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Ark Nova WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Terraforming Mars, Meadow, Cascadia Published by: Feuerland Spiele, Capstone Games Designed by: Mathias Wigge By Steve Godfrey Have you ever stood in your local zoo, looked around and thought. Yeah I could run one of these? Yeah me neither, I’ll leave that up to Matt Damon. But if you did ever get the urge to fill your back garden with a petting zoo, an elephant and a sun bear then you can instead save some money and avoid the headache of planning permission and give Ark Nova a go…..I mean, I know the board is big but I’m fairly sure you don’t need planning permission to put it on the table! Zoo map. If you're new to Ark Nova then give players Map A, a sized three enclosure and a kiosk and set them in the indicated spaces. Every player then places their animal card in slot one and then shuffle the rest of the cards and place them at random in the other spaces, blue side up. Give everyone 25 money, one association worker and eight cards from the deck from which they choose four to keep, but probably let them sit through the rules before choosing. If you’ve played before then players can choose any of the map boards they like. On your turn you will play one of the five action cards in front of you. It’s position in the line determines how strong the action will be. Once you’ve carried out the action place it in space one on the track and push the others up one space. The actions will let you play animals into your zoo, build enclosures, play sponsor cards, take an association action and get cards. The animals card lets you play an animal card as long as you have the required symbols present in your zoo, you can pay for the animal and you have an empty enclosure to put it in. These will have one off powers, appeal (victory points) and will also give you symbols to count towards future cards. The build action lets you put new enclosures into your zoo. You can only build a size of enclosure up to the space your card is on the track. So if your card is at space three you can only build a size three or less. These will also trigger bonuses if you cover those spaces on your board. Sponsors cards work similar to animal cards. You play them and they will give you either a one off ability, an ongoing bonus, an end game scoring condition or a combination of them. The association action lets you take partner zoos (which helps with card requirements and makes some cards cheaper to play) gain universities, reputation and let you complete conservation cards. If you complete requirements for these cards you can place one of the cubes from your board on the card and gain conservation points (also a type of victory point) You can even place a conservation card from your hand and score it. Once it’s out other players can score this as well. The card's action will get you……well cards. Certain cards will move the break token along a track and as soon as it reaches the end then there will be a break where each player nets income, discards and removes two cards from the display and places out new ones. Ark Nova has two main tracks. The appeal track which will move your marker anti clockwise round it and the conservation track which will move a separate token clockwise. Once one player's tokens share the same space then the game will end with each other player getting one more go. Points are determined by how far each player's markers are from each other once they’ve crossed each other. This will give you positive points. If your markers haven't crossed then you’re essentially in negative points. River of dreams. I’m just gonna jump straight in and say that I love the card action system. For me this is the mechanism that makes this whole game. It will bring all your frustrations and all of your triumphs throughout the game but it will also provide you with a ton of interesting decisions, because you see ark nova is all about careful planning. Which is pretty convenient since you're building a zoo! The big challenge is getting each card where you want it and when you want it. You’ll find yourself puzzling out how to get your build card high enough to get the enclosure size you want, but also trying to figure out which cards in the higher slots to use to move down to push that card along and I’ll tell you something, that choice isn’t always that easy. You’ll often find yourself in a situation where the other cards in the higher slots are there for a reason and you really don’t want to play them just yet. It’s a system that is a ton of fun to try and navigate and will keep players constantly engaged. I’m sure if the great David Attenborough was to look in on a game of this he’d be commenting about gamers in the wild spending our time contemplating and muttering to ourselves before we quickly strike and take our turn, only to go back to muttering to ourselves looking annoyed. I’d watch that. BBC executives, David, if you’re reading this, and I’m sure you are, get in touch. Also did I mention the fact that you can upgrade these cards? The upgrades really open out your options. Per game you’ll only be able to upgrade a max of four of them, as far as I know anyway. I’ve not yet found a way to get all five of them flipped. All the upgrades are good, but deciding which ones to flip at the time is going to give you some other fun choices. Especially when you realise that some areas across the boards can only be accessed when you’ve upgraded certain cards. The great thing is that these upgrades are not necessarily late game flips. Just scoring a couple of conservation points will let you upgrade your first card and who doesn’t love getting new powers to play with, especially early game. Superhero Zoo Ark Nova is a big mish mash of popular mechanics, card play from terraforming Mars, scoring from raja’s of the Ganges and even a tile placement game. But putting a few big mechanics doesn’t necessarily make a good game. Much like the big superhero team up movies, just throwing it all together because it’s cool without finessing and you could end up with the board game equivalent of the Justice league. Take some time and thought however and you’re looking at The Avengers. (Feel free to swap those team ups around to your particular taste). It’s a shame though because both JL and Ark Nova both have bats in them! Bats. That’s the beauty of Ark Nova though, it all flows together so well. It’s like these mechanics were always meant to be put together and now they’ve found each other at a summer camp and realised they were split at birth because their parents split up and decided to take a kid each and move to different countries……...or is that the plot to the Parent Trap? Regardless, everything integrates together so well and works to serve the others so nothing feels like it’s arbitrary. Everything is worth doing despite what strategy you decide to focus on. Just because you’re not focusing on sponsor cards for example, it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth playing one. A good card like that at the right time could easily help you grab a couple of bonuses or help boost your income. The designer has done a great job of making it flow together so well that you’ll be using a bit of everything for most of the games you play. Even though you’ll have your hands in everything the game still gives you lots of avenues to try different things each game. There’s a wonderful balancing act when it comes to scoring points and also a fun ramping up as the game progresses. You’ll find appeal points are easier to come by, but as you build up your zoo engine and upgrade your cards you’ll start racking up the conservation points. It starts to get so tense as you see everyone’s tokens edge ever closer to each other and you try and eek out those last few points before final scoring kicks in. That leads me onto one of my favourite things in Ark Nova….combos! Now and again you'll play a card or move your reputation marker and it’ll trigger this cool chain of events that will see you flipping a card and getting more points and getting a couple of bonuses in a row. In my case these are usually accidental but I think that’s actually a plus point. The idea that these can happen to anyone round the table is really fun, it gives new players a chance to experience the same high as someone who has played before and probably set up one of these combos. These combos happen just enough that you get that fun high from it, but not too often that it adds to the game length. There’s nothing worse than having to sit while people are constantly taking elongated turns and you just play one card. When they do kick off though it soooo satisfying. Can a Zoo be too big? Ark Nova comes with a huge deck of cards, so big that even at four players you probably won’t get through the whole deck. With such a huge deck there’s going to be more randomness than in most draw decks. It means that playing to a particular strategy in ark nova won’t necessarily serve you well. If you play a sponsor card that gives you money based on reptile cards then getting reptiles in your zoo is a good play….but I wouldn’t hinge your entire game on it. With a deck that big you may find that you won’t see that many reptiles. I know that this sort of randomness and the lack of control won’t be for everyone and that’s completely understandable, things like this can be a frustration and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t annoy me sometimes as well. However if you can accept that this is a thing (and I tend to let new players know before we get started) then you can take a more adaptive approach to the game which I personally really like. It keeps me on my toes and I like that you can play with different strategies during the game and not have to wait for the next one to change track. I like that you can be playing with reptiles and then all of a sudden decide that you want a petting zoo next to the crocodiles! This also, weirdly makes the game a bit more thematic. Most zoos have a wide range of animals so having to populate yours with a variety makes some sense. I’m not sure if this was the intention or not by the designer but it works either way. It’s probably worth nothing as well that this is not necessarily a short game. My first two 4 player games, both with all new players, ran at around three hours each. Long games aren’t something that bother me but it’s worth knowing what you’re potentially getting yourself into. Once everyone knows the game then you can definitely get this time down and I’ve actually found that turns can go pretty quick once everyone’s up to speed. All the small things. There’s so much more I could talk about for this game but to keep from this getting too unwieldy I just want to touch on a few of the small things that I love. Objective scoring. I love that you start with two end game scoring cards and you don’t have to choose which one you want to keep until one player gets to a certain point on the conservation track. It’s usually about a quarter to halfway through the game. It gives people time to see which one has a better chance of scoring some decent points before chucking one and doesn’t pressure new players into picking something at the start of the game before they’ve got a chance to understand the game and which one is better for them. It’s brilliant, every game should add this sort of thing in if they can. The solo mode is great and is, to coin a phrase “super easy, barely an inconvenience” The A.I. Phase is simply, slide a cube. Done. After all the cubes have been moved you take a break, remove one cube, reset and carry on. You keep going until you have two cubes left. At the end of the round, if your scored at least zero you’ve won. You can scale the difficulty by where you start on the appeal track. There’s no big upkeep getting in the way of your turns and it really makes you play as efficiently as you can and it gives you a great challenge. I know it’s a big game to set up but the solo mode can be so quick that I’ve even reset and started again on some occasions. Some of the cards (mostly the snakes) do have some take that elements (not the popular 90’s boy band) but if you’re not feeling particularly venomous then you can easily avoid these by using the solo rules for these which are on the card. I always like when games give you this sort of option when they can. Ark Nova brings in some big, well known and unique mechanisms to create something unique, engaging and a heck of a lot of fun that is certainly worth the hype. Right, I'm off to complain about the lack of Otters in the game and insist on their inclusion in the expansion.

King of Monster Island WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: King of Tokyo, Aeon's End, Horrified. Published by: IELLO Designed by: Richard Garfield Richard Garfield has created some of the biggest games in the industry. Netrunner, King of Tokyo, and Bunny Kingdom to name just three. When he puts his name to something, it usually generates a lot of buzz. More so when it is a cooperative follow up to the huge hit, King of Tokyo. Even more so when there is a giant Volcano in the game! Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Place the main board into the centre of the table. Put the Volcano together, (it takes but a moment) and place this into the centre of the board. Next, choose a boss to fight against. Place your chosen adversary next to the board, choosing which side you want to face. There is a normal and hard mode for each. Make sure the star dials are set to zero and the heart dial is to the health shown on the bosses sheet. Then set aside the number of red dice as specified on the boss sheet you are using and place the boss figure matching the sheet into any zone on the main board. Then make a pile of all resources. The Crystal and Pylon tokens, monster dice, the bag with the minion tokens, the energy cubes and lighting tokens, the 12 support tiles placed face down, and the eight flamelings, if you are fighting against the Lava Lord boss. Next, shuffle the power and event cards together and create a face down deck. Flip over three cards to create a market. Replace any event cards if they come up at this point. Then draw a random minion from the bag and place it into each zone, starting with the bosses zone. Then, each player chooses a Monster figure to play as taking the matching figure and board. Set your points to zero and health to ten and add your figure to the board, ensuring you are in a different zone to the boss. Finally take one random ally sheet equal to the play count plus one and place them face up by the board. You are now ready to play. How to Play The game plays similarly to King of Tokyo, except the cooperative nature of the game. In this game, all players are working together against the boss, rather than the battle royal seeing in King of Tokyo. If you can get the bosses health down to zero, you all win. If ever you have to draw a minion from the bag and there are none left, or if a player begins their monster phase with no health, or if three pylons are built; then all players loose. On your turn, players will first check any active powers from the boss, according to their current star level, and then roll the bosses dice inside the volcano. That's right! It's not just decoration, it's a full on dice tower, spreading the dice randomly into the six different areas of the board. If any roll off the board, just re-roll them again. After multiple games, chucking dice into this volcano has not got old! It's a great fun part of the game. Where the dice end up determines where the boss will now move too. Which ever adjacent zone has the most dice, this is where the boss goes. If there are no dice in these spaces, simply move the boss one space clockwise. If the space that the boss is currently in has the most, activate that space and leave the boss where it is. Then, all minions in the bosses location activate. Either damaging all monsters in their zone if it is the Soldier minion shown here on the bottom right, or building a Crystal, if it is the Builder minion shown here on the bottom left. The Crystals build up and turn into Pylons. When the board has three Pylons you lose the game. If it is the Cannon minion shown in the top left, they will attack every Monster in every zone. The shield Minion in the top right has no affect. This minion just protects the other minions when it is your turn. They must be defeated before any other minions or bosses can be attacked. Next, each dice in the bosses zone will activate. Depending on it's current face up value, more minions will be added, the boss will be rewarded with star points, increasing its base skills, or a crystal will be built. Any dice activated at this point will be removed from the board to be thrown back into the volcano in the next round. After all this is done, it is finally your turn to fight back! You will roll six of the monster dice, and just like King of Tokyo, with up to three re-rolls, to determine your actions. The hearts give a monster in your zone one health back. The Lightning give you one green energy cube to buy power cards. The footprints let you move any monster in your zone to an adjacent zone or deal one damage in your zone. The claw lets you deal two damage in your zone. The star lets you gain one fame on your monster board. And finally, the spanners work in three or four. If you manage to get this many, you can draw a random support boat from the supply and place it face up on the board in a space in your zone, as long as there are no pylons present. At any point during your turn you can activate a support or recharge a previously activated boat. Activating a support boat either gives you an energy cube, or an extra dice face. Once activated, simply flip the boat over. If you get any dice you cannot use, or don't want to use, you can lock them into the zone you are in for a monster to use on their turn, later in the game. This is a great way to get to three or more spanners and use all dice, even when they don't quite work for you. Once your dice are all resolved or locked, you can then spend any available energy cubes on power cards. Then resolve any end of turn effects, pass all available dice to the next player and they will have their turn. Activating the boss and rolling their own monster dice. Play continues until one of the end game triggers are activated. You can play the game multiple times against the various bosses and difficulties for each one. Then the rules suggest when ready, for you to try the ultimate challenge, facing all three bosses, back-to-back in one epic game. This really is the way to play King of Monster Island. Defeating the bosses on their own is quite simple, and the sense of satisfaction wears thin quickly. But taking all three on at once is a real challenge and very rewarding when successfully completed. Is it Fun? Playing King of Monster Island feels very similar to King of Tokyo with two main differences. One, this game is cooperative, which means no player elimination. Being knocked out of King of Tokyo is frustrating, especially if playing with more than two other players, and their subsequent battle takes a while to finish. In this game, you are all in, or all out together. That is a good development. The second major difference is the fact that sometimes, you cannot fight the boss. If they move away from you and you do not roll the required feet symbols, you cannot catch them up. Some powers allow you to damage the boss in adjacent zones, some cards help with this too. And you can of course use support boats and locked dice to help other players. But once per game at least, there will be a time when you are chasing shadows. That can be frustrating and never really seen in King of Tokyo. The support boats are a nice addition to the game, as is the ability to lock and share dice with other players. Similar to King of Tokyo, the cards are too expensive and/or you don't get enough energy cubes, so we start the game with one random card each, and five energy cubes. I just don't get a game that has so many cool cards that you rarely ever get to own, let alone use. So, house rule as you see fit to have more fun with the cards. They are awesome. The ally sheets are a nice addition too. Once you have at least one star/fame point, you can choose one of the available sheets to place next to your monster board. This will grant you bonus powers and actions as you gain more fame in the game. This is a nice variation and allows you to do some exciting new things. Moving the boss this way is particularly useful. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed King of Tokyo, and wants to have a cooperative version of the game. It feels like this could have been an expansion to the base game in the same way Viticulture World was, to reduce the need to re-produce some of the shared resources, like the dice. However, I like the ambition with this game, the size of the new board, and the 3D volcano is a great statement on the table. It looks great, functions in the game well, and justifies this games' presence as a stand-alone game. I think I will always reach for this now over King of Tokyo, simply as I enjoy cooperative games so much more. More so when the competitive version has player elimination which just doesn't wor well for my group. Ultimately, that choice is down to you based on what you prefer. Coop or competitive. But don't tell me you are not dying to chuck some dice in this volcano!

This is a preview copy provided for free by the publisher. It does not represent the final published copy. The game is being crowd funded soon. For more information, read here. 21X is from Naylor Games, the team behind the brilliant Magnate: The First City. It's a bit of a change for the team behind the huge box experience of Magnate. Going from a sea of plastic to a simple deck of cards. Publisher James Naylor said, "It’s very different to our other titles. It’s a super quick, maths puzzle game you can play with anyone from children to university maths professors." Well, lets take a look ourselves and see how it plays. In 21X players are trying to get there cards to add up to 21. The game plays just like Blackjack, but the cards are very different! Set Up The first thing to do is decide your desired difficulty. The cards are all marked in the top right and bottom left corner with either a Triangle, a Triangle and a Square, or both of these and a Pentagon. Level one with just the triangle has simpler easier equations with whole number cards with addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Level two has more complex equations with divisions, brackets, indices, and powers. Level three brings in negative numbers in divisions and even more difficult equations. Take out any cards you don't want to use and then shuffle the deck and deal each player two cards, just like normal Blackjack. Place the remaining deck face down between the players along with the player aids. You are now ready to play. How to Play All players simultaneously reveal their cards and the round begins. Each player will now try to work out a value for X that makes their cards add up to 21, or as close as possible without going bust. This means by scoring over 21. The value of N is determined by the number of cards they have in their hand. So will change if they get more cards. X can be whatever they want but must be the same across all cards if they have more than one X present across multiple cards. X can be positive or negative but must be a whole number and cannot be zero. Any players may decide to twist in order to draw another card. You can do this up to three times for a maximum of five cards. If you cannot get to 21 exactly you can stick by calling out the number they can get to. After which time, all other players now have a maximum of one minute to carry on playing, trying to get closer to 21 than the player who just stuck. Once you stick, you cannot change your number. You cannot stick on 20. And once one player sticks, no other player can now also stick. The first player to make 21 correctly wins. If no one makes 21, the player who can make the number closest to 21 without going over is the winner. The winner must always show their solution. If they have got their math wrong, the winner is the person with the next highest value and so on. You can play multiple times, in a race to three, five etc, or however you see fit. Publisher, James Naylor said, "I have high hopes there’s an educational angle here as well as being a great stocking-filler gift for the mathy friend in your life. The teach takes less than 1 minute and it being just a single deck of cards, you can take it anywhere. It takes less than 5 minutes to play. It has adjustable difficulty too, so you can tailor it really well to group." James continues, "I personally love it and felt compelled to sign-it the moment the designer Leo Samson first played it with me. It’s just one of those things that felt like it should exist already. If you like math puzzles or mental arithmetic, I think you’ll really like it. If not… it’s almost certainly not for you." Is it Fun Some of the cards blow my mind, I am certainly not a mathematician. However, I have loved playing with my son (nine). He loved the concept and trying to work out the best way to get as close to 21 as possible. Which he did, quite often! More than me. Some cards are pretty simple. Just a flat number, or negative five for example. Others are more complex and require a lot more thought. The N concept was very clever. As this changes when you get more cards. You could get to within one or two of 21 with the cards you have. And then twist to try and get to 21 exactly but of course, any N card you had is now a different value. Getting to 21 is very satisfying. If you like working out math problems then you will love this. If not, I would still consider it to try with your friends and family who do. I have introduced this to a few (very clever) non-gamers who were blown away by it and are now looking at what other modern games may be for them. It certainly is unique in that aspect. I don't see many other games brining in scientists and mathematicians to the hobby as much as this! For more information, head here.

Art Robbery WBG Score: 7.5/10 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Plotalot, Tucano, 6 Nimmt. Published by: Helvetiq Designed by: Reiner Knizia When Reiner Knizia puts his name to a new game usually people sit up and take notice. The man behind four Deutscher Spiele Preis winning games and a Spiel des Jahres, two of the most prestigious awards in the industry; the Knizia name comes with some serious credibility. His latest game, published by small box advocates Helvetiq, Art Robbery brings some interesting ideas to the take-that card game genre. Using Knizia’s intricate knowledge of mathematics, Art Robbery pits players against each other in a daring heist. Aiming to steal the most valuable pieces, players must track what their opponents are taking and importantly wining, all whilst ensuring they don’t have the least valuable alibi scores at the end of the game. In Art Robbery, there are four rounds, called raids. Players are focused on the attempted robbery of four different types of art. Sculptures, Paintings, Sketches and Antiques, represented by circular tokens separated at the start of the game. In each round, players will be playing cards to take the most valuable works of art placed in the center of the table. The art tokens have a score ranging from zero to five. You may want to take the zero’s and lower scoring tokens due to these pieces offering alibi scores as well. The raid ends when all the tokens are taken. Players keep any token they have stolen that round, bank them, and then next round starts. The person at the end of the game with the most points wins. But the person with the lowest alibi score will be caught by the police and eliminated. The game is a delicate balance between acquiring the highest prized pieces of art without neglecting the lower scoring pieces that will provide the alibis you need to stay in the game. The game starts with each player being dealt five cards. On your turn, players will choose one of these cards to play. The cards will come from one of four main categories: Boss cards: Each round of Art Robbery will see new art tokens placed in the center of the table to collect. There will always be at least one token with an image of ‘the boss’ on it. This token is worth 5 points at the end of the game. However, the twist being you have to have another token worth four or five in order to keep the boss token at the end of the raid. If you don’t have another token with this amount, then the boss token is discarded scoring you zero points. Number cards: Each card, numbered zero to five allows you to take the token of the equivalent value from either the center of the table or from another player who has already tried to loot this piece of art. No piece of art is safe until the end of the raid. Thief cards: This card allows you to take any token of your choice from the center of the table other, than the boss token. Guard dog cards: This allow you to either take the guard dog from another player if they have it, or the center of the table if the guard dog piece is still unclaimed. This token can then be used to protect you from later attacks from other players when they play a numbered card to steel one of your other tokens. Art Robbery is a constant back and forth. The game often starts with people playing nicely. Taking what they can from the center of the table and not thinking about affecting other players own scores. Inevitably, one player will be left with a situation where their only legal play is to take a piece of art from another player. The gloves are now off! This is not a co-op game after all! It’s every robber for themselves! If you have the boss card and your opponent has the only available four token, and you have the number four card, its time to rob your friends! A sense of jovial back-and-forth is created from this tit-for-tat play. It doesn’t have the often “mean” feeling created by take-that games. Everything happens so quickly and there are multiple chances to get back what was once stolen from you, this is not a game that will create enemies at the table. Just laughs! Each time I have played this game I have witnessed a lot of giggles, cries, and screams. Trying to take a token from an opponent, that is blocked by a guard dog, which is then followed up by a second attempt moments later to take the same token, when the same card is played, but now not defended by the guard dog, is just hilarious! This sort of interplay happens often. It's fast, funny and very satisfying to both be a part of and watch. Art Robbery plays quickly and has the end-game scoring surprises and joys seen in games when no one really knows how they have done! Or how they have scored in comparison to the other players. The final reveal of your own points vs. the other players, as well as the check on who has the lowest amount of alibi’s is a suitable end to a Knizia game. It feels like an event, despite all being over and done with within 20 minutes. If you are looking for a light, fun, family friendly take-that card game, this could be the one for you.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Fire Nation Rising WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Thanos Rising, King of Tokyo, Hit Z Road. Published by: The Op Designed by: Patrick Marino, Andrew Wolf There have been a number of "Rising" games. I covered the history and the Batman Who Laughs version here. The latest version from The Op who provided this game for review is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Based on a huge franchise that has made films, tv shows, and hundreds of comics, like the other games in this series, Avatar comes with a big following, but does it live up to this? Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up First place the main board, made up of three pieces together at the centre of the table. Let each player choose a character to play as, taking their player board, token and card, and placing it in front of them. In a solo game, take two for yourself. It works as a two player. Then decide on the difficulty and place between ten and 13 Villain cards into the deck to suit your desired game style. Now shuffle this deck and place one card in each of the nine spots around the board. Place the fire nation statue into the central spot, along with the fire nation cards shuffled and placed next to the board. Place the Pai Sho and damage tokens into a central location on the table, along with the dice pool and final battle cards for later use. Finally take the balance and ruin tracks and decide which difficulty you want to play. This is marked by the symbol on the bottom left of the balance track. Place the balance and ruin markers on the bottom spot. You are now ready to play. It should look a little like this, colourful huh!? How to Play Players will now take it in turns to place their character token into one of the three locations on the main board. Players are looking to recruit new characters to join their team and increase their powers and take out the villains that could end their game. If you ever loose all characters from the same team, or any ten then the game is lost for all players. In order to win, you need to build up your team during the first phase where the balance and ruin tracks advance, and then win the three final battles. On your turn, you will place your token into one of the three locations on the main board, and then flip the top fire nation card. This will determine if the fire nation statue will stay in it's current location or rotate one space either way. It will then tell you to move the ruin marker up either zero, one, or two spaces. Then, all Villains in the current location of the fire nation statue will activate, simply carrying out the actions on their card. Generally this will heal other villains or attack other characters. The fire nation statue itself will also attack, adding one damage to all hero's in its current location, including those in front of the active player if they placed their token into this same location. Players then have the chance to fight back, by rolling dice. This is what this game is all about, and there are a lot of dice in the game. They feel and look great on your fingers and eyes with their embossed edges and bright colourful design. As players roll dice, they are looing to match the symbols on the characters they want to recruit in the sector they are in, or on the villains they are looking to fight. Each character has its own set of dice to roll, and as you recruit new characters they will brig new dice to roll in this phase, offer re-rolls, or other useful powers. After you have rolled all your dice you must assign at least one to one card or action. Either fighting a villain, recruiting an ally, activating a power on your player card, or moving on the balance track. You can see some of the spots on the balance track need certain dice faces to be rolled in order to progress. More so on the harder tracks. When you assign dice to villains, if you manage to get one dice for each face needed, you can add one damage token to this card at the end of your dice rolling phase. Most cards have two to six damage spots, sometimes more. You need to fill a track before that card can be defeated. So, for the Pirate Captain below for example, it needs one water and one fire dice face to add one damage, and two damage to defeat it. As you assign dice, you can then re-roll any un-assigned dice. This continues until all dice are assigned. If ever you cannot assign a dice, the dice is lost. One dice must be used each round. But remember you have four positive ways to use them, and re-roll to use. So I would say 90% of dice can be used in the game. But of course there is some luck here and a wasted dice is frustrating. One way you can mitigate this, other than the re-rolls, is by using the Pai Sho tokens. These are gained via different character powers, or you can take one if ever you cannot use any of your dice to fight a villain, recruit an ally, or move on the balance track. Often you can flip two tokens, and choose one to take. You can then spend these tokens at any point to replace a dice face you haven't rolled yet, add an extra dice, re-roll dice, or remove damage. Once all dice are assigned and activated, any villains defeated or characters recruited will be moved either off the board or into your play area. These cards are replaced from the top of the deck, and the next player will take their turn. This will continue until either side of the balance or ruin track reaches its summit. At this point, at the end of the players turn, all character's or villains with the black sun marker will be removed from play. If you reach the top of the balance track before or at the same time as the ruin track, the villains will go. If the ruin track gets to the top first then the characters will go. Any hero's lost this way are considered defeated and count towards the end game tally of ten or more. It is possible to still win the game if the ruin track gets to the top first, but it is a lot harder. Focusing on moving up on the balance track in the first phase is important. Once all cards of either type are removed, the balance and ruin track is also removed from the game. You will now enter the second phase of the game. The three final battle cards are placed into their locations on the main board, and the game will continue. Now, when the statue moves, the ruin track will no longer be activated, but the final battle cards will trigger. Players need to try and roll the dice faces shown on these cards when in the right location, and when there are no villains present. Each battle needs two damage to be defeated. When this happens, the card if flipped and an immediate bonus is awarded. If a player can flip all three final battle cards before they loose too many hero's, they will win the game. Is it Fun? Playing Avatar feels very much the other Rising games. However, the balance and ruin track does add a new element to the game, with a new way to split the main phase and the end game phase. But the reason people will buy this game is the theme. With a Star Wars, Batman, and Avengers theme already out there, the designers of this game are staying firmly in the fantasy/comic book world. But I think that is because they know gamers are collectors as well as players. Hence this game being beautifully produced, and just like the other games in the series, coming with a real stand out miniature. If you already have one of these games, you probably want the others too. Hence the themes coming from similar genres. This is a Pokémon situation. And I want them all! The art on the cards is bright, clear, and stunning. Fans of the show/comic will be very happy to see all their favourite characters beautifully and accurately represented here in the game. The whole production is incredible, and I would want to keep this game even if I didn't enjoy playing it. But I do. However it is very similar to The Batman who laughs and the other games in the series. So, I can see why not everyone would want to have all of these games. You either need to pick the theme you like the best, or accept the fact that they are similar and just enjoy collecting them all! But do you even want one? I would suggest yes. If you enjoy dice games then you will enjoy this. It's fun to be able to roll lots of dice, get more dice, be able to manipulate your rolls a little, and grow you powers as you build up your armies. The game has a lovely build to it, and it is incredibly simple to teach and get into. And the pay off is rewarding if you win. I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the Rising or Avatar series as a must have. For anyone else, this could work for you if you enjoy dice games, and want some theme to go with your rolls. Just check the many different games in the rising range to see which one works best for you.

This is a preview using a porotype copy provided for free by the publisher, Comet Games. The fact that I got the game does not affect my opinion. I'm not that cheap. Bye Bye Dice is from Comet games, a small independent UK publisher I am quickly becoming a big fan of. They make games full of charm and personality. Bye Bye Dice will be their second game when it comes to Kickstarter April 2022. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Find the Token card and one My Turn card for each player. Give the My turn card to each person around the table and lay the Token card face up by the side. Then take the rest of the cards and place them face down and give them a good tornado shuffle. Give the dice to the first player and you are ready to go. How to Play The first player will now start the game by rolling the dice. If they roll a six they can start flipping over cards. If they don't roll a six they will pass the dice to the player to their left. If you roll a six you can flip one card at a time. You are looking for a card with a one on it. If you find that card, place it face up in front of you. If you don't, place the card back, face down and flip another card. You can keep going until the next person rolls a six and takes over your spot at the table. You are looking to build up a run of one to eight with the final Winner card. The first person to do this wins the game. You will notice there are lots of different colours on the card backs. For a harder game, you need to get all your numbers in the same colour. For a simpler game, you can use any colour and also reduce some of the numbers, taking out the higher cards, and making the race a first to five, or six, of whatever works for you. As soon as someone completes their set with the final Winner card, they win the game. This can happen within minutes, or depending on the roll of the dice and the rules you are playing, can take a little longer. But either way it will be frantic! Some of the cards have special powers. They will either help or hinder you. Everyone starts with a My Turn card. This can be played at any time to take over at the table and start flipping cards without rolling a six. There are more My Turn cards in the deck. The Steel Any Card lets you take a card from another person. They will then need to replace that card when it is their turn before they can carry on their their sequence. For example, if another player has a One and Two and you take their One, they need to take another One of their next turn, rather than carrying on from Two. The blank card works as a wild and can replace any number you need. There is also a card with a hand on that if you flip over, means you have to stop flipping and join the rest of the players rolling the dice. The most entertaining card is the Bye Bye Dice card, which means you can throw the dice away to stop the other players from being able to roll it! You can house rule this however you set fit, big throw, small throw. In the room. Within view. Whatever works for your group. But it's hilarious either way and I am all in for it! The cards are all very bright and easily marked. You will be able to see what they are quite quickly. I am unsure how easy this will be for players who have colour blindness though. They may need to consider different style fonts or backgrounds for the final copy. I am not an expert here and this is just a prototype version Is it Fun If you like real-time games then you may well love this. If not, it may be a little stressful for you! I love it as it reminds me of a game I played each birthday when I was a child. We had to roll a dice, and if we rolled a six, we could start putting on layer upon layer of winter clothing. When done with the clothes, and this included thick winter gloves, you could then start eating a chocolate bar, but you had to use a knife and fork to do so! At any point, if another player rolled a six, they would rip the clothes off you, start putting them on themselves, and take over eating. Or at least trying to! It was a real treat for me, and a lovely memory. And this game takes me right back to that feeling. I may introduce a chocolate bar to this game! Just for nostalgia sake of course. For young children and families, this is a great game. Perfect for a young children's party vibe, the same that my old family chocolate bar game was used for. When it arrived in our house my kids wanted to play it non-stop all evening. And this was without the chocolate bar expansion! The game is quite simple, and there is not much strategy to it. Although you can place the cards back wherever you like, and try to remember where you placed certain numbers and cards. But this is mainly about acting and moving fast. A true race game. If you enjoy that kind of tension, pressure and the frantic nature of a game it creates, this well could be for you.

Velonimo WBG Score: 8 Player Count:2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Tichu, Scout, Lama. Published by: Studio Stratosphères Designed by: Bruno Cathala Road cycling seems to be hugely popular now-a-days. So are cute animals. I can see what they did here! I love card games. Simple, family-friendly games, perfect to get out after dinner for some quick fun. So, as someone who likes cute animals and getting out on my bike, I am all in for this. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Buckle up. This is a tricky one. Set aside the Award Jersey card, shuffle the rest of the deck and deal out 11 cards to each player. You are now done! Woah! Time for a rest How to Play Players will now play in turn, either playing a card or not. Attacking or passing. This is a ladder climbing game, so it's all about trying to beat the cards on the table. When you attack, you can either play a single card or a group of cards. When you play a group they must have the same value or colour. When you play any card it must beat the current active set on the table. You can do this by playing a regular card or combination of them, or one of the higher value Hare cards. Play will continue like this until all players pass after one player attacks. They will do this as they either do not want to or cannot beat the current set. Cards are scored by their numerical value for a single card, or by the number of cards plus the lowest value number for a combination. Whenever you play more than one card, each card immediately becomes worth ten points, and you will add a bonus of the lowest number. So, three blues that are a Two, three, and four, would score 32. Ten for each card and then plus two for the lowest value card, the two. The player with the wining cards will then score points equal to the round, based on how many players are still in play. For example, in a three player game, in round one, the winning player will score two points. One for each player. One as it is round one. So two in total as there were two other players. For round four in a four player, the winning player will score 12 points. Four for each player. Four as it is round four, and 12 as there were three other players. The game will run for five rounds, but the rules suggest you can modify the number of rounds for a longer or shorter game to suit your own desires. At the end of each round, the winning player is awarded the below Carrot Jersey card. This is a bonus plus ten card that can be played once in the subsequent round, to increase the value of any card or combination of cards. Some have suggested that this just helps the winning player but the idea behind it ,as explained by the designer himself in the comments in this video, is to help the leader out. As the leader will most likely become targeted in the next round using the final group of cards, the Leaders. Therefore they need some help in the shape of the Carrot Jersey. The Leader cards are the Turtles, all with a value of one. For each Leader than you play, you can take a random card from an opponents hand. For each card that you take this way you must give one back, but you can choose which card this will be. It could even be the card you just took if you don't want it. It's a great way to get rid of cards you cannot or do not want to use. And as shown, a good way to target the leader to slow them down. There is a two player variant where there are just a few changes. The Carrot jersey is not used and the water carriers, the number two cards, have a special power. When any Camel card is played, you must add the top card from the draw pile to your hand. If you play more than one Camel card at once, draw one new card for each card played. Each time you win an attack you must draw the top card again, but this time, either take it for yourself, or give it to your opponent. Is it Fun? Velonimo is a simple game. It takes a round or two to get used to the scoring. Ten points per card plus the lowest card number is a simple concept but as you will also be playing single cards with their face value too, it will take a second to let it click. But when it does, it flows very quickly, and is just so much fun. Velonimo is one of those card games that you play that feels so familiar. Like it was a game you played in your childhood. And you are now reliving all those memories again for the hundredth time. Even if ladder climbing is new to you. This has a homogeneous feeling as you play it that warms your heart. The art on the cards is wonderful and certainly helps with the charm of this game. This, added to the simplicity and familiarity of play, plus the smooth and fast gameplay, has all combined to make this a firm family favourite in a matter of weeks in our household. There are some games that you just reach for over and over again as you know they will deliver. Velonimo is one of those. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys simple card games that offer a come-back-and-play feeling. Simple rulesets. But high in interaction and fun. Velonimo joins a large group of great card games that can be enjoyed by anyone. But also a small group that offer high levels of fun every time you play it.

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.