Wendake

EvEvanstar2,5

The game has four score criteria tracks that get paired at random at the start of the game. At the end of the game your actual score is your lowest in each of the two sets. One the four criteria comes from buying techs which give special ongoing abilities that you pretty much have to buy. Whichever other criteria pairs with this is mandatory to focus on. Generally this seems like a do everything evenly game and not a specialize game if you just look at the scoring. The game mechanisms reward specialization however which makes for a bit of a disconnect. The way you resolve your actions is by activating an action tile in a 3x3 grid on your board. All further turns you have to activate tiles so that by the end of three turns you've made a straight line across your board. The tiles can have multiple effects as the game goes on adding to the long downtime between turns. At the end of the round the tiles you used flip over and become an uninspired rest action that give you rest track points based on how many guys are uselessly sitting at home. Then you push out the bottom 3 tiles, choose one to stop using, then choose a new one from a fliplucky display; shuffle it with your 2 and put them at the top of your grid. There's a lot of downtime as players AP their tile choice since each tile can do several things and the combinations appear unique. Generally your actions produce goods from the board, which you need different sets of to get the technology tiles. Your ability to produce goods depends on how hard other players punch you. When a player gets movement points they can move their soldiers around the board. The soldiers can then stand guard, or they can lay down on an empty space becoming a production spot, or they can punch someone out of a production spot unless that spot is guarded. If the opponent has a guard then your attackers and the guards die uselessly for both players at a 1:1 ratio. This means the game isn't punchy at all until all the spaces fill up then suddenly it's super punchy. Attacking is pretty much universally bad, and in our game players did it more because they were out of new guys to spawn and or they had movement points they didn't have a way to usefully spend, than out of some sense of punching the leader. So track 1 is get techs. Everyone does that. Track 2 is have the most military in x spots; this is very dependant on not getting punched. Track 3 is take the rest action and don't have guys on the board, which is super uncompelling but something the game expects you to do. Track 4 is a tacked on flip luck driven set collection card thing. The game also comes with variable player powers that are pretty minor overall. It all works out to feel like a similar game to; but not nearly as good as scythe? The downtime with 4 players is unbearable. I wound up falling into a dumb trap of activating tiles in a straight line horizontally, which meant that before long I had my three actions that did things on the top row, and then below that two rows of all rest actions. I really thought I'd like this a lot more, but I have to say it's a pass for me. :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :nostar: Clever or interesting mechanisms :nostar: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :star: Multiple plays stay interesting :star: Low or mitigatable luck elements :star::nostar::nostar::nostar::nostar: Raw enjoyment

Benjamín Amorínstar8,0

Awesome eurogame that flies under the radar of the community and it must be put under the focus because it's brilliant. Great 3x3 mechanic of worker placement selection, lots of ways to do points, very original.