth. I’d encourage you not to do that all the time though because beyond that stunning artwork from Karolina Kijak and Katarzyna Fiebiger is a game that screams “come for the artwork but stay for the brilliant thinky puzzle underneath” As a side note if you’re game does start screaming at you I’d advise contacting the publisher for a copy that isn't possessed Playing cards and collecting the prerequisites for the cards Meadow is like the plot of an Indiana Jones movie (or if you’re of the younger generation Uncharted) You know where you need to start and you know where you want to get, but the journey in between will have you bouncing here and and everywhere trying to find the best path and just like those movies, the journey is where the joy of the puzzle lies in Meadow. Whilst you stare lovingly at that artwork, so much so that you have to be nudged to take your turn, you’ll eventually spot a card that you want. It could be for its points value or it could be the perfect symbol to nab one of those goals. So you take it, but now you need the requirements visible in your meadow to build the thing and that ain’t gonna be easy. What follows will be a chain reaction of events where you play one card, which then lets you play this other one, but then you need this other one so you can play this symbol there which finally lets you play the big card you initially wanted to play in the first place. That all sounds quite convoluted and in some cases it can be but it’s also a lot of fun trying to puzzle it all out. It’s also not all wasted. Apart from ground cards, each card has a points value so not only are you working towards goals and the bigger cards but you're also still scoring while you’re doing that. More than just a walk in the park. Meadow is certainly a game that has you thinking multiple steps ahead and in a perfect world you would be able to take cards at your leisure and nothing would disrupt your beautiful nature filled engine. Unfortunately this is board gaming and other players exist to (to be fair, unknowingly) mess up all of that beautiful work in more ways than one. This is an open drafting game so yes, players taking your cards has its usual frustrations and will have you rethinking your plan whenever this happens. More often than not though the cards they take won’t be the issue. Where they’ve placed their path token will. It's a great feeling when your turn comes around and that perfect card is still left for you to reach out and grab. All you need to do is place out your path token and take it. Then you get the sinking feeling when you realise that none of your path tokens can get you that card either because all the spaces you need to use are blocked, or because you’ve used the token needed to get it earlier in the round. That possibility of having, not only your card taken, but also your path to that card blocked as well really ups the tensions between turns. This increases with the player count because the spaces will fill up quicker and there’s going to be more chance your card won’t be there by the time your turn comes. This is where the bonuses come into play. These are all going to be useful at some point in the game but all but one of them come with a price of not being able to play a card that turn and that can be a pretty big thing, but the sacrifice may sometimes be worth it. I really love the puzzle this game throws at you and I love the way you can watch your engine build and evolve. The first few turns and rounds are all really about building it up. You can build ten columns in your meadow and I suggest you try and get as many as you can before that North deck kicks in so you can play those cards, which usually have a few more requirements on them, a bit easier. Having to cover up a symbol when you play a card gives you so many tough choices to make. Especially when you’ve spent a few turns building up to get a card, only to agonise whether or not you want to cover it, or another one up you’ve worked for, so you can play this other card. Don’t feed the ducks! The gameplay itself does scale up well between the 1-4 player counts but the lower the player count the less the cards cycle. If at two, both players take a card on their turn then you’re only seeing potentially two new cards before your next turn. It can be a bit frustrating when none of the cards on the board fit what you’re doing and the new cards don’t either. In that instance it’s easy to feel like you’re playing a token for a card just for the sake of it. Especially if any of the bonuses don’t work for you. It’s always good to have cards in your hand that you can easily discard for a requirement but I’d rather have taken those with a plan in mind and then change track. It would be nice if there was some way of refreshing a row with a bonus just to keep the board state fresh, especially in those lower player counts. I’m also torn between the length of the game in terms of rounds in the four player game. It’s eight rounds rather than 6 in other player counts. In one respect It does feel like it may be one or even two rounds too long, but on the other hand I have had games where I needed those rounds just so I could finish off the plan I had going. I do appreciate though that it’s that many rounds to give players an equal chance at going first. This last one is a very me thing and I’m going to quote an earlier film icon I mentioned earlier, Snakes, why’d it have to be snakes! Learning is optional. One thing I would like to applaud Rebel for doing is that fantastic card index book. They’ve done a similar thing in Chronicles of Avel (see my review on the site) Each card has a number on and you can look it up in this book and find out the name of the animal, it’s scientific name, a fact about it and you can even use the book as a field journal if you’re so inclined. I love that they’ve done this. It means that none of this information that, while fun, isn’t relevant to the gameplay, can still be included without compromising the art and can keep the cards to a decent size. Another thing included in the box is five sealed envelopes with thematic cards inside. They’re not recommended for your first game but they can be shuffled into your decks once open. You can open these whenever you want but if you want to have some fun with them then there are some achievements in the rules that you can aim for before you open each one. Some in game, some real life. All mine are open but don’t worry, I’ve not included any of them in the photos. I do have a lot of fun with this game. The thinky, engine building nature of it gives me a great puzzle to work on and the beautiful artwork gives me something to look at while I’m doing it. Nature themed games are more and more popular these days and this is one I think stands out well amongst them.

Sagrada: The Great Facades - Glory WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count:2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Sagrada, Roll Player, Azul Published by: Floodgate Games Designed by: Adrian Adamescu, Daryl Andrews By Steve Godfrey If you’re not familiar with The Great Facade expansions for Sagrada, then, much like a window, let me enlighten you. Each one (there’s three overall) has a number of modules included which you can mix and match into your game. This new expansion brings the total to 10 modules that you can add to your game of Sagrada! I’ve not tried them all together but I’m sure that one day, someone will decide to play a game with ALL the modules and I can tell you now, that won’t be me……well maybe not………okay now I really want to try it. If anyone fancy’s donating me the Life expansion I’ll do it and write about it here once my brain has recovered! Strife Dice Just like the other modules you’ll be given some nice new dice to play with and yes they’re grey, but you can trust Floodgate to make even grey dice beautiful. They’ve got this lovely marbled sheen and they look great. When you play with strife dice, set ten aside next to the round tracker and then set up the rest of the dice according to player count. This will also include more of the strife dice. Shuffle the strife tiles and pick one at random and place it for all to see. Place out one strife tool card and one strife public objective then fill the rest of the slots with regular objectives and tools. Now when you pull dice from the bag only take two per player then add one of the strife dice that you’d set aside on the round track. Play continues as normal with strife dice acting as their own colour but all the usual restrictions apply. However, the tile you placed down earlier will give the strife dice their own restrictions. Have a look at the picture for some examples of how they work. This expansion was pitched to me as the one that makes Sagrada more difficult. The first time I used the strife dice I wondered what people were talking about. These were no trouble at all and that was with us using all of Glory’s modules. I was beginning to think I was being strung along by people’s descriptions. Then I played my second game and I’ll tell you what, whoever named them Strife Dice needs a pay rise because that name is spot on. Our tile this time said that two grey dice couldn’t be in the same row. One of our objectives said that we needed two grey dice in a column. It was scorable but it needed some careful planning and that was without everything else that needed to be taken into account! I love what these add to the puzzle and they definitely up the brain burn factor. How much depends on the combination of the strife tile you pick, and the public and private objectives but I think even with the most forgiving combination there’ll be enough to up the challenge. I love that they’ve made it so that you definitely have a strife die every round. There’s sometimes nothing worse than adding expansions into a game and barely seeing any of the content come out. Having said that, when you pull out a handful of strife dice, then have to add another you can’t help but curse your luck. It’s a great idea to always add a strife tool and a strife objective every time you use them, it means you’re always able to make full use of them for scoring and manipulating. Pioneer Objectives These are new public objectives and you’ll add three at random to your game in addition to the usual three in a regular game. These come in a variety of flavours such as, being first to complete certain areas of your window or completing a row with different coloured dice. However, rather than scoring for everyone at the end of the game, the player who achieves an objective first will claim the card and score these points at the end of the game. They won’t get replaced once they’re claimed so be quick. Sagrada for me has always been a heads down type of game with players only looking up to select their dice and occasionally berating other players for taking the ones they wanted. The new objectives work to change that dynamic by adding some interactivity to the game along with a race element. In the base game there wasn’t really a need to watch what other players were up to but now you’ll find yourself scanning other people’s boards to not only see what one they may be working on but also how close they are to achieving it. They add a new level of tension and excitement to Sagrada as you look round and see another player close to getting the same objective as you and you wonder who’s perfect dice is going to come out first. Let’s not forget that they’re also going to be adding to the puzzle as a whole as now you’ve got another thing to factor into your window along with the public and private objectives. These are a great addition to the game, and the fact that they are in addition to your normal public objectives means that I’ll probably be adding them to every game now. Rivalry Public Objectives As the title suggests, these are another type of public objective that can be shuffled into your normal objectives deck (so you can use these with the pioneer objectives) These are competitive objectives with the person who achieved the most of each getting most points etc. I’m sure we all know the deal with how these sorts of objectives work. Much like the pioneers objectives these add to the interactivity and how much you’ll be taking in other peoples boards. There may be a bit less of that with these ones just because you won’t be able to see as quickly how well players are doing with them. Again, these are fun to have on the table and make end round scoring a bit more exciting as you watch each other count how well you’ve done on them in the hope that you net the big score. These will get shuffled onto the main objective deck so they won’t get picked out everytime, but I’d be tempted to keep them separate and make sure one goes into the line up each time. Flourish Private Objectives During set up deal two to each player, once they’re chosen their window they then decide if they want to keep one, both or none of them. For each one they keep they get an extra favour token. Completing these will score you the points at the end of the game just the same as regular private objectives. However, if you don’t complete the ones you kept by the end of the game you lose the points value printed on them! Do you want to make Sagrada more stressful? This is how you make it more stressful. Every objective in Sagrada is important and you always want to do as many as you can to get the best score, it’s literally the whole point of the game! But if there's one you can’t do you can just as easily forget it and focus on getting more points from so other ones. These flourish objectives you NEED to complete because losing any of these points could easily lose you the game. Much like the pioneer objectives these really up the tension in the game, but a different type of tension, because you decided to keep the card/s so now losing those points is all on you. The longer it takes to get them finished the more that touch of panic sets in as each round you eagerly look to see what dice are pulled from the bag and what’s rolled just praying that the right dice come out. When you’re on the end of it, it’s horrible as your mouth begins to dry and you start to curse yourself for being too cocky and taking both. When you’re on the other side however you get some weird sense of pleasure as you see your opponents squirm and frantically check their objectives constantly hoping that they’ll miraculously be able to achieve them…..or maybe that’s just me embracing my inner moustache twirling villain! I only have two of the great facades but this one is currently standing as my favourite so far. If I have one problem with it it’s that there are no rules on how to use the private dice pool from the 5-6 player expansions (which, if you’re wondering, is my favourite expansion for Sagrada) which is a shame. There’s a couple of threads on board game geek which deal with that so go and check those out if you want to use the private dice pool. See right through you. I was told that this gives the game more bite and ups the challenge of Sagrada and I’m definitely not going to argue with that! So I’d definitely seek this expansion out if you feel the base game needs a bit more bite. I'll always want to play with the pioneer objectives and maybe a rivalry objective. If I’m playing with people who have played before then I’ll also be looking to give out the flourish objectives as well, just maybe not during the hot weather, no one needs to sweat THAT much. I really like the strife dice but, like the rare dice from Passion they may be an as and when addition. I may even alternate between them and the rare dice. After the 5-6 player expansion this is the one I would recommend you pick up next if you want a bit more challenge from Sagrada or if you want to make the game that bit more interactive. You could always throw all of Glory’s modules in and use it as a starter game to break your friends' brains before the big game of the night to help you secure a victory and Glory!. Huh, maybe that’s where they got the name from?

Wild Island WBG Score: 7 Player Count:2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Labyrinth, WolfWalkers, My Fathers Dragon Published by: Value Add Games Designed by: Maja Milavec My Fathers Dragon is a movie that came to Netflix in 2022. The film is based on an illustrated 1948 children's book, written by Ruth Stiles Gannett. The book was the winner of the Newbery Medal. An award that recognises “distinguished contributions to American literature for children”. Perhaps you grew up reading this? Wild Island is a board game version of this story, set in the same beautiful, magical, and exciting world. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up. First, connect the four beach pieces to form a square frame. Then find the four tiles that show Elmer and Boris flying on the back. Below is the reverse of the tiles. Illustrated beautifully, and functionally to aid set up. But otherwise, this art serves no purpose in the game. It's just been done to make the whole experience feel more immersive. The inside of the box lids have the same touch. See below. Place these four tiles into the four corners of the frame with the dotted circles orientated into the corners. Then fill the rest of the board with the remaining tiles, placed randomly. Each player will then choose a colour and place their playing piece into the corner closet to them. Then place the four coloured jigsaw pieces matching each players chosen colour face down next to each player. The jigsaw will show four icons, one of each piece. This will be the target locations for each player in the game. Finally, shuffle the courage tiles and form a face down stack next to the board along with the dice. You are now ready to play. How to Play Players will now take it in turns to move around the island, trying to get to the four spots on the board that represent the four icons shown on their jigsaw pieces. Each time they get to one of their locations, they can flip the corresponding jigsaw piece. The first person to visit all four locations and flip their complete jigsaw is the winner. However, nothing is as simple as you think on Wild Island. If you have read the book or seen the movie, you will know what I am talking about. A players' turns starts with the Island Shaking! In the story, the Island is constantly sinking. In the game, this is represented by the land tiles shifting places. However, you may be able to use this to your advantage, and also, to cause some mischief to the other players. At the start of your turn, apart from your very first one, players must pick up a tile next to one of the eight white arrows. They will move this to the opposite side of the board, rotating as they desire, sliding down the other three tiles. They will then place the tile they removed onto the other side of the board into the space created by sliding the others tiles down. This can move your own or other characters as this happens if they were on any of these four tiles. Once the Island has finished "shacking," players will roll the dice and move the displayed amount, up to two times in order to get closer to their next target. If you end your first turn on an icon then you cannot roll your second turn. You must stop there and then choose if you want to carry out the icon's effect. The different icons offer different powers to help you move across the island more quickly. These are all optional benefits. They may not always be helpful. If not, you can simply stay where you are. The Wings icon allows you to fly to any space on any adjacent tile. Even another icon space. The Cave symbol lets you move to any other unoccupied cave symbol on the board. An objective symbol, the animal picture, let you flip one of your jigsaws pieces. If it matches one of your own of course. The Courage dragon symbol lets you draw the top Courage tile from the pile. If it is one of the blue backed tiles, you can immediately use it, if you wish. The dice symbol lets you roll and move one more time. The Cave symbol lets you move to one of the unoccupied cave symbols on the board. And the arrow symbol lets you move in any direction for the amount of spaces shown on the tile. One, two, or three spots. The brown tiles can be stored for later use. These allow you to subtract or add one movement from a dice roll. Very useful in this game! Moving onto an exact spot can be tough. But essential in this game. You can also re-roll dice, flip tiles, enact the Island Shakes action twice on your turn, or when you are enacting the Island Shacks action, you can choose to move the tile the opposite direction of the arrow during this part of your turn. As you move across the island, you cannot go onto the trees or move diagonally. You can move over other players but you cannot end your movement on the same space as anyone else. You must complete your full movement and you cannot ever backtrack. As such, landing on specific spaces can be quite tricky! During the Island Shakes phase, as you move the tiles, and re-arrange the board, you mind will be full of different possibilities. This works very similarly to Labyrinth, and is by far the best bit of the game. It's not just about the tile you move, but the other three that will slide along into its spot. How will this affect you? How will this affect the other players? It's a lovely decision to make each turn. The first player to visit all four of their icons will win the game. You can also play a few variations by having just a single move each turn instead of two rolls, or by making each icon you land on a mandatory movement. Is it Fun? Wild Island is a delightful game. It is full of charm and character. Just like the book and film. If you are a fan of the original story then I think you will love this and I would strongly recommend checking this game out. Everything in this production has been based on the recent Netflix adaptation, and children who enjoy the film are going to love this game. As you can see below, the visuals are exactly the same. So, the only question remains is if this game is right for you if you have no plans to watch the film, or simply do not want to, and were never a fan of the book. if that is the case, I am impressed you got this far into the review. But I would suggest, that maybe some of the charm has grabbed you. If you enjoy games like Labyrinth, then you will enjoy this too. It has the same mechanic and idea to it. It is perhaps too similar to own both, but if you don't have Labyrinth in your collection yet, and you prefer this theme, then this could be for you. Although, there are a LOT of different Labyrinth theme's now! I can see this game being enjoyed a lot whilst my children are young. It is definitely suited to under 12's. Time will tell if the game continues to be enjoyed beyond then, however, either way, I will cherish this in my collection for years to come. As I love the movie and art style this is as much of a collectable as a great game for me.

Hello Kitty And Friends A Lotería Game WBG Score: 6.5 Player Count:1-6 You’ll like this if you like: Bingo, Hello Kitty. Published by: The Op Designed by: (Uncredited) Lotería has been around for years. Since the fifteenth century in fact. It is Spanish for "lottery" and is a very close cousin of Bingo. It has played a huge part in the cultural history of Mexico and Italy. It has been used to help entertain the masses, teach children the language, whilst helping to represent Mexican heritage. Netflix are making a movie about the game. Google honoured the game with one of their doodles. But now, it's the big time. Hello Kitty have branded their own version of the game. Surely the highlight for this epic game! ;) Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Now, bear with me. This is going to take a while. Give each player a player mat and shuffle the deck of cards. Place the tokens and cards in to the centre of the table. You are now ready to play. Still with me? Tricky one isn't it! How to Play Now, turn over the top card and read out the name of the card and/or number. Each player will then check their own unique player board to see if they have this character on their mat. If they do, they can mark it off using one of the shared tokens. If not, they simply wait for the next card. When all players are ready, the next card is revealed. The game will continue like this until one person meets one of the various winning criteria. This is to have a run of four horizontally, vertically, in each of the four corners of the board, or in a two-by-two box. At this point they must shout "Super cute." The drawn cards are checked against their winning symbols and then if correct, they are declared the winner. You can also play a more traditional way, where someone acts as a caller. Revealing the cards one by one. But instead of saying their name or number, they reveal a verse or riddle based on the cards appearance instead. Players need to guess as best they can which card they think the caller is referencing, and mark off as appropriate. It's a fun way to play both for the players marking off the cards as well as the caller. In fact, its my favourite way to play. I love being the caller, but my children rarely let me have the chance! They love it too. Is it Fun? If you have played bingo or Lotería before you will be very familiar with this game. It does not bring anything new to the table other than the Hello Kitty theme. If you have other copies of this game already, then I would suggest you would only want to consider this if you are a collector. Or a huge fan of Hello Kitty. If you don't own a copy yet and have young children then I would encourage checking this out. My seven year old daughter played this five times on the first night we received this copy and immediately declared this as her favourite game of all time! As a 42 year old man, I feel I must bow down to this opinion over mine for this game. The player mats are nice and thick, as are the tokens. The cards however are a little flimsy which is a shame as you will be shuffling them a lot. But the art style is wonderful. For any Hello Kitty fan you are going to be in heaven. They really pop. It is not all Hello Kitty though. The game has the usual 54 deck of cards as seen in a traditional game of Lotería. And along side the characters from Hello Kitty, the designers have included iconic images from traditional Lotería games. Many cards also have the Spanish name and description, meaning this game can be used to help teach Spanish to younger players. Just like the original games. Marking off the pictures as you play is a great word to pictures association skill. Ideal for teaching younger players new words in either English or Spanish. As such, I would certainly recommend this game to anyone looking for a game to play with younger children. Its a great way to help young children learn a language in a game environment. Everything in this game screams joy. It looks bright and vibrant. Every time my children play it, they sit and play with the components for ages afterwards. They have enjoyed copying some of the pictures, drawing their own versions of the characters. And making up stories about the cards in the game. To see the beauty of this game you need to see it through the eyes of a child. Thankfully I have been able to do that and it has brought us all a lot of fun.

Loading WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-7 You’ll like this if you like: Captain Sonar, 5-Minute Dungeon, Happy Salmon. Published by: Lumberjacks Studio Designed by: Marc Paquien In order to stand out, party games need to do something special to stand out in today's cluttered market. There are so many games released now, and many of them seem to be quite similar. As such, it takes a lot for a party game to really interest me. However, when I was first introduced to Loading at UKGE, I was instantly blown away. The game can be taught in minutes, and instantly creates what every good party game should. A lot of laughter. Let's get it to the table to see how it plays. Set Up Deal each player a boost card, placing the rest back into the box. This is placed in front of each player. Then lay out Stop cards relevant for your player count and place these into the centre of the table. Then, shuffle the main progression deck and deal them out into equal packs to each player, leaving one person with no cards. That player has to place their palm out, face up, ready to receive a deck from another player. You are now ready to play. How to Play The player without a deck starts the game by shouting "3,2,1, load!" and then each player will begin to look at their deck. They will be looking for the lowest card to place down to start their stack. When they have taken one card, they will hand the rest of their deck to the player with their hand out ready to receive a deck. They will then in turn place their own hand out, ready to take the next available deck. When they get this, looking through your second deck you are looking for a card that is closest to the card you first placed into your stack. Ideally moving up by the smallest increments in ascending order. They don't have to be consecutive, but they must always be superior. If you ever see a card that is directly one place higher than someone else's current top card on their stack, you can instead place this card from your current deck onto that player's stack. This means you can then take their Boost card, if they have one, and place it in front of you instead. If you feel there are not many, or any cards left in either deck that would work for you, then you can discard the deck you currently have, meaning no player can access it, and take one of the Stop cards from the centre of the play area. You will place this on the top of your stack to show you are done for this game. Your boost cards are now safe from being taken by other players. The game continues like this until there are no Stop cards left, or one of the deck of cards runs out. At this point, any player must shout 'Stop,' and all players must immediately cease playing. Each player will now check their progression cards are all in ascending order, and if so, count up the green rectangles on their cards to total their score. One point for each one. Any card that is not ascending is simply discarded. The player with the most points wins. You will notice that some of the cards are coloured. This is for the expect mode, where cards can be easily identified in order to add in one extra rule. Cards of the same colour can be played in top of each other, ignoring the ascending rule. Either on your own stack, or onto an opponents in order to steal their Boost card. There is also a two player mode where 10 random progression cards are discard and three decks are created. Each player takes one deck and the third is placed into the centre of the play area. The game then works as usual, apart from when you want to exchange your deck. Instead of passing to another player, you will place it onto the table and take the other deck that was there. There is also one extra rule to stop player's ending the game too soon in this player count. At the end of the game, if you don't have at least nine progression cards and you were the player to take the stop card, then you must give one of your progression cards to your opponent. Is it Fun? Loading is incredible fun. I have not played this game yet without immediate, raucous, and constant laughter being created! Any game where players are rushing under the time pressure of doing something faster than other players often creates a good buzz. This, coupled with the real-time nature of checking through and then passing of the decks, along with the simple game play; means Loading is as sure fire a winner as any party game can ever be. If people don't like real-time games where you are rushing then this won't be for them. People who don't enjoy a noisy game will also struggle with this. But that is probably the only group that won't instantly fall in love with this little gem. I love the organised chaos this game brings. Loading is a small box game, but with a huge presence. Each game I have played Loading it has generated a fair bit of noise. Shouting. Laughter. Accusations of poor deck passing! (Which is covered in the rules to be fair). And a whole lot of enjoyment. This is party game heaven. I can see this game coming out to my table whenever I have a large group as the perfect start to any game night. The two player works but it has a lot less going for it. For me, this is for five and up and best played with the full seven. If you get a chance to play this, I would give it a go. You may well have a new favourite party game.

Voids: Memory Meets Matter Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Memory Games. Published by: Teleporthole Games Ltd Designed by: Andrew Klinkenberg This is a preview of a prototype copy so some things may change in the final game. Hence no score above. Voids: Memory Meets matter is hitting kickstarter in November 2022, you can find more information here. If you want to see how this plays there is a simple video here. The game will available as a PnP or fully published game at an affordable price. Voids works as a solo or multi-player game, with a co-op and competitive mode. It is very easy to learn, and offers some lovely strategic choices. Backers will be able to get involved in the campaign, voting on the type of cards that will be made, and even access STL files for a 3D custom box for the game. But how does it play? Set Up Place the tiles face down on the table in a seven by seven grid like above. Place the worm hole card in the very centre, and the stacked coloured Matter Pool cards in the four corners. Then each player will choose one of the four coloured tiles to play as, and will place this into the centre of the table over the worm hole card. You are now ready to play. How to Play On your turn, you will be moving your playing tile one space orthogonally out towards the four corners. You are looking to collect three of the Matter Pool cards, returning them to the central worm hole card in order to win. This is a race! However, as you move, you will un-cover different cards as you go. These will either help or hinder your progress. Each space you move to you must pick up that card and bring it into your hand. You can only ever have two cards in your hand, so if you ever must take a third card, you need to play one of the three you now have into the space you are moving from. When you play a card, you must play it face down. Ideally, remembering what you placed in case you come back this sway again. When you play a card in this way you can use it's power. If you don't lay a card, this will mean that as you move, you will leave spaces behind you where you have been. Void spaces. These cannot be moved through as easily without certain powers, otherwise you must use two turns to cross them instead of the usual one. You can use the reverse of your player card to show progress here. As shown with the double blue triangle above. The Warp is the first power above on the far left. This card when played allows a player to move in a straight line as far as they choose until they are blocked by the edge of the game board, a void space, or one of the light/dark tokens. The central card above is the Void card. When you pick these up they must be removed from the game instantly. This increases the amount of void spaces on the board. The far right card above is the Matter Bridge card. This allows players to fill previously created void areas and move through them in one turn. Other cards that will block players are the light and dark cards shown above. You can play these cards face up on any face down game card to slow down other players. In order to get through these spaces, you must either take two turns, or play the opposite card onto it to remove both from the game. The middle card above is the boost card, this allows you to move two spaces on your turn instead of the usual one. When played, they would only allow you to move one space if encountering a light/dark space though. Co-Op Play You can also play this game cooperatively by making a few slight changes to the rules. First, cards held in players hands are available to all players on all turns as a collective resource. Essentially, players can share cards. The light and dark cards that are found are left flipped face up in the space they were and will not block any players movement. However, as soon as the opposite card is found, both are then removed from the game, creating voids in the board. Finally, voids can only can crossed using a matter bridge in this mode. You cannot move through using two turns like in the competitive mode. The game is won by returning the required amount of matter pool cards to the centre. This is determined by player count and the level of difficulty you want, from two in an easy two-player game up to seven in a hard two-player game. Solo Mode Solo mode works much the same way, with the same rule change for light and dark cards, and the matter bridge. There is also a score to try and beat, ranging from five in easy mode to 12 in hard mode. Is it Fun? I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys small box strategy games that require good memory, forward planning, and depending on the game mode, either good team work or the ability to scupper another players plan! I enjoyed the competitive mode over the solo and co-op myself, as I found the cards and ruleset better suited to race style take-that game. Trying to out manoeuvre your opponents, and collect the matter pool cards first was a fun challenge and process for me. Whereas the other modes felt to much like solitaire. If the cards were in my favour, I will do well. If not, I would not. Whereas the competitive game mode created a lot of tension and I enjoyed the race element this created. In the solo and co-op mode it's more a matter of trying to do something before the board became too full of void cards. Which is quite simple once you get the hang of the game mechanics. As such, it felt more like a campaign style progression as I moved through the levels of difficulty as I developed with the game. Just ticking off each level of difficulty as I improved my understanding of the game. However, I can see how others would love this development. I myself love it in other games such as The Mind. I will watch this campaign with interest, and am keen to see what other game's this designer brings to the table over the coming years. There certainly seems to be an interesting ramping up in their ambition from project to project. I am glad I am here and able to enjoy their games at this stage in their development.

Galileo Project WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Ganymede, Starship Captains, Published by: Sorry We Are French Designed by: Adrien Hesling Wow, what a game a game this is. 2022 has been an amazing year for games, but it seems to be ending on a huge combo heavy high! Galileo Project is the spiritual successor to Ganymede. A 2018 release, where players compete to get their settlers to Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. Now, with Galileo Project, set 30 years later (in the game world) rival companies are battling it out to control Ganymede and the other three moons. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set-Up First, place the main game board into the centre of the table. Then shuffle the Robot cards and draw five of these, placing them face up into the top row on the main board. Then do the same with the character cards, placing them on the bottom row. Then sort the technology tiles into the four types and lay them out on the board. Two of each for a two and three player, four for a four player game. Place the Z tile, on either side, next to these. Next, select four of the goal tiles and place them out on the board as well as the robotic project cards. Then place out the Megacredits and Energy tokens onto their dedicated spaces. Each player then takes their own player board as well as all the components in their colour, placing their four moon trackers onto the zero space. Then draw out some robotic project cards equal to the number of players plus one. Each player will choose one which will set their starting resources and the level of their first robotic project. You are now ready to play. How it Plays Players will now take it in turns to carry out up to three actions on their turn until either one player has acquired their tenth robot card, or the character deck becomes exhausted. Their are two tracks on the main board showing influence on either Earth or Mars. Your first available action, which is optional, is to spend a Megacredit to switch your marker to the opposite tracks. You would want to do this because your second available action, which is mandatory, is to hire either a character, acquire a robot, or develop a technology. If you are hire a character or acquire a robot, you can only do this for one that matches the colour of the track you are currently on. The cards are either red or blue, and you need to decide which card you want on your turn, move to the matching track, and then spend the required number of influence to take that card. The final action, which is also optional, is to claim one of the four goals, if you have reached it's requirements. Each goal has space for up to three markers. The first person to place their marker can put it into the first space which will score more points then the second or third spot. So, this is a bit of a race. You can lower the requirements of a goal if you want to try and achieve it before the other players by spending energy. Each energy spent you can lower the requirements of one goal by one cost. When you hire a character, you will immediately gain the influence shown on their card. Moving your marker on the influence track by the corresponding number. This influence is used to buy robots. So, you take the characters to get your influence up, then spend that influence on a later turn to acquire the robots. However, the character you hire will also give you an instant one shot ability or end game scoring condition. This is decided by your current position on the influence track. Each character card has a immediate ability shown on the top of the card and an end game scoring option on the bottom. These will either be red or blue, mixed up between the top and bottom of the cards. You will either carry out the top immediate ability if that matches your current track, or tuck the card under your player board for the end game scoring. At the start of the game you can only place two cards here, but you will have the ability to upgrade this during the game. When you acquire a robot, you first pay the influence needed, making sure you are matching that robots influence colour to the current track you are on, and then you can place that robot into one of the four spaces around your own player board. Each robot card will show different moon images. You can place the robot into either space that match this symbol. You can then resolve that robots ability which will be to either gain extra Megacredits, take an extra character and use one of their abilities, increase the level of one of your robots, or use one of the benefits on the Z tile. These vary from gaining extra credits, influence, energy, or characters, or you can increase the level of one of your existing robots, develop a new technology at a discount, or achieve one of the goals, even if you have not met the requirements yet. The more robots you have of each type, the more you can use their action. For example, if you place your third miner robot, you will take three Megacredits when you place this card down instead of just one. This is the beginning of where the joy comes from in this game. Strap in! Increasing the level of your robots is important for a number of reasons. As you add more robots to each moon, or when you increase an existing robots level, you can move the tracker at this moon up the corresponding number of places. As you move up the tracks, this will increase your end game score, but also brings additional benefits depending on the the different moon's. At Jupiter you can develop your ability to acquire robots for a lower influence cost by spending Megacredit's. Europa's track allows you to gain energy. Ganymede improves your hiring a character ability by giving you the chance to resolve both benefits on the cards instead of one and build up to collecting up to six characters instead of the starting two for end game points. And Callisto increases the value of your most common robots at end game scoring. Either scoring one, two, or three points for each robot of your most common type. Developing technology is the last main option available to you on your turn. Each technology has a requirement that needs to be paid shown on the top left, and then it can be placed above your player board. The different technologies offer various benefits, including gaining Megacredits, acquiring new Robot cards, being able to move up by two influence each time you choose to shift tracks, and using characters from the discard pile. The game ends when someone has control of at least ten robots, or the character deck runs dry. At this point, you will complete the final round so all players have equal turns, and then score for each player position on the four moon trackers, characters they have hired, technologies they have developed, and goals they have achieved. Most points, unsurprisingly, wins. Is it Fun? Galileo Project builds on what made Ganymede so good, and turns the combo dial up to 11. Any game where your powers develop as you play and your ability to do more powerful things on your turn increases is generally a game I will enjoy. But you have to feel that you earnt this to make this a truly fulfilling experience. Galileo Project brings this feeling in a big way. Spending a Megacredit to move tracks to acquire a robot which when placed at a specific moon, allows you to increase a Robots level by using the Z tile, which in turn, allows you to fulfil one of the goals, increasing your end game points on both the Moons position and goal tracker is well, phew... incredibly satisfying! So much in this game is about doing this particular action in order to do a second. Take card A to move on Track B. Planning out your turns in this way is deeply rewarding and leaves you with a huge sense of gratification. Especially if it means you end up winning the game. But even if you loose, just making your turns as efficient as possible and seeing development in your abilities as the game progresses will bring you great joy. Some games with combo-tastic turns can create unnecessary complications by offering too much choice, in terms of the actions available to you on your turn. But in Galileo Project, this is not the case. Most of the time you will be simply hiring a character to increase your influence or using previously gained influence to acquire a robot to develop on the moon tracks. But within this simplicity, there is the feeling of a lot of choice and control. Of course, each time you chose a card, be that a character or robot, you are picking from one of five cards. And each card will have a different top or bottom affect if it is a character. And for the robot, the choice of which moon you want to develop, which type of robot you want, what their cost is, and what their current level will get you too. Which all starts with the colour of the card and determining which influence track you need to be on. There sure are some layers. All of this plays over a 45 minute period, or a bit longer with more players. Giving you the feeling of playing a crunchy rewarding game, that is relatively simple to learn and play, but one that offers tense, exciting, and rewarding turns and game development. And as I said, all in under an hour. The holy grail of board games. The set-up is simple, the gameplay is incredibly streamlined, and the learning curve is very low. I taught this to my nine year old son in under ten minutes, and he ended up beating me on his first play. I love the way the game develops on the story from Ganymede. You won't especially feel this as you play the game. It's a little abstract in truth. But the theme they are trying to implement is interesting and everything looks bright and colourful. The components are all high quality and feel good to play with. I would recommend this game to anyone who is looking to progress from their current collection of gateway games into something a little more complicated and rewarding. This is the perfect "next" game to play with someone new to the hobby, to show them what modern games are capable of. I would imagine most who play this will enjoy the combinations that you can develop, and will come away from the table wanting to play again and again to develop their understanding of the game and overall score. I certainly have struggled to get this one off the table, and can see this game easily making my top ten for 2022.

Cóatl WBG Score: 7.5/10 Player Count: 1–4 You’ll like this if you like: Roll Player, Azul Published by: Synapses Games Designed by: Pascale Brassard, Etienne Dubois-Roy Cóatl is a stunning game to look at. The components are great and the colour scheme make this game really pop on the table. But how does it play? Let's get it to the table and find out. Set Up Set the circular board into the middle of the table with the scoring side placed faced down. This will be used later. For now, you want to use it as a supply board. Now place the three hessian bags out, and fill the supply board with 12 body pieces, and two heads and two tails. Each player will take one of the player boards and three sacrifice bonus tokens in their chosen colour. Give one person the starting player marker. Shuffle the temple cards and deal one to each player then leave the rest in two face up piles by the supply board. Then shuffle the prophecy cards and place six face up into a general supply, leaving the rest in a face down deck. Then deal cards out to each player as required. Three to the first player, four to the second, five to the third, and six to the forth. Each player can keep three, but must discard the rest. The game is now ready to begin. How it Plays Players will take it in turns to take one of three actions. They can either add new pieces from the supply board to their own by choosing one head, one tail, or two grouped body pieces. Or, they can take one or more prophecy cards from the face up supply and add them to their hand. There is a hand limit of five. Or finally, you can build your Cóatl. This can be done by starting a new one, or adding to a previously started Cóatl You can never have more then two being built at once, and no more then three built through the entire game. You are looking to match the cards in your hand to the Cóatl's you are building. For example, a card may require there to be two green pieces next to two red pieces such as the central card below. If you can take these pieces from the supply then add them to your Cóatl, when you finish the Cóatl, by either adding the final head or tail piece, you can then fulfil up to four prophecy cards using this Cóatl. Any cards that have been fulfilled can be added to the table by this Cóatl and scored at the end of the game. Some cards can be scored more than once for their required configuration, such as the black and green card's below, which can be scored up to two times. If the requirements of three reds in a row for the black card, or a green and black to have at least one other coloured piece in-between it for the green card are met twice in the same Cóatl you can score this can twice. Gaining you six points for the green card or seven for the black. At this point, you can also either assign the temple card from your hand, or one of the two face up temple cards to your finished Cóatl, which would add further end game points. Based on the length of the Cóatl, and the colours used in it. The temple cards have two requirements and if you score one of them you will gain an additional three points. If you can fulfil both requirements, that will score you a further seven points. At any point, instead of playing a usual turn, players can use one of their three sacrifice pieces instead. They allow them to do one of three powers. First, you can use one to pick any two pieces you like for your Cóatl from any of the three bags. The second allows you to discard the six face up prophecy cards and as many as you like from your hand and redraw six new cards, and then draw up to five new cards to your hand. The final sacrifice token allows you to take one of the face up temple cards and reserve it to use at a later point in the game. Very useful if there is a card there you want to use, but your Cóatl you want to use it for is a few turns away from completion. This stops another player from taking this temple card for themselves instead. When a player completes their third Cóatl or the body segments run out the game will end. Flip the supply board to show the pint scoring side and each player will place a body part of their colour into the first space. Each player will then total the points scored from their prophecy and temple cards for each of their Cóatl's, moving their coloured body part along the score track as they go. The player with the highest points will win. In case of a tie, the player who used the most cards with their completed Cóatl's takes the victory. Is it Fun? Cóatl is an abstract strategy game. As much as this looks beautiful and has an interesting theme, this is all about how you can best use the cards at your disposal to score as efficiently, and as quickly as possible. Much like games such as Azul, you will be very much focused on your own game experience as you play, not really paying attention to other players, other than from the fact that you are all drawing from the same pool of body parts and cards. However, there are enough options and ways to manipulate your strategy to not be too affected by what other players around the table do. As such, this is a somewhat solitaire experience which I very much enjoy. The rare occasions when your game is affected by another player it will be even more rare for them to have done that intentionally as they will not know what you are aiming for as your prophecy cards and temple goals are all known only to you. So, if you are looking for a game with high player interaction, this is not for you. Where the fun comes from in this game is through the constant fulfilling of small objectives and the tight game play. Many games use this strategy to reward the player with a constant sense of progression and satisfaction, and Cóatl does this very well. But crucially, as you can only add so many cards to each Cóatl, and as you can only build three Cóatl's in total each game, despite being able to fulfil card's requirements quite regularly, you can still only do it so many times in the game. This creates the perfect balance of making something special whilst also allowing it to happen regularly. The tight gameplay comes from the player board and the restricted total of pieces that you can hold at any one point. As your player board is limited to eight pieces, when this is full, you cannot take any more and must start constructing your Cóatl. However, you may not be ready to do this yet. You may still need one or two more pieces to score as effectively as you want. But you cannot do that. But you cannot wait for ever even if you wanted to as the game could end. The balance between the race element of this game and the pint scoring options works so well together. The game is highly visually appealing. The colour and chunky body pieces feel great on your finger pads (as the great Gamecasters says!), and look wonderful on the table. And the sense of progression as you make on Cóatl work for multiple cards feels great. Take the example above where these ten piece's without any blue, fit the temple card perfectly for seven points. They can also can be used for these three prophecy cards with two green preceding two reds fulfilling the first yellow card. (The head can be used for this). A green and black being separated by another piece of another colour meets the green cards requirements. And three reds all being placed next to each other delivers for the black card. A 16 point Cóatl. You can get a lot higher than this fulfilling more prophecy cards, and fulfilling some of them multiple times. But remember this game is a race. First to finish three Cóatl's ends the game. You don't want to be caught out making the perfect Cóatl that will score you in the high 20's if other players are making smaller Cóatl's that will end the game quickly. I would recommend this game to fans of games like Azul, that are looking for a game that offers a similar sense of satisfaction but with a different theme. This sounds odd for an abstract strategy game where the theme is secondary. But that ultimately is the choice with abstract strategy games. There are so many out there. A lot of them are very good. So, you have to separate them some how. And theme, funnily enough, is the best way I would suggest. Azul still rules this world of games in terms of sales in the abstract market. However, I would suggest Cóatl is almost as good a game, and for me, more visually stimulating. It's a shame the pieces, although very good, are not more solid. They are hollow and feel a little light. And the player boards are a little too thin. So, this is another area where Azul edges it, with the production. But from pure gameplay, I would argue this is the perfect complimentary game to any Azul fans collection and one that will bring a lot of joy to a lot of tables.