Ecos: First Continent

EvEvanstar4,6

In this game players get an asymmetrical deck of cards, with a few starting in play in front of them. The active player draws tiles one at a time from a bag. The tiles each have a symbol on them, and when drawn, each player gets to put a cube on an instance of that symbol on one of their cards. When a card gets full of cubes, that player pauses the game to resolve the effect of their cards. Over time, players build out a central landscape of hexes, animals and features, and try to play and use cards that generate points off of that game state. The game is overall enjoyable. The engine/combo building is pretty satisfying. Each starting setup has a few different directions you can push into, and there are 6 different sets to explore, so there's decent variability. Particularly as over the course of the game you get to add more cards to your hand from a communal draw pile. The luck isn't bad. The game is very clear about the tile spread in the bag, and if a symbol is drawn that you can't use you get the effect of a pass action that actually helps you build your engine. The animal tiles are a little difficult to read from a graphic design perspective. Each type can only live on certain terrains, and it looks like that icon didn't make it clearly inside the punch board size. Since you are building a common central area, players will much with each other's plans unknowingly a lot, which can be minorly unsatisfying. This is also a game that wants 3, maybe 4 players. More than that and the downtime becomes too large and it outstays it's welcome. ☆ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★★☆☆ Raw enjoyment