How To Play Ecosystem

Ecosystem is a pretty simple game and a drafting game. Your goal is to create the best five across by four down grid of animals to score the most points. This is done over two rounds, each round consists of a hand of ten cards.

Within those two rounds of Ecosystem, there are turns. On a turn everyone selects a card from their hand and puts it face down in front of them. That card is going to be added to their ecosystem in a way to optimize their scoring. Each type of animal or biome provides scoring in a unique way. Then you pass your hand of cards, first round clockwise and second round counter-clockwise, and receive a hand of cards.

Once all the cards are used from the two hands the game is over and scores are tallied. Each animal and biome scores according to it’s rules. And you score the diversity of animals and biomes in your ecosystem. If you don’t have enough you get docked points. Highest score wins.

What Doesn’t Work?

I think that there is one major thing that might be a turn off for some people. That is the diversity in the cards from game to game. I like Sushi Go Party better than I like regular Sushi Go, why, because it allows me to select what subset of cards I use each game, and Sushi Go does. Ecosystem is like Sushi Go in that it only comes with one set of cards. So if I play the game a number of times, I start to stumble across the same strategy, potentially. But, to mitigate that, Ecosystem is not a drafting game where you use each card, so there are always some cards missing from the drafted hands.

What Works?

One thing I enjoy about the game is that fact that you don’t use every card. I see how it would become an issue if you saw every card every time, but in Ecosystem you never will. And, you see 120 out of the 130 cards with six players. But if I play the game at two or three, we see forty or sixty cards respectively, which means we fail to see most of the cards. That is going to swing your strategy as you play.

I also enjoy how the scoring works in this game and how the diversity of creatures works. I think without that diversity of creatures it would end up being pretty standard across the board. But, because you want to diversify and they provide motivation to, I think it’s builds on the game nicely. When I need to think about not only my best scoring play, but how to avoid a 17 point potential swing, -5 points to plus 12 points, it adds a layer to the game.

Now, it doesn’t ratchet up the complexity of Ecosystem too much, and that is a good thing. Because, the last thing I like is that the game is a relaxing game. When I sit down and play a game like Ecosystem, I get to enjoy the artwork. I enjoy the puzzle of the experience, but it is not a stressful one. and with a game with pretty artwork, I think that fits what the game is going for. The game is not one that should stress you out as you play trying to get that perfect combination.

Who Is It For?

So, who is Ecosystem for? I think that this is a good game for a family with younger kids, not too young, though. You need to read your player aid when you draft the first few games. The scoring is not complex, but there are eleven things you need to think about as you play.

I also think that Ecosystem is a great game for that bit of downtime at a work lunch, or when you want to play a game but not think too hard after a long day or week or work. But one that offers just enough to keep playing it as that filler experience. It is like Sushi Go Party (or Sushi Go) that way. Though, those two are less filler games than Ecosystem is.

Final Thoughts on Ecosystem

At the start I asked the question, is this game too simple to stick in a collection? From my response I think you know my answer. I see why for some it might end up being that way. But for a relaxing filler game, Ecosystem is a great option. I play a game that offers some fun decisions or risks as I go, but not a game that offers too much.

I like to own games where I see them, and I think, this is a game I can play with most anyone. And Ecosystem is that sort of game. If I play this with my parents, it’ll work, and I played it at a game night, and it worked. That is a type of game that I enjoy to own because it’s not a party game, and it’s not Uno, but it is a game that I see most anyone playing.

Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: A
My Grade: A

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Marvel Champions is a cooperative superhero game where you play as a superhero who is trying to thwart the plans of a villain and defeat them. On the heroes turn, you can play cards that might be an ally or give you an additional ability or allow you to thwart the villains scheme or attack the villain. But these cards cost resources, and to get the resources to play these cards, you need to discard cards, so while you might want to play all the cards in your hand because they do something good, you are limited in number to how many you can play because they are going to cost, and the better cards cost more. Then the villain goes, and depending on if you are in the alter-ego side of the superhero side of the character card, they will either work on their scheme or they’ll attack you. Plus, then you need to encounter a card, it might be a henchmen that you need to take care of, otherwise they’ll be pinging you for damage, or it could be treachery card where it causes some other action to happen, like scheming or attacking again. This goes on until either the villain has completed their plan or the hero has taken out the villain. If the superhero takes out the villain, the heroes win, but each villain has two versions that you have to face off against, so taking them down once isn’t enough.

This game does some really interesting things. First, let me say that one of the big things about the game is that it’s a living card game. That means that there are expansions coming out. In the base game, you have plenty to play with Ultron and Rhino as villains and the likes of Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, She-Hulk, and Spider-Man as villains. But the expansions give you new characters or villains to face off against. You can get Green Goblin so that you have to worry about him and his glider in a fight, and you can get Captain America to face off against him. There are other heroes like Ms Marvel, Black Widow, Thor, Doctor Strange, and Hulk that have been announced or are out. All these expansions, and a Red Skull campaign expansion coming sometime this summer, can make the game more expensive, but also you don’t need them all, if you don’t care about Hulk and Ms Marvel, don’t pick them up, and you can still have a great game with lots of fun things in it. And while the expansions are pretty consistently coming out, they aren’t that expensive, which is nice.

But let’s talk about some of the other cool things, first there is the alter-ego and superhero piece. It’s really clever and gives it a great comic book feel, in my opinion. In the comics (I’m going to mainly be using Spider-Man as an example), it’s common for Spider-Man to get knocked around, Peter Parker then needs to rest and recover, which he can, because people don’t know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but the villain, thinking that they’ve defeated Spider-Man will scheme and plot and get closer to their goal, when Spider-Man then shows up again to stop them. The flipping between sides, alter-ego and superhero, is very much that feeling. Each hero has things that they can do when they are on their alter-ego side and their superhero side that are different as well. For example, Captain America, when he’s in alter-ego form, he can recruit allies easier, but when he’s on the Captain America side, he can un-exhaust so that he can do more actions. So it make sense, Steve Rogers/Captain America is the leader of the Avengers often, so he can go out and recruit a hero, and he also never gets knocked down and out of a fight, so he’s always ready to attack and then un-exhaust and do it again, as he says…

And each hero has their own things like that, which fits their character and makes them unique from the rest of the heroes.

Another cool thing is that the heroes have different aspects to them, and you can change this up. So maybe you want Spider-Man to be more protection cards, you can give him more defensive cards in his deck. That way he’ll be able to stay in Spider-Man form longer and not have to flip back and forth between the two as much. Or maybe you want him to be aggressive you can change out his aspect to that, or Justice or Leadership. That’s going to give you another way to change up things. I played Captain America with a protection cards, and I was able to stay in the superhero side of things for all but one turn because I was taking damage so slowly. But if you wanted to, you could make Cap very aggressive and he’d deal out a lot of damage fast, or leadership makes thematic sense because he often leads the avengers. So you can mess around with deck building that way to create what type of team you want to play with.

Are there any downsides to the game? It takes a few minutes to set-up and if you aren’t familiar with deck building you might just be stuck with the decks that they recommend or you might have some weird deck builds that happen. But you can learn how to do better deck building. I think that the one downside right now is that it is hard to find the expansions, they aren’t printing enough and it takes some time to get a reprint done, and with COVID-19 as well, that could delay the reprints as well. Right now I have the Wrecking Crew villain expansion and Thor character expansion, but those are basically sold out as well. But, with that said, those packs will show up again, and there is enough in the base box that it’s worth it to just grab that and play and learn with those characters.

Now, I’ve done some comparisons already, and that’s in the Board Game Battle with Marvel Legendary, so is there room for both on your shelf, I think if you like Legendary, you will probably will find that this is different enough, and vice-a-versa. But I also want to bring up the other living card games that Fantasy Flight has put out, there is Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Arkham Horror. So how does this compare to the one that I’ve played, Arkham Horror? I think that it’s close between the two, if you go back to my deck building/construction article yesterday for Top 10 in that genre, you can see that Marvel Champions is the spot above, however, it’s close. I like the story driven nature of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and that’s something that I do miss with Marvel Champions, but that is also coming. I think that I just like the superhero theme a little bit better and being able to pull it out for one game. But because one, right now, is a single game and the other is a campaign, I think that there’s room for both on shelves.

Overall, clearly I like this game. I think that it plays well at both 1 and 2 players and offers unique challenges both ways. There is a lot of really interesting things going on in the game, and it feels like a comic book. If you’re at all interested, I’d definitely recommend checking it out. But, with that said, know that the cost could add up over time if you’re a Marvel fanboy/fangirl, like I am. Because I’ll want to get most of it over time. I also think that this can work for a more casual player to pick up and learn. Fantasy Flight does a good job with their rule book, and the game is pretty simple, but still offers good challenges, so this a game that people interested in it will probably be able to understand easily.

Overall Grade: A
Gamer Grade: A
Casual Grade: A-

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Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is a semi-cooperative to fully cooperative board game. In the first part of the game, players are going around the city of Baldur’s Gate, flipping over tiles, finding shops, dark alleys, and more. During this time, they are collecting items when they are told to, but also finding omens of what might be happening in the town. Eventually an omen will trigger what is known as the haunt. Players then compare to the omen to the room it was found in to find out who the betrayer might be, if there is one. This then tells the players how they are actually going to win the game, whether they are the betrayer or the good adventurers.

Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is a re-implementation of Betrayal at House on the Hill, a horror based game where you are exploring a creepy old house and eventually, based off of room and omen again, a haunt happens. Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate fixes, a little bit, how you determine if the haunt happens so that it can’t happen quite as quickly. There were times in the original that the haunt would happen very quickly. Otherwise, most of the game feels the same with just a fantasy, D&D, skin put on it. I personally don’t like this skin as well. I have no connection tot he Baldur’s Gate video games however, and the people I’ve played with who do, like those nods in the game, something that I can’t appreciate. With that said, I still think that the campy horror style of Betrayal at House on the Hill is more enjoyable, though Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate has a better rule set.

What I do like about this game over Betrayal at House on the Hill is t he fact that each character has a special power to go along with special stats. A barbarian in this game or jock in the other, might have more speed and strength, but in this game the barbarian also has a special power. I feel like all the powers seem thematic to the game and give each character a unique feel. I feel like I generally end up playing a magic user and there are things that make them feel more like a magic user in what they can do. I also don’t feel like any of these abilities are unbalanced in the game.

The components in this game are solid for the most part, there is a ton of cardboard that you have to punch out. The minis in the game are good, however, there are a few parts of them that are too thin and the plastic doesn’t hold up, so it isn’t brittle and it doesn’t snap, it is just that things like the wizards staff sag. I also wish that this game, like the other, came with a better storage solution or at least a lot of little baggies. There are so many tokens that without little baggies, it can take a long time to dig through them and find everything.

But, let’s talk more about the core mechanics, I compared it to Betrayal at House on the Hill, but I haven’t delved into what the game is really like. Like I said above, the game is split into two halves. In the first half you are exploring and in the second half the haunt happens. The exploring part might be the best part of the game because you really don’t know what you’re going to find next. You might be collecting omens because that is what on the different rooms and buildings you are flipping, or you might be loaded down with items and ready to take on the betrayer. While I think that it makes more sense for this random flipping in Betrayal at House on the Hill, it works well as a mechanic, so I understand why they kept it the same way in the Baldur’s Gate version of the game. It just doesn’t feel quite as thematic in this game.

The haunt, however, I like better. I think that they got better at how they’ve written out the betrayer and good players parts of the haunt so you can more clearly understand what you need to do. Now, I don’t think that it’s perfect, but it’s better than it was in the original game. I also really like how there are 10 haunts that do not have a betrayer. You all end up working together and take this game where you were stressing about who the betrayer was going to be and when the haunt was going to happen as you explored, to now working together to stop whatever is happening in the town. And, I keep saying the haunt, because that’s what it’s called in the games, however, I don’t feel like haunt is accurate for Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate because, some of them have a horror theme, but really it’s more like a boss encounter in a game of D&D than a haunt. It works for the game, if everything was horror, that wouldn’t make sense for the theme and tone of the game. I’ve played a handful of scenarios, and I think that about half the time the betrayer or game has won, and half the time the good adventurers have.

I really do enjoy this game. I like the mechanic set and I like the D&D theme on the game. I do think that it’s not as good as Betrayal at House on the Hill, simply because the mechanics lend themselves to more of a horror style of game theme. But if people don’t like horror games, or if you think that the haunts are too confusing in Betrayal at House on the Hill, Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is a really good option and gives you a lot of fun game play.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: B+

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Century: Golem Edition is an engine building, hand management game where you are trying to convert games into different types to get the right combination to get golems. To do that, you have to collect gems, upgrade gems, and get cards. With the cards, they let you get more gems or upgrade/change the type of gems in different ways than your base cards do. So you are trying to build up a combination that helps you get gems faster, but also gems that are going to allow you to get the golems. Every card you get is added to your hand, and you play down cards and only return them to your hand when you decide that you want to. Eventually you’ll need to, though, because you’ll want to get the cards of the engine back into your hand so that you can get it working again.

Century: Golem Edition is a really slick engine building game. With cute artwork and a cute theme, you expect the game to not offer that much strategy, but there is a good amount of strategy there if you want to find it. The cards, and how valuable the card is to you really determines what you might want to do. The engine building, too, never becomes too much, because while you are building up an engine you are only playing a single card a turn. That means that you are either getting more gems or changing out gems, depending on the card. Then the next turn you play the next step to the engine. If you were playing all the cards at once, turns would last a long time, but instead, the turns fly by because you are only firing off part of your engine each time. That really makes it as an accessible engine building game and a good introductory engine building game. It would be easy for there to be too many things to keep track of otherwise.

The components also really sell this game on the table. The gems are amazing looking and just fun to play around with. And their holding bins work really well and are another nice aesthetic piece, but it’s also highly functional. Then there are metal coins that just add a little bit to the potential scoring of the golems and make getting some of the passed over golems more valuable. There is no reason that the coins need to be metal, you could have just put in a +1 and a +2 cardboard chips, but the metal coins feel amazing and look great. Century: Golem Edition really goes above and beyond the expected quality of a game with nice large cards, a great insert, an the other things that I’ve mentioned above. The game pops on the table and people are drawn to the game to see what is going on.

Finally, Century: Golem Edition is a very good introductory game while still not being a game that more “serious” gamers are going to find boring. The engine building piece is interesting and offers different choices each game, the random golems mean that you have to vary your strategy, so it helps keep the playing field a bit more balanced. Plus, there is the determination of when you bring cards back to your hand, because that is your turn. If you do it at the wrong time, someone might beat you to a golem that you’ve been angling for. This isn’t going to be game that more “serious” gamers are going to always want to play to fill that strategy itch, and the game isn’t one that has a ton of strategy, but they aren’t likely to be bored with it either.

Overall, I enjoy this game a lot. I think that it works well for a mixed crowd of players and I love the speed that game plays at. If you are looking for an engine building game to teach the concept and strategy of engine building, Century: Golem Edition stands out in that field. You can definitely use Century: Spice Road, but if you are playing with very casual gamers, Golem Edition is going to draw them in a whole lot more. I definitely recommend this game to people to help fill out that introductory game collection for when new gamers are around.

Overall Grade: A
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: A+

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In Dominion, you are building your deck up to be able to buy as many victory points as possible. The downside is that those victory points clog up your deck. On your turn you are playing down cards that give you additional actions, card draw, number of cards you can buy, and money. At the end of your turn, you draw up a new hand of cards and you repeat the process. Doing this, you are getting cards like Marketplace, Council Room, Estates, or cards like Copper, Gold, and Silver that give you money.

In terms of a pure deck building game, Dominion is a pretty good game. The issue is that it had a dull theme on it. It looks like it’s a trading in the Mediterranean game with poor artwork and a dated looking card design. And with Dominion, that theme “works” because the game itself has nothing to do with the theme. Why the Council Room gives you draw of 4 cards and an extra buy action and the Festival gives you 2 coins, 2 more actions and another buy action, who knows. And really who cares, you are just trying to build an engine of cards to be able to buy estates as quickly as possible.

But, like most deck building games, you are really looking for a very small combo. You are looking for ways to get as much money into your hand as consistently as possible while avoiding getting dead cards. There is a strategy to the game, but with a bit of luck of the draw when you start the game, one person is going to be down the path to victory faster than everyone else, and there are going to be no catch-up mechanisms. Now, a good strategy game, that’s fine, but there’s enough luck with the shuffle of the deck that now it doesn’t matter that you figured out the strategy, someone was able to get the combo going a turn faster than you, you won’t win. And if you don’t notice the strategy, you can figure out half way through the game who is going to win because they figured out the right combo of the cards. Now, again, Dominion is an abstract deck builder with a pasted on artwork and theme that aren’t needed, so if you want that puzzle and hope that you can get your engine rolling faster with a little luck in the card draw, Dominion is a great game for that. It’s meant for you to min-max your cards and find the ways to empty out your deck to just have what you need, more power to you.

For me, I’ve gotten rid of Dominion though. I think that there are other deck builders like Clank! In! Space! or Xenoshyft: Onslaught that I have on my shelf that are a lot better. Now, there’s a bit more going on in those games, so it’s probably not as good for teaching deck building, but I’m not teaching deck building too often. And I think some of what bugged me about Dominion was that there are a plethora of expansions for the game, but they really don’t add that much new, and the new and additional rules that they add, they aren’t thematic, or are they used all that often, because they add to the complexity of Dominion. Dominion being more complex pushes it away from being that introductory deck building game, which means that unless you have people who live and breath Dominion, there are those people out there, I know one of them, and always want to play it and play it with other people who love it, those cards and rules aren’t going to be needed.

Dominion is significant to the hobby, and I recognize that. It really helped create deck builders, and without it, games like Xenoshyft: Onslaught or Clank! In! Space! might not exist. And Dominion has helped get people into the hobby, but some of the love for it that it’s gotten over the years, it just doesn’t resonate with me. That might just be my taste in games coming through, but I think that there are plenty of better deck building games out there, and while Dominion might have been a good introductory deck building game to teach the concept, I think that there are better ones out there, and an early year of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is going to be just as good for deck building if not better. Or even something that’s definitely more complex like Xenoshyft: Onslaught, because it’s cooperative, could work decently well in that teaching role. And with both of those games, they feel like they have more theme and that you are doing something more. The veneer on Dominion has now become too thin when it comes to theme.

Overall Grade: C-
Gamer Grade: D
Casual Grade: B

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In Arkham Horror LCG, you are taking on the role of an investigator looking to solve various mysteries that are plaguing the town. However, these mysteries aren’t like anything you’ve dealt with before, and are you fully equipped to take them on? The answer is probably just barely. You do this by gaining clues, fighting monsters, and managing your hand of cards and cards in front of you. And you travel around from location to location searching for clues and possibly finding horrors that you’ll now have to deal with.

Each case uses different locations and you might have to face off against ghouls in your house or be searching for cultists hidden about the town. Can you find them all in time or can you escape your house before the ghouls over run it. And those are an example of how the scenarios and cases can change as those are the first two that you play out of the base box.

Arkham Horror LCG is a story driven deck builder, and that’s the best description I have for it. You have your mystery scenarios, but also each character has a deck of cards that you can put together and that they play from and that you can upgrade between sessions. That means that you could get a better weapon into your deck as you become more prepared to take on different challenges. You generally play through the scenarios in a box with the same characters that you start with, but they give you a wide variety of characters that you can use. You might be someone who makes sense, like an FBI Agent or Reporter, or you might be trying to solve these crimes as a waitress. And their decks are going to be built slightly differently depending on the character. This is much more of a deck builder in the lines of Magic the Gathering versus a deck builder like Dominion where you are adding in cards midgame.

What I think really works in this game is the unique feel of the scenarios, and though I haven’t played a ton of the scenarios I really have liked the ones that I’ve tackled. Too many games you play them an handful of times or different scenarios and they end up feeling like they are similar, but in Arkham Horror LCG you can see the care put into developing unique scenarios and changing up mechanics for scenarios, and it gives it an extremely thematic feel. These scenarios aren’t easy, but Arkham Horror LCG also gives you ways to adjust the difficulty, so that if you want to play a simpler and more story driven experience, you can do that. Or if you want to really challenge yourself with a nightmarishly difficult scenario, you can adjust the level to make it that as well.

That’s one thing that I haven’t talked much about, with how you change levels is that you add more or different tokens to your modifier bag. When you want to do something like shoot a gun, evade a monster, or search for clues, you look at your stat and play any cards that you want to modify that card and use cards that you have in your inventory to hit a target number. But you’re always going to pull tokens from the modifier bag, and it could be fine, or it could give you that plus that you needed to succeed, or you might pull a negative, or you might pull one of the special tokens which will have unique rules depending on your scenario.

For me, this is a really great game. If I remember correctly, the battle came down to Arkham Horror LCG and Mansions of Madness, and I really love both of those games. Arkham Horror LCG is probably harder to initially get to the table, but then is easier to repeatedly get to the table. It’s a fun game with a ton of a content now and will keep you nice and busy playing. It’s also a game that you can play up to 4 people if you have two copies of the base set, but I really think that Arkham Horror LCG is a great solo game and I enjoy playing it that way. I’m excited to play more of it because it even seems like there is more design space that I haven’t seen yet.

Overall Grade: A
Gamer Grade: A
Casual Grade: B

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* For this article board games can mean card/dice games as well but not RPG’s.

7. Elder Signs

Why: Elder Signs has a theme that I really like. Lovecraft and his world of horror is very interesting. It takes some ideas from games like Arkham Horror, where you are trying to defeat a great old one, but it takes less thinking to play Elder Signs. As compared to high strategy and traveling through Arkham, you are just in the museum, and different scenarios happen which you need to roll various symbols on the dice. It combines enough strategy with luck though to keep it very interesting and moving. And one of my favorite parts is that fact that you play different unique characters.

6. Lord of the Rings: Board Game

Why: This is Lord of the Rings. You go through the parts of the story that everyone knows which are so great. And you play the characters that everyone knows, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and Fatty Bolger. Yes, this is from prior to the movies. This is another game where I can play a unique character. And we have an expansion where someone can play the bad guys, which adds a new level of stress to a game that always makes you feel like you are doing well, and then all of a sudden you are within danger of losing.

5. Smallworld

Why: Smallworld if a world of slaughter and laughter. An area control game that mixes unique races and abilities, it s a blast to play. I really like the fact that with the different map sizes, the maps are never so large that you can just sit there, people will always be going after another player, and because it is so inherent in the game, And the combinations are great, dwarves who can fly, giants who pillage, or merchant elves, the game plays out differently every time.

4. Betrayal at House on the Hill

Why: It’s another horror based game and it is semi-cooperative. There will almost always be a traitor in the game, and there is always an end game. But who knows who it is going to be, and who knows what horrors the house will reveal. This game is good because, while there is a traitor, no one is actively playing against the group in the first part of the game. This means that you don’t end up with hurt feelings, and it is just a fun game.

3. Pandemic

Why: Another cooperative game, you can see what I play most often, where you are part of the CDC fighting against diseases that are spreading around the world. It is one of those games, like Lord of the Rings, where you feel like you are doing well, and then all of a sudden, things start to go poorly, and you don’t know what to do, and are scrambling to keep up. It’s a blast to play and one that I would highly recommend that people buy.

2. Pandemic Legacy

Why: A lot of it can be summed up with – see above. However, it is a Legacy game. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Legacy games, how it sets up is that whatever you do in previous games affects the board and how things will work in future games on the board. It also tells more of a story. So you gain more abilities, and there are other things to escalate and it is always stressful and a ton of fun.

1. Dead of Winter

Why: This game potentially has a hidden traitor, it has high stress situations as you look to feed your colony of survivors, keep the zombies from getting in, and complete an objective. The fact that their may or may not be a traitor means that it is questionable if someone is working against you. It is a subtle game, and a high stress game trying to figure out what is going on with helping the colony and trying to find the traitor.

What are some of your favorite board games, or your person Table Top Picks?

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Five Tribes

Five Tribes is probably quintessential Euro Style board game. It focuses on victory points, and having lots and lots of ways to get them, in fact, you don’t know how many points you or anyone else has until the end. With all these different ways of getting victory points, it allows players to focus in on different areas where they are getting points.

Five Tribes uses the world of Alibaba and the 40 Thieves and 1001 Arabian Nights. You vie for workers in a town using a very unique mechanic where you take workers off of one tile and then move them around to other tiles, finally matching and removing the matched color of meeples from the tile. This is the part of the game that requires the most strategy as you look at the combination of meeples, what color you want to remove, and pull down victory points.

However, each round starts in by bidding for turn order. Different spots cost different amounts of gold, ranging from 18 at the highest, and 0 at the lowest. So if you have a move, worker, resource, or Djinn that you need to have, you can bid accordingly to get what you need. Or you can sit back, save up your gold coins, which are worth victory points, and hope to gain your points that way.

There are some other unique things, while some workers give you resources or money, there are others that just give you points at the end of the game, there are assassins who can kill meeples, and Elders who you can use to buy Djinn. However, there are only specific spots where you can buy Djinn, so they are a powerful but limited resource.

While there are a lot of different things going on, the rules are actually very short and very simple. Once you get a grasp of the rules, you can implement so many different strategies and hope that they work. The game really can get moving as you go as well, since it isn’t overly complex. Kristen and I, while learning to play the game and half watching the Olympics, were able to play the game in just over an hour, I would think with a group of people who know the game, you could get a four player game done in about that same amount of time.

I definitely want to play this game again, and it’ll probably get put into the rotation of games that we play just Kristen and myself, as well as bringing it to small group game nights.

Overall Grade: B+

Gamer Grade: B

Casual Grade: B+

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