Here's a few Board Game Highlights from this week:
Zhanguo: The First Empire
Zhanguo: The First Empire is a 1-4 player mid-heavy Euro style game set in China, building palaces, assigning governors and building walls. It has a combination of a number of mechanics: Action Selection, tableau building and area control.
How does Zhanguo: The First Empire Play?
There are five rounds of six turns, each turn players will play one of the six cards in their hand. Players can place a card under one of the regions on their player board or can choose one of six actions which will typically gather or spend resources to advance their own strategy.
The interesting part of this is that the cards are multi-use and are numbered, playing a higher or lower numbers than the previous player can then trigger extra abilities from the cards under the regions on their player boards, there are three decks of numbered cards, players will draw two of each at the start of each round and can see a rough bracket of what cards players are holding to plan their actions.
How do you score points in Zhanguo: The First Empire?
There are lot of different methods to score in this game, some actions will typically score as you play but a number of others will score at the end of the game. The wall sections score of variety of multipliers, some of which are based on types of cards played under your board. Governors score majorities in each region and there is a 3x3 grid of objectives known as the mausoleum which score extra bonuses if players complete rows and/or columns.
This is a game that has slipped under the radar a little but I was glad to be invited to play this game and I'm looking forward to playing again!
In the Footsteps of Darwin
In the Footsteps of Darwin is a light, gateway game that can play with up to 5 players in just 45 minutes!
How does In the Footsteps of Darwin Play?
Players will have 12 turns to select animal based tiles to add to their collection, each time choosing a tile that is in the same row or column as 'The Beagle.' The players will aim to select tiles that match their own personal objective and can gain more objectives by stacking on top of a tile type they already possess. Alternatively, they may aim for a greater spread of tiles as completing a row or column gains points for creating a publication.
My wife loves this game (I do too!) and it featured in out Top 5 list. This week we played just two player and she beat me 45-44 and as you can see below the artwork is beautiful (which fits on the coffee table!) and is excellent to introduce new people into board games.
Caldera Park
Caldera Park is the sequel to Savannah Park for 1-4 players and plays in 60-90 minutes, ideal for new gamers.
How does Caldera Park Play?
Players have five stacks of seven tiles, (randomised but identical) each round players take turns to select an animal and a terrain type, then all players must, if they can use the selected criteria to place a tile in their park, but be careful each round one gray tile is revealed which can give negative effects.
Players are aiming to create point scoring multipliers of animal types multiplied by the number of watering holes that animal has access too. Points are also scored for completely covering particular terrain types. Most points wins!
This was my first time playing Caldera Park and I'd be happy to play again. We also had two new players at our local club, so hopefully they will be back!
