Artists: Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, Beth Sobel
Release Year: 2019
Mechanics: Card Drafting, Dice Rolling, Hand Management, Engine Building
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Introduction
Hoo-boy, talk about a sleeper hit. I remember so much drama when Wingspan was first released by Stonemaier Games in 2019. It hit store shelves and immediately sold out. Everyone wanted to get their hands on the hot new bird game, to the point where nasty rumors of ‘artificial scarcity’ began to circulate and people criticized Stonemaier Games for having poor forecasting. The reality of the situation was that no one could have predicted just how successful Wingspan would become.
How to Play
Wingspan begins each player with an empty ecosystem board, 5 bird cards, 2 goals, and 5 food (one of each type). Players can keep as many birds from their initial draw as they wish, but they need to sacrifice 1 food for each card kept.
On your turn you may place one of your cubes in any one of the four action spots on your player board, simultaneously helping keep track of how many turns in the round, and helping you remember how to run your engine.
The first possible action is to play a bird card. From your hand, simply pay the required food from your personal supply back to the bank and place your bird on one of the three ecosystems on your board (Woodlands, Plains, and Wetlands). Your bird card must go in the leftmost empty column, and depending on the column you may also need to pay an egg.
If you choose not to play a bird, You can instead play your cube in one of your three ecosystems. Each ecosystem will net you different benefits. If you place your cube in the woodland area, you’ll get to generate food based off the die on the table. The Plains allows you to lay eggs on your bird cards, and the Wetlands allow you to draw cards. As you play birds to an ecosystems, choosing to play your cube there becomes more lucrative. When you take any of the actions that correspond to the ecosystems you place your cube in the left most empty spot on that track. As bird cards fill up the weaker left slots, the basic action will get stronger (for example, the first woodland column generates 1 food while the right most generates 3). Not only will your action be better, you will also benefit from the specific bird cards that you activate as you move your cube left, completing your turn.
The charm of Wingspan lies in its great variety. The base game contains 170 individual cards, all with lovely and unique art depicting each bird. While not every card power is unique, there is still a huge variety to behold.
The game continues with players taking actions until they all run out of cubes. Players score for the goal of the round and move to the next round. After the 4th round the final score is tallied and the player with the highest score is the winner.
Review
The production of Wingspan is simply fantastic. The box and rulebook have a luxury linen finish, and the card stock for all the cards is thick and satisfying. The artwork is breathtaking, and the pastel coloured eggs are sure to give you candy cravings. Everyone I’ve shown this game to has complimented how nice everything is; it is clear that no compromises were made during production.
The game play of Wingspan is simply and straightforward. Everyone has their own goal that they’re working towards and some shared goals to help nudge players in a specific direction. The public goals generally refer to having birds in specific ecosystems, or eggs in certain types of nests, while the private goals are much more varied. Some goals will have you seeking birds with colours in their name, while others want you to amass a flock of birds with a wingspan of 76cm or less. While you only start with one of these goals, some bird cards will give you the chance to obtain more.
The bird cards are the core of Wingspan. The entire game revolves around collecting, playing, and activating the birds on your player board. Often players will find themselves grappling with the desire to activate a certain row of birds, but really needing the effects of a different action.
Over the course of a game of Wingspan you’ll likely play anywhere between 8 – 14 cards into your tableau. With 170 unique bird cards there is a great amount of variability and many paths and engines for you to explore. There is no need to do the same thing over and over again, game after game.
A game of Wingspan starts off slowly, which can be a bit painful. It takes over half of your turns of the first round to get enough food and cards to play just a couple of birds. Luckily a lot of the cards you play will give you a benefit every time they activate, making your subsequent turns more effective and allowing you to reach heights you previously thought impossible.
Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of Wingspan. It’s pleasant to look at, easy to teach and play, and offers a great amount of replayability, but I dislike how much luck is involved. The card deck, while tall and varied makes it difficult to find the specific card you need, and if one of your opponents was lucky enough to pull a food generating crow early in the game, it can be difficult to keep up. I do enjoy the small amount of positive player interaction (some cards will give all players a food, and others will give you a point when a other player takes a certain action), but I wish there were just a little more. Again, this has to do with the size of the deck and just how varied the cards are. While I know I would prefer a more focused tableau building game such as Race for the Galaxy, I recognize that the wide variety is important for the replayability of Wingspan.
But who cares about what I think – my wife absolutely LOVES Wingspan. This is one of the few games she actively asks to play, and any game that inspires a level of enthusiasm from my partner is a game that deserves applause. She loves the feeling of building an engine, she enjoys the fact that no one can throw a wrench into her mechanics and slow down her process, and she particularly enjoys when a satisfying combo can be created.
It’s also worth pointing out that the theme of birds is just plain pleasant. It’s so nice to see lovely illustrations of birds that we could see in our back yard. If Wingspan had a goblin or mountain troll theme, it would be eminently less pleasant. I think this is where Wingspan shines the brightest; it’s a fun, comforting, enjoyable experience and it is completely inoffensive. Wingspan welcomes players into the board game hobby with open wings.
We’ve arrived at my favourite 10 games of all time (as of March 2020). I did not anticipate how long this series would go when I started it over a year ago.
It’s been nice reflecting on my favorite games, verbalizing why I like each one so much. A few of the games descriptions were enough to peak my wife’s interest, which always makes me happy.
I’ve played a lot if games over the last two years, and while this list will have changed quite a bit, I know that these top 10 are firm in their spots. It would take something pretty special to come a dislodge any one of these from the pantheon of my top 10 games of all time.
10 – Glen More II: Chronicles
Glen More by Matthias Cramer was one of the few games that I lamented ‘missing’ out on when I first got into the board game hobby. Our local board game cafe had a copy and I loved it. I really enjoy how the scoring is all based on how well you’re doing in certain aspects compared to the other players, and I love the push and pull of selecting tiles to add to your tableau. Leaping ahead to grab the best tiles is tempting, but then players who take their time have a much better chance of growing a strong whiskey engine. Alas, by the time I became a Board Gamer™ Glen More was out of print
Glen More II: Chronicles takes everything that I enjoyed about the original game, adds some gorgeous art, and throws in a boat load of discovery. While the new clan board is not my favourite addition, I love that there are 8 expansion modules in the box that can be mix and matched for a unique game every time we play.
Glen More II is the game we play on Robbie Burns night after feasting on Haggis and drinking scotch. It plays well at 2 and 4, and is a very satisfying experience every time it hits my table. Because Glen More II is the game we play during a special event, it ends up holding a very special place in my heart.
9 – Scythe
If you’ve been paying attention to my list, you’ll notice that there aren’t very many games that offer direct player combat. Scythe by Jamey Stegmaier is one of the few board games where conflict is the main focus that I really enjoy.
I’ve often said that Scythe is a ‘cold war game’, meaning that the threat of combat is often more important than the combat itself. Military posturing and threats go a long way in this game about farmers and mechs.
While my friends enthuasim for Scythe is infectious, what really cemented Scythe for me was playing through the Rise of Fenris campaign. Playing Scythe over and over again each week and finding new statagies and discovering the emergent storytelling from the gameplay brought me so much joy. I look forward to every game I play of Scythe, and I’ll never forget one game where I managed to win the whole game, while losing every single combat levied against me!
8 – Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
It feels very odd to have a game that I adore so much and have so high on top games of all time list that I’ve never played in person.
That’s right, I’ve never actually played a physical copy of Vlaada Chvátil’s civilization building card game Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization. What I have done is played dozens of games on Board Game Arena, and even more on the excellently designed Android app.
While my win rate is absolutely abysmal (3 victories in 25 games), I enjoy every play. Each game has a feeling of progression and momentum that other games can only hope to emulate. Oddly enough there isn’t a whole lot of discovery in Through the Ages as you’ll see every single card in each game, but there is so much depth to mine. Given enough thought and smarts you absolutely can master this system and prove your superiority over all who dare oppose you.
7 – Race for the Galaxy
Race for the Galaxy by Thomas Lehmann is another Board Game Arena obsession that I’ve almost never played on the table (2 physical plays!). The BGA implementation is slick, fast, and with a very healthy player base it takes no time to find an opponent and games almost never last longer than 10 minutes.
Race for the Galaxy is a tableau building card game, laden with iconography not for the faint of heart. Of course, once you crack the code and understand the logic of the icons, you can ascertain what each card does at a glace, but this can Race for the Galaxy can be intimating for new players.
I find RtfG best at 2 players as it’s quick, exciting, and strategic. If you have a gaming partner who is near the same skill level and enthusaiam as you are, I’d highly recommend picking up Race for the Galaxy and playing a half dozen times in quick succession.
6 – Concordia
Concordia by Mac Gerdts is probably best known for it’s somewhat controversial (read, bad) cover art. While later editions updated the art (although some people still detest it), the game inside has always been a wonder to behold. Concordia was one of the first games to introduce positive player interactions to me. Whenever a player activates a province to produce resources, they activate every building within that province, which could land your opponents with a sudden windfall of goods.
I also really enjoy the action selection mechanic, where you have hand of cards, each one offering you a different action, and as you play the cards to take their action they just sit beside your player board, waiting for their chance to strike again. One of the cards in your hand will be to retreive all your cards, which is almost skipping a turn just to get access to all of your actions again!
We most often play Concordia with the Salsa expansion which includes player powers, one time benefit tiles, and the special wild ‘salt’ resource. There are many maps available as well for those who crave a little variety in their Mediterranean resource trading games.
5 – Istanbul
Istanbul by Rüdiger Dorn is my favourite game that I don’t own. And it’s a bit of a tragedy too because it’s a fast, light, excellent game where players are racing to collect 5 gems from various merchants around the turkish bazaar. Each player begins with their merchant disc and a stack of assistants. As you move around the board you deposit assistants and take actions. Should you return to that location again you can collect your assistant and take the action again. The catch is if you don’t have an assistant to drop off or pick up at a location, you don’t get to take the action!
It always feels odd when the goal of the game is to stop playing as soon as possible, but in the case of Istanbul, the potential for an incredibly short game exists. Filling your cart with 5 rubies first can be done in as little as 18 actions (depending on the tile layout and how much your opponents are getting in your way). I find Istanbul charming and incredibly replayable. I love shuffling the location cards, dealing them out at random, then try to find the most efficient route to claiming those precious rubies.
Two expansions exist for Istanbul, but I don’t find them necessary. Expanding the number of action spaces can make this game tedious to play. The only reason I haven’t priortised getting a copy of Istanbul into my collection is because two of my close friends already own it, and the last thing I want is for our collections to start overlapping. If I ever moved away from this game group however, this is would be one of my first purchases!
4 – Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
The eagle eyed observer may have noticed some glaring omissions. I don’t know why, but I seem to love when Alexander Pfister and Andreas Pelikan work together. I really enjoyed Broom Service and I love Isle of Skye. There’s not many bidding games on my list, because I keep coming back to this one! I adore the variety in scoring objectives (especially after I got the expansions that included even more), I love how simple the base gameplay is, and I even enjoy cursing my friends when they pitch the perfect tile back into the bag.
7 Wonders Duel by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala is the game that my wife and I played together the most. we bought it early in our board game career, when we were coming off the high of discovering that board games could actually be fun and exciting! We had played the 2 player version of 7 Wonders and found it fell flat as we really didn’t enjoy managing a dummy player.
7 Wonders Duel was one of the first games I chose to review, mostly because I love it so much. It’s small enough that it can fit on a coffee table and deep enough that it can withstand dozens of repeated plays. There’s an android app available, and a wealth of players on BoardGameArena if you’re seeking a variety of opponents.
2 – Galaxy Trucker
Galaxy Trucker by Vlaada Chvatil is the game that divides my group. Myself and Bigfoot absolutely adore the chaos and insanity that Galaxy Trucker revels in. Otter is somewhat luke-warm on it and Bear detests this game. He’s proclaimed that he’d rather take up knitting than play Galaxy Trucker.
In Galaxy Trucker players are racing to build the best ship they can, full of guns, storage containers, engines, batteries, and crew cabins. Once constructed, ships are run through a gauntlet of asteroids, space pirates, epidemics, and wide open space. The players to manage to survive and deliver their goods earn credits and at the end of the game anyone with at least one credit is a winner! Of course, some players will win more than others!
The chaos and randomness will either draw players in, or chase them away. Personally, I find myself laughing uproariously when a single stray asteroid cleaves your ship in half, but for some, that pain is too much to bear. There is also a run-away leader problem where often the players who are struggling get punished for struggling. Even with those criticism in mind, Galaxy Trucker lands in the number 2 slot of my top 100 games of all time.
1 – Food Chain Magnate
Food Chain Magnate is the game that excites me the most. Almost the anthesis of Galaxy Trucker in that there is nearly no randomness. I’ve talked in depth about Food Chain Magnate recently, but it’s one that generates the most excitement when sitting down to play.
Every game of Food Chain Magnate feels unique. I can pursue the same strategy over and over and have wildly different results every time. Because Food Chain Magnate is highly interactive and so much of doing well in this game relies on anticipating what your opponents are planning and capitalizing on their actions, simply following the same pattern in every game will quickly lead your opponents to knowing exactly where your weaknesses lie.
I could literally talk about Food Chain Magnate for hours, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just thank you for reading to the end of my top 100 games of all time as of March 2020! It’s been quite a journey actually sitting down and writing my impressions of each of these games. Some I haven’t actually played for a couple years but writing about them renewed my desire to get them back to the table! I hope you had as much fun as I did!
Soon I’ll make a post about some of the more radical changes that have happened in my top 100 list, like how Bullet<3 debuted at number 7!
Number of plays: 2 Designer: Maxime Tardif Release Year: 2023 Mechanics: Tableu building, Card Drafting, Hand Management
A prototype of Earth was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
Earth, designed by Maxime Tardif and published by Inside Up Games, is an engine building, hand management, tableau building game for 1 – 5 players. In this post I’ll be focusing on the multiplayer mode of play, which generally takes between 60 to 90 minutes to complete. Earth is on Kickstarter until March 7th, so if anything I say below interests you, check out their fundraising project here!
And if you’re interested in the solo game, you can find my review of it here!
How to Play
In Earth you are an island, with a distinct and unique ecosystem. Your goal is to plant flora into a 4 x 4 tableau that will grant you special abilities and amass points, as its the player with the most points who gets the distinction of being the best island.
Every player starts with 3 double sided cards, an island, an ecosystem, and a climate. These cards will dictate how many cards and soil you start with, grant you a special ability to use throughout the game, and give you an end game scoring condition that only you can fill.
In the centre of the table four Fauna cards are laid out, each offering a unique goal (such as “have 6 plans with 3 or less cube spots” or “have 4 cards completely full, all their growth and plant tracks complete”). Should you accomplish any of the requests of the fauna cards, you’ll earn victory points. The first player to satisfy each one will earn slightly more than those who come after them. On this board two more ecosystem cards are laid down, offering even more end game scoring conditions that all players can fulfill.
Now the stage is set and everyone draws their initial hand of cards based off their individual island. Some will draw 10 cards and need to compost 4 of them, others will draw 3 cards, but get extra soil to start with. Either way, each player will have an asymmetric starting position with their own benefits and drawbacks
The active player chooses one of the four actions (Planting, Composting, Watering, and Growing). That player gets a major benefit based off that action while all other players get a minor benefit. Then all players trigger any abilities on their cards from top left to bottom right that match the colour of that action. Once resolved, the next player becomes the active player, and the game continues in this fashion until someone has completed their 16 card tableau and triggers the end of the game. Play continues so all players had the same number of turns, then the final scores are tallied.
Points in Earth come from a wide variety of places. Cards in your tableau have a base VP, cards in your event space usually have a negative VP, you get 1 VP per card in your compost pile,1 VP per plant cube in your tableau, 1 VP per growth token, unless the canopy has been placed, in which case you gain the completion bonus instead, Terrain cards in your tableau may offer VPs, the Fauna board offers VPs to those who completed them, and finally, the ecosystem cards will offer VPs as well.
Review
Earth is a rare game where the player interactions aren’t negative; you’re not trying to cut your opponents down or steal their resources to gain a better position for yourself. Instead, there’s a beneficial relationship here. When you choose an action all the other players gain a fraction of the benefit you received, and everyone gets to trigger any cards of that colour.
With over 360 unique cards in the main plant deck, there’s no real way to hate draft or otherwise stifle your opponents, other than capitalize on their weaker positions. If you see they’re low on soil, it may be in your interest to choose the Plant action as they may not be able to fully utilize the benefit. Likewise, if you notice that both your opponents are full on cubes but you aren’t, consider taking the action that gives everyone cubes and laugh as they groan!
You won’t get far in Earth if you’re playing this way however. The goal is to grow the best ecosystem you can, and that is only achieved when you can create and maintain a well balanced engine. Having too many cards that produce cubes is a detriment when you’ve reached your capacity. I’ve really enjoyed playing cards into my tableau that create a self-sustaining ecosystem; the first card earns me a soil, the second card let’s me compost a card from my hand. The third card lets me pick up a card from the deck, and my fourth card discards a soil and a compost to earn 2 cubes and 1 growth. It’s so satisfying when you can align your abilities to create the perfect perpetual motion machine.
Earth has been billed as Terraforming Mars mixed with Wingspan. While it has much more in common with the latter, I can see the comparisons to both. Like Wingspan, you have 4 actions to choose from on your turn, and the action you take dictates which aspects of your engine will trigger. It also features point scoring cards based on various features (like 3pts per plant with a colour in its name) which Earth does its very best to inform players of the likely-hood of obtaining cards by including how many cards in the deck include that feature. I’m curious as to how that would change with future expansions, if diluting the deck would modify those odds, or if every expansion that adds cards to the Plant desk will need to maintain the appropriate ratios of cards.
Also like Wingspan the cards of your engine trigger in a specific order, making where and when you place them important. While some will agonize over the loss of efficiency when you’re forced to put a card that scores points based on being adjacent to other cards along the edge, it absolutely does cut down on some analysis paralysis. Considering you’ll be triggering the abilities on your cards on every players turn, it’s nice that you can just start from the top left and go to the bottom right, collecting and converting resources. This step can happen simultaneously and helps cut down on the play time.
While the comparisons to other games like Wingspan are apt, another mechanic I want to touch on is the benefits players give to each other on their turns. Harkening back to games like Puerto Rico or Race for the Galaxy, when the active player picks an action they get a major benefit while all the other players get a minor benefit. This system manages to keep all the players at the table involved, as their actions directly affect and benefit you. It’s wonderful when you’re agonizing over your cards trying to figure out which two you’ll want to plant but being constrained by your low soil supply, then the player before you takes an action that pours soil onto your player board. I really enjoy this positive player interaction and think it’s one of the more interesting parts of this design.
Earth has been fun to discover. I love the slight amount of asymmetry from the start and more as each player grows their engine in a different direction. I particularly enjoyed my friends as all the pieces started to fall into place. When deciding on their first hand of cards and exclaiming “oh! OH! But then… ooooohhh!”, their excitement was contagious. if you’ve enjoyed games like Wingspan or Terraforming Mars in the past, I’m willing to bet that you’ll enjoy Earth. Even if you don’t, at the very least you’ll get to enjoy some really lovely nature photography and learn about some fascinating plants. Like how cool the bleeding tooth fungus looks!
If you’re in the market for a medium weight engine builder that’s high in discovery and low in direct conflict, Earth will not disappoint!
Designer: Lance Hill Artists: Matthew Ebisch Release Year: 2022 Mechanics: Card drafting, set collection
A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
Introduction
OT Fantasy Draft is a up-coming card drafting and set collection game by Lance Hill, published by Funhill Games. In OT Fantasy Draft you’re trying to assemble the very best team of Old Testament characters, all of whom will offer a wide variety of ways to score points and other special abilities.
How to Play
The box of OT Fantasy Draft contains only a single deck of 54 cards, and a paper pad of score sheets. To begin, shuffle the entire deck and deal everyone two cards. Each player returns one card to the bottom of the desk, and keeps the other one secret. Deal out 5 cards to the centre of the table and decide who is going first.
The first player simply takes one card from the draft line and places it in front of them. They then refill the draft line so that it has 5 cards for the next player. Once everyone has taken a turn the whole draft line is discarded and refilled with 5 new cards. The player who went last in the previous round goes first in the subsequent round.
Round and round players take turns pulling players, things, and locations into their team, hoping to be the player with the most points at the end of the game.
The trick of the game is that every card has rules or effects that will affect other cards in your draft line. Samson for instance will destroy Grain, Lion, Philistia, and Temple, but give you points for each card that Samson destroys. Deborah on the other hand doubles the total points of all drafted women. The key is to assemble a team that synergizes well to score the most points.
Review
OT Fantasy Draft is a quick and fun card game. The rules are light and while it’s dead simple to play (literally pick a card on your turn. That’s it), the challenge lies in assembling the best lineup, which may be difficult if you find a man eating lion on your team. Seeing as OT Fantasy Draft is just 54 cards (and a paper score pad), this game is perfect for travelling. As long as you have a place where you can lay out 5 cards for the draft line, you could play standing up, holding the rest of the cards in your hands. Although for optimum comfort I do recommend a table and chair.
I’ve had odd successes and failures with pitching OT Fantasy Draft to players. The non-religious recoil and dismiss the game entirely, I’m sure no doubt due to the perception that Christian themed media is inherently poor quality and exists only to proselytize to its audience.
On the other hand, playing OT Fantasy Draft with some friends of faith, we had a ball. Laughing at the connections and interactions of the cards, like Abraham, who destroys Issac or Job, who destroys all things. The joy came from our shared knowledge and the callbacks to the classic stories out of The Bible.
I was reminded of the first time I played the Battlestar Galactica board game (before I watched the show) and my friends spent the whole game shouting quotes at each other and referencing events from the show that I just didn’t get. It was a fine experience, but without that cultural context most of the flavour was lost. I can only imagine all the references and interactions of OT Fantasy Draft would feel arbitrary to someone who hasn’t done their required reading.
It’s nearly impossible to separate OT Fantasy Draft from another drafting game, Fantasy Realms by Bruce Glassco. Both games have decks full of unique cards with varied scoring capabilities and interactions between the cards in your hand. Where Fantasy Realms has a generic fantasy theme OT Fantasy Draft employs characters, locations, and items from the Old Testament. If you’ve played Fantasy Realms before, the complex interactions of opposing cards in your draft line will feel very familiar.
While I’m not the biggest fan of the gridiron background on all the Location cards, I do like the logo style artwork on all the items, and all the human characters in various football poses, like Moses catching a dove like a wide receiver, or Saul, absolutely dunking on another player. I imagine those who reside in the Venn diagram of Christians, football fans and board game aficionados will be absolutely stoked with this product.
If you have a group of friends who know the Old Testament Bible stories, I’d recommend OT Fantasy Draft. The familiar theme and characters can be a useful bridge for someone who many be intimated by modern games. Experienced players will have an edge over new players, but I doubt that will be a concern for many people. With games so short it’s easy to just reshuffle the deck and play again and being so portable I reckon that you could get 3 or 4 games played in the pews during a Sunday morning service. Not that you should, mind you.
Number of plays: 2 Designer: Maxime Tardif Release Year: 2023 Mechanics: Tableu building, Card Drafting, Hand Management
A prototype of Earth was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
Earth, designed by Maxime Tardif and published by Inside Up Games, is an engine building, hand management, tableau building game for 1 – 5 players. In this post I’ll be focusing on the solo mode of play, which takes about an hour to complete. Earth is currently on Kickstarter so if anything I say below interests you, check out their fundraising project here!
How to play
In the solo game of Earth you are pitted against an AI named Gaia who is controlled by a small deck of 6 cards. The setup is mostly the same as the multiplayer game; shuffle the (massive) deck of 360 unique cards, then draw an island, climate, and ecosystem card, which will form your asymmetric starting powers and personal end game victory point goals. These cards are double sided to offer plenty of variety. Four Fauna cards are laid out on the common central board, and two public ecosystem cards give all players further victory points to work towards. After that, you’re ready to start.
On your turn you pick one of the four available actions (Planting, Composting, Watering, and Growing). After taking the benefit the action affords, you activate any cards that have played that contain the same colour as the action you just took. Then Gaia gets a small benefit based on that action.
For Gaia’s turn, draw the top card from her deck and follow the instructions. Most cards will have you adding points to her board while simultaneously giving you a small benefit and activating all the cards in your tableau of a specific colour. A large part of the game is ensuring you’re ready to capitalize on whatever benefit Gaia offers you.
Back and forth you and Gaia play until either you have 16 cards (in a 4 x 4 grid) in your personal tableau or Gaia plays all 6 of her cards twice. Whoever amasses the highest score is the winner.
Review
Earth was a fast game to learn and play. I found it helpful to know some of the design inspirations behind the systems (it was sold to me as cross between Terraforming Mars and Wingspan), but what I didn’t know about was the Puerto Rico-esque action following mechanism where the active player gets to choose an action and gets a big benefit while all the other players at the table get a small benefit. This interaction is simulated well in the solo game, as Gaia will trigger many of your abilities. Knowing what cards still remain in her deck is akin to looking over at another player and estimating which of the available actions they’ll take on.
While it was fairly simple to grasp the rules, I was somewhat overwhelmed with information when I started my first game. Trying to choose the Island card that I would use, and which 2 of the 10 cards in my hand to compost was a bit much. Every plant card has around 7 different features to consider (cost, base points, ecosystems, plant type, tree size, plant cube spots, and potential bonus action), so parsing 10 cards right at the start can be a bit much. In later plays, the shock was nowhere near as bad as I had a deeper understanding of how the mechanics fit together and how to quickly scan the cards for the information I needed.
Designer Maxime Tardif has posted an extensive designer diary talking about how they balanced the cards in Earth (which you can read here). While the value of each card is quite variable based on the goals of each game and other cards that it may interact with, you can be comforted by the thought that even if you throw away a good card, the rest you keep should be somewhat balanced.
Earth has a massive amount of variability ensuring that no two games you play will be identical. With 360 unique plant cards, 32 double-sided ecosystem cards, 23 double-sided Fauna, 10 double-sided Island and Climate cards, every game will have you exploring something new. In one game I focused on building a grove of berry bushes, with each one giving benefits to my other bush plants, while in another game I focused on growing all the trees on my cards to their full height. There’s no obvious single path to victory. Instead, players who are able survey the situation and capitalize on it the most effectively will be rewarded.
I enjoyed my solo plays of Earth. It was relaxing and challenging at the same time. I love the feeling of building an engine, particularly when you happen to get all the right pieces in place and your one action cascades into mountains of points. The AI opponent has four difficulty levels to choose from, so you can make adjustments if you find yourself absolutely trouncing her. The harder difficulties don’t drastically impact how Gaia plays, just how many points she accrues and how much more benefits she earns from each of your actions. I found the Medium difficulty to be the sweet-spot where I had fun and could narrowly eke out a win. I keep looking at the harder difficulties but shying away, waiting for the day where I’m in the mood to get absolutely wrecked by Gaia.
I have to admit that I don’t think there’s too much of a difference between having a dummy player accruing points and a point goal to work toward, but it feels more engaging to see Gaia’s board grow alongside your own. I enjoy the feeling of pressure as I see the mess of cubes and trees on Gaia’s board and only being able to guess at just how many points she has and how in the world am I going to surpass her. Sometimes I’d find myself second guessing which action I should take because the benefit I would be providing to Gaia would vastly outweigh the points I would gain.
While the copy of Earth I received from Inside Up Games is a prototype so none of the components are final, I found the production charming. They chose to use hundreds of breathtakingly gorgeous photographs on the cards. I love the height of the tiny trees as they grow off the table (somewhat reminiscent of Takenoko), but take care! I shudder to think about the calamity the would be caused by carelessly bumping the table and knocking everything askew. I’ve enjoyed following the crowdfunding campaign as they reveal more about the final compontents.
One of the features that I’m really looking forward to is the neoprene play mats. Neoprene play mats isn’t something that’s really tempted me before, but I love the gorgeous imagery on these mats, and having a mat to lay your 4 x 4 tableau of cards onto would be a very nice addition.
Earth is a looker, the mechanics are fun and interesting, and it’s simultaneously relaxing and engaging. I enjoy the different difficulty levels that let me choose if I want to push myself to new heights or if I just want to wind down at the end of the day. I’d love to see Gaia get some more decks that could simulate different priorities or change how she acts in some way, but as it stands, Earth is a quality game that I’m excited to explore further.
