Automania

EvEvanstar5,9

In this game, you place workers on the edge of a tile grid, take a tile, and the resolve the action on the board. Most of these actions produce a car that's given a star rating according to the upgrade tiles along the path the car follows on your player board. The star value determines which boat spot the car is placed on. At the end of the round, the boat spots convert to dollars and points, with the players who had the highest value selecting their spots first. The game also has objective cards that reward you extra points for completing certain types of cars with certain upgrades. As the game progresses, the tiles get better, and the star value of the demands shifts. It's a very cute game that hums along the whole way as players try to make the most efficient use of their workers and maximize their efficiency between tiles and cards. The game could absolutely use some dice so that players could easily tell what the star value of producing a car is at any moment, both for your own brain's sake at having to re-calc everything, and so that you could see when another player is about to block you from taking the spot you want, but that's a minor quibble. ★ 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