Council of 4

GaGarfieldstar8,0

#39 Some very nice mechanics in it. [c] Theme: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Not much in it --> Gameplay: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Good amount of decisions to make --> Interaction: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Not much, but you have to take care what the others are planning --> Artwork: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Appealing --> Luck: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Card drawing... --> Strategy: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Yes --> Components: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Nice miniatures --> Play duration: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good --> Easy to teach: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Rules quality: <!-- size 7]not yet read --> Setup time: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> No downtime: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Replay value: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Random tile placement? --> [/c]

EvEvanstar4,6

In this game, players are trying to gather points by putting their houses in every spot on the board that matches a region or a color of house. This is done through buying permit tiles, which require discarding sets of cards with colors matching the meeples sitting on the council area of that board section. One of the actions in the game lets you alter one meeple in a section, so the card draw luck element of the game is at least partially player action driven. The best element of this game is that when you use your action to put down a house in a city you have a permit for, you activate the city's special bonus and then also each other city bonus in a connected chain of cities. This makes for some very compelling engine building, as you are also rewarded for being the first to get cities in all the cities of a certain color or board area. The cards are a very limited resource, as you only get one new card each turn, and you might not wind up drawing what you need. There can be stretches of the game where no player has a color combination in their hand to make a useful move, and it's possible if multiple players want to effect a single council area for them to blind block each other through their color manipulations. This doesn't feel great. It's possible to mitigate this through getting houses into cities with card draw bonuses early, so it's not the worst thing in the world, but this isn't always obvious to new players, which can lead to a negative experience, as they feel like they are forced to waste turn after turn manipulating the councils, and then maybe not drawing any cards they need. ★ 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 ★☆:Nostar:☆☆ Raw enjoyment