Yes, it’s as adorable as it sounds, and it’s a lot of fun.

Moley moley moley

The concept is simple. Each player starts with a sheet of paper with a garden on it divided into a grid. All over that garden are stones, flowers, coins, mounds of dirt, and other bits and pieces. Your mole has a starting point at the middle of the garden and has to dig tunnels around underground to collect the things littered around it. The tunnels you dig all have a shape, and that shape is dictated by the card drawn from the top of the pile. Each shape has a name based on the shape it describes, and they’re well-observed and funny.

As with many games with Tetronimo-type shapes, you can flip and rotate the shape as you see fit, as long as it retains the same overall shape. The catch comes with how you place the next shape, and it’s probably the hardest concept to get across to new players. Each new shape can only share one edge with the existing tunnels. Sounds simple, right? In reality, it’s a little more complicated. It means your new square shape can’t place both blocks along a straight tunnel, because that’s two edges/faces. The same goes with trying to add a tunnel to a corner.

Take that First Aid shape in the image above. Tunnels can only ever join on the ends of the arms of the cross, which makes it a more difficult shape to fit than you might expect. It’s not really a ‘tetris’ game in the same way as something like Patchwork, Silver & Gold, or even A Feast For Odin is because for most of the game, you’ve got to leave spaces, rather than trying to fill them all. Once you understand that, it’s fine, there’s just a little learning curve for younger (and older) players.

Hip hip hooray, for Superworm!

Ot not, as it goes, as the worms in Molehill Meadows are all there to be eaten. Their sacrifice will not have been in vain, however, because eating worms allows you to charge up your various worm powers. Every worm eaten lets you tick off a box next to one of the powers, and once a power is full you can expend them for bonus effects. Things like drawing the next shape twice, allowing you to touch more than one face with the next tunnel, or even drawing your own, additional tunnels in a shape you choose.

Those of you looking for something a bit more challenging in your games will enjoy these powers, especially when it comes to combining them. Let’s take making connections as an example. If you can connect the pairs of flowers, ants, or streams across the map there’s a potential for big bonus points. It’s not always easy to do, but it becomes easier if you employ some cunning mole strategy. Invest your worms in the ‘draw the next tunnel twice’ and ‘dig an additional 6 square tunnel’ powers, and then use them both at once and bam! All of a sudden you’ve made a 12 square passage right across the map.

The strategy doesn’t end there. At the start of each game, a pair of goal cards are chosen at random which gives you something to aim for. Those yellow flowers on the sheet aren’t worth anything usually, but get a goal card which rewards them and all of a sudden you’re digging tunnels north-west to try to get them all. It’s another little thing which adds some longevity to the game and stops it from getting stale too quickly.

Final thoughts

Molehill Meadows is super cute and a lot of fun. If you like flip-and-write games, you’ll love it. It’s as simple as that. I own a ton of this style of game, so I knew I was likely to enjoy it, and I wasn’t wrong. If you’ve ever played and enjoyed Silver & Gold, Aquamarine, Pioneer Rails, Demeter, Patchwork Doodle, Cartographers, or The Guild of Merchant Explorers, you’re going to enjoy it. Another very cool fact is that the game is being produced in an eco-factory in Europe with no plastic being used. The cellophane equivalent used on the box and cards is bio-degradable. That’s a huge deal and a really good example how how it can be done if publishers are willing to spend the money.

Other than the ‘tunnels may only touch one face’ rule, the only thing I found which caused any kind of problem was with some of the more complicated shapes. Befuddled and Cloud in particular. They’re made of more than four squares, so the geometric awareness needed to rotate and/or mirror the shapes can be confusing for children (and some adults) to get their head around. This is a friendly, fun game though, so there’s no reason not to help one another out.

I’m delighted to see another new game from Unfringed, and also to see something in a completely different style to Zuuli. It’s just the kind of thing we need more of, and we’re very lucky to be getting it from not only Chris & co, but also the folks at Dranda Games, Postmark Games, and other indie studios. Long may it continue. At around £20 it’s very easy for me to recommend Molehill Meadows. Go back yourself a copy now on Gamefound.

Preview copy kindly provided by Unfringed. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Molehill Meadows (2024)

Design: Chris Priscott
Publisher: Unfringed
Art: Clemency Bunn
Players: 1-99
Playing time: 20 mins

The post Molehill Meadows Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

How do you annoy Lady Gaga?

Pioneer Rails is another flip-and-write which offers you loads of things to do, knowing full well that you can’t possibly do all of them. Your railways start out in one of the four quarters of the map, with each associated with a suit from a standard deck of cards. When you pick one of the three cards on offer, the suit of that card lets you extend that railway by three lines. Different hexes give different benefits if they have a feature, and each has a number. The number tells you how many edges of the hex you need to draw around, so while a mine only takes one edge to get you some gold, banking that gold at a… well, a bank. A bank that needs four edges of a bank surrounded. Plotting routes to get all the stuff you want is tricky, because temptation lies along the edge of every hex.

I mentioned poker hands earlier, and that’s one of my favourite parts of Pioneer Rails. The cards on offer each round represent the 10 – Ace range of standard playing cards. When you choose a card for its suit, to grow your rail networks, you also write the card’s value in the little row of boxes at the bottom of the sheet. The goal of these boxes is to create poker hands, which are worth points during each of the interim scoring phases. It’s a really interesting twist to most flip-and-writes, and it makes the choice of which card to take each round extra tricky. It’s also a really thematic touch, which brings to mind a hundred different westerns with grizzled cowboys playing poker in saloons.

If at first you don’t succeed

I don’t get as much time to play games as I’d like. While a lot of that is down to having a family and a full-time job, I also have the self-imposed pressure of having a backlog of games to write about. Sometimes that means that no sooner have I finished playing a game, than I’m packing it up, unboxing another and learning that one. Pioneer Rails scuppered that workstream by having an abundance of that ‘one more game’ pull. I find myself going back to try another strategy or another combination of things. It’s got the same draw for me as the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at a Premier Inn. High praise indeed!

By far the trickiest concept to grasp in the game is the way Cattle Ranches work. You score them by isolating them in such a way that you can trace a contiguous line of hexes to another ranch, with rails, mountains and rivers acting as barriers. It sounds really easy when you see it written like that, but there’s an odd mental disconnect when it comes to working it out. I think it’s partially to do with the fact that your focus during the game is on drawing lines between the hexes to accomplish everything, but to score the ranches you’re looking at the hexes, rather than the gaps. It’s not a major issue, and it’s one that may be a non-issue by the time it goes to print. This is just to let you know, if you do struggle with it, you’re not alone, and after a single play, you’ll have it.

Final thoughts

The hardest thing when it comes to reviewing verb-and-write games is conveying what makes them so much fun. I could span this review out to 2,000 words explaining every last action and intricacy, but that would be doing it a disservice. A game so quick and easy to both learn and play deserves a review of equal brevity and function. The feeling of ownership that every little line you draw bestows on your sheet is fantastic. The little rail networks are yours and yours alone, and despite a very small set of variables in terms of which actions you take on your turn, every player’s sheet will end up very different to the others.

If you’ve played any of the Postmark Games catalogue in the past, especially Voyages, you’ll immediately recognise Matt’s hand in the design of Pioneer Rails. It doesn’t feel like a rip-off at all, just a feeling a familiarity which goes in its favour, as Voyages is awesome. The artwork and presentation throughout is great, thanks to Inkgolem’s brushstrokes. The sheets are bright and colourful, and the playing cards are especially gorgeous. I believe there’s going to be a bonus in the Kickstarter campaign to get a full set of playing cards in the same style, and I’d be inclined to make sure I have them. That’s not Dranda asking me to push them, I just think they’re beautiful.

Pioneer Rails will have a pledge for the two different map sheets, and mini-expansions, for £24. For this price, for a game as much fun as Pioneer Rails is, I think you’d have to try hard to think of a reason to not back it. It’s fun, fast, and easy to learn. Admittedly the train part of it feels very abstracted – you only ever draw lines – but it doesn’t matter. Grab a pack of strong felt-tip pens, tip your stetson, and get your Old West railway on. Great stuff, flip-and-write fans rejoice, you’re going to love it! The Kickstarter campaign begins on the 17th April 2023.

Preview copy kindly provided by Dranda Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own. All rules, artwork and components subject to change.

Pioneer Rails (2023)

Designers: Jeffrey D. Allers, Matthew Dunstan
Publisher: Dranda Games
Art: Javier Inkgolem
Players: 1-100
Playing time: 30-45 mins

The post Pioneer Rails Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

The what of what now?

I’ve played The Guild of Merchant Explorers a lot of times now, and I’m still no closer to knowing what such a guild is. It feels like someone has handed an AI writer a list of board game hot words and that’s what it came up with. Regardless, each of the players is a merchant-slash-explorer tasked with venturing forth and reestablishing contact with the various cities in the realm, opening trade routes, and discovering villages which may have sprung up since the last time someone went geocaching there.

In practice it’s a pretty simple game, like many of the best games are. In each turn a card is flipped over showing a terrain type, and each player places cubes on the board in hexes which match that terrain type. Every time you place a cube, it’s got to be adjacent to an existing cube, your capital, or a village you found in a previous round. If you completely cover a region of a terrain type, you get to place a little village on one of the hexes – huzzah!

Now, there might be some of you reading this thinking “reveal a terrain type, place cubes on hexes, make routes between cities – this is a Kingdom Builder rip-off!” It’s undeniable that there are plenty of similarities, and I made the comparison myself in social media posts when I was playing the game. However, there are a few big differences between the games, and these differences create an experience which feels different to Donald X. Vaccarino’s classic.

“You can go your own way”

Thank me for the Fleetwood Mac earworm later. The biggest difference between The Guild of Merchant Explorers and that other Kingdom game is that each player has their own map board. I say board, it’s a player sheet, just like those in The Castles of Burgundy (review here) and Ark Nova (review here). Everybody starts with the same map (of the four available in the box), and starts from the same space. Everybody reacts to the same terrain (explore) cards as they’re revealed, and places their cubes at the same time. It sounds like a recipe for several identical player sheets at the end of the game, but courses very quickly diverge.

During the game you get opportunities to draw Investigation cards, which act as more powerful versions of the explore cards. Each player ends up with three different investigation cards which get activated several times during the course of the game. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those pictures of spiders’ webs when they’ve been given psychoactive drugs, but the investigations have a similar effect on the players’ expeditions across the map.

Ultimately you’re trying to make lots of money. You’re a part of the guild of MERCHANT explorers, after all. Connecting two cities earns you dollarbucks, as does discovering villages and completing the shared end-of-game goals. There are ruins around the coasts to discover treasure in, discovery towers which can earn you big bonuses if you manage to reach them all, and there are some other interesting tweaks in some of the maps to keep things fresh.

Final thoughts

This isn’t the longest review I’ll ever write, but it doesn’t need to be. The Guild of Merchant Explorers is a lightweight game with a simple ruleset, which can be played in 30-45 minutes, tops. This isn’t a criticism, it’s the opposite. As much as I love heavy, complex games, I enjoy clever, lighter games just as much, and this is a great example of one. The solo mode is great too, and forces you to actively work towards the goal cards in a specific order.

The biggest issue I have with the game is the price. I make a point of not mentioning the price of a game unless it’s exceptionally high or low, and in my opinion, the ~£40 asking price for The Guild of Merchant Explorers is too high. For a light game which doesn’t even have player boards – just sheets – it feels like too much. Yes, the discovery tower models are cool, but if you take them out all you’re left with is basically a deck of small cards, a bag of wooden cubes, and a few punchboards of tokens. It didn’t need to be in a Kallax-size box, but competition for shelf presence is often king.

Grumble aside, there’s no denying that The Guild of Merchant Explorers is a great game. Matt and Brett keep turning out gold-standard game designs, and this is another one to add to their CV. If you’re looking for a flip-and-write that’s a little more meaty, I still rank Hadrian’s Wall (review here) as the best you can buy, but if you want something lighter, this is a fantastic choice. Nothing has really scratched that Kingdom Builder itch for me for years, and The Guild of Merchant Explorers does it with enough of a twist to make it feel fresh and interesting.

Review copy kindly provided by AEG. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

You can buy this game from my retail partner, Kienda. Remember to sign-up for your account at kienda.co.uk/punchboard for a 5% discount on your first order of £60 or more.

If you enjoyed this review and would like to read more like this, consider supporting the site by joining my monthly membership at Kofi. It starts from £1 per month, offers member benefits, and lets me know you’re enjoying what I’m doing.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers (2022)

Designers: Matthew Dunstan, Brett J Gilbert
Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group
Art: Gerralt Landman
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 30-45 mins

The post The Guild of Merchant Explorers Review appeared first on Punchboard.

You’re on a shuttle, heading from Ganymede (one of Jupiter’s moons) to one of the moons of a red dwarf called Demeter. You’re heading there because they’re extremely similar to Earth, and as luck would have it, they’ve discovered dinosaurs on one of the moons.

Dinosaurs. In. Space.

I could leave the review there and be pretty happy, to be honest. As luck would have it though, Demeter is a great game.

Welcome, to Jove-assic Park

For all this talk of space, it’s dinosaurs all the way from hereon in. Every round of the game sees one card from all five decks flipped face-up, and all players choose which one they want to use. The top half of a card tells you to colour something in, be that a box or a bit of a dinosaur (more on that in a bit), and the bottom half lets you choose one of the tracks to advance on.

If you’ve ever played a something-and-write game with a little bit of depth to it, you can probably already guess that there’s no way you can manage to do everything in one game. Upgrading the blue track, for example, means that each time you take a scientist action, you get an additional action point for each of the blue boxes you’ve coloured. If you don’t want to min-max, you can go for a bit of everything, and get rewarded by completing columns in the tracks, which give you different bonuses.

Much like Hadrian’s Wall, my favourite flip and write ever, (read the review here, it’s great), your first ten, twenty, or even thirty plays of Demeter can be treated like a sandbox. You can try a different strategy every time you play, and that’s where half the fun comes from. The other half comes from the fact that you’re COLOURING-IN DINOSAURS. I can’t over-emphasise how important this tiny, ridiculous detail is to me. If you take my advice, you’ll get a set of colouring pencils to make your dinos completely awesome.

Getting started

The hardest part of Demeter is teaching the game to people. There’s a bit of theme there, and the tracks kinda tie together, but it’s still a bit loose. It’s not so loose as to be totally abstract, like Ganz Schön Clever (review here), but not intuitive either. Let’s take the blue and red actions as an example.

Blue actions are scientists, and red are for viewing platforms. You need to build enough viewing platforms for each dinosaur area, to allow you to colour-in the scientists in those areas. If you think about it, the idea of better viewing platforms allowing more scientists to to more study makes sense, but it’s very difficult to convey in terms of the game’s mechanisms.

When you play the game, all of that theme goes out the window anyway, and you’re just playing with the various cogs and gears the game drops in front of you, it just means that the first teach can be a bit cumbersome. There’s a lot going on, and a lot of options. Understanding the dependencies between the coloured actions is important. All of that said, I taught my ten-year-old to play it, and once he got the idea, he was well away. It’s just something worth bearing in mind, as it can sour that first exposure for non-gamers.

Autumn & Winter Expansion

The Autumn & Winter expansion for Demeter adds a few new dino tiles, and two new pads to play on. They don’t change the game massively, but they do mix things up in ways that feel fresh if you’ve burned-out on the base game.

Autumn is largely the same as the base game of Demeter, with a couple of important differences. The research track at the top of your sheet now has three starting points instead of one, so you can heavily weigh your research actions towards a particular bonus tile, without having to use a lot of actions to snake your way through to them. The other main differences are the ways that some of the dinosaur species are scored. Changes to things like the Pterodactyl and Gallimimus are enough to make you rethink the way you approach the game.

The most interesting new thing that Autumn brings are the replacement dinosaur tiles, which now have the names of the species on, and a whole new breed that you need for Winter.

Winter changes more about the game than Autumn does. First up, you can now research Stegosaurus, which is great for dinosaur fans, because more dinos is always better – fact. The other big difference is in the action cards used for the game. In a standard game, just 12 of the 15 cards from each deck are used, and you never know which are excluded. In Winter, all 15 cards are used in the game, meaning every card will be available, and there are another three full rounds. Great news if you always find yourself saying “Oh come one, one more turn!”.

Coupled with those changes, there are some new upgrades available, and more changes to the research track.

Interestingly the Autumn & Winter expansion also comes with a few bonus tiles for Demeter’s sister game, Varuna.

Final thoughts

I know I had a bit of a grumble about how the teach can be a bit awkward, but it’s really the only negative I can lay at Demeter’s feet. If you’ve played a modern roll-and-write game, like Fleet: The Dice Game, you know what to expect. Pick one of a load of options, try to combo it as best you can with the other things on your sheet, and have fun doing it.

Demeter is fun, it’s satisfying, and it’s quick. Like, the-game-is-over-in-20-minutes quick. It’s got enough substance to keep any regular gamer happy for a long time, and novices enjoy the feeling of learning how combos work too. It’s just a tidy, fun package. The Autumn & Winter Expansion is great if you enjoy the base game. It’s more of the same, with a bit of nuance. Autumn, to me, feels like the game Demeter was meant to be all along, almost as if Demeter was hurried out before a final blast of playtesting. Winter builds on the base game, and it’s the ‘advanced’ version of Demeter.

The thing I love about Demeter – other than the whole “dinosaurs in space” thing – is that it doesn’t take itself seriously at all. It shares a universe with other games like Varuna and Ganymede, but it really plays towards that family fun and ‘great big kid’ angle. My son loves colouring the dinosaurs as much as I do, and as someone who has his nose in the rulebooks of a lot of heavy Euro and wargames, it’s a refreshing change for me. If you like roll-and-writes, give it a go, you’ll have a ton of fun.

You can buy both Demeter and the Autumn & Winter expansion from Punchboard’s retail friend, Kienda. Remember to sign up for your account through kienda.co.uk/punchboard for a potential 5% saving on your first purchase.

If you enjoyed this review and would like to read more like this, consider supporting the site by joining my monthly membership at Kofi. It starts from £1 per month, offers member benefits, and lets me know you’re enjoying what I’m doing.

Demeter (2020)

Designer: Matthieu Verdier
Publisher: Sorry We Are French
Art: Oliver Mootoo, David Sitbon
Players: 1-100
Playing time: 15 mins

Demeter: Autumn & Winter

Designer: Matthieu Verdier
Publisher: Sorry We Are French
Art: David Sitbon
Players: 1-50
Playing time: 20-30 mins

The post Demeter + Autumn & Winter Expansion Review appeared first on Punchboard.

In Hadrian’s Wall, you are a Roman general, tasked with building a section of the eponymous structure which marked the boundary between what was Roman Britannia (England), and Caledonia (Scotland) in the north. Over six rounds, you’re going to construct walls and defences against the Pict invasions, entice citizens with baths, theatres and temples, and increase your renown, piety, valour and discipline, while trying to avoid disdain. Or you’ll try to, at least. The way you do this is using the various people and resources at your disposal each round and assigning them to tasks, reaping benefits along the way.

I appreciate the fact that the rule book’s foreword acknowledges slavery. At the point in history that the game is set, slave labour made-up up to a third of the Roman Empire’s workforce, so to ignore it would have been insensitive. The history is acknowledged, the terminology rephrased to call those pieces ‘servants’, and it’s enough. The actions and game are so far abstracted from real life that it doesn’t feel like an issue for me.

Tick-box culture

Instead of a game board and player boards on the table, as in most games, Hadrian’s Wall sees the players tearing a couple of sheets off the huge pads included in the box. Armed with a pen, pencil, or your favourite blunt crayon, whenever you take an action you fill in a box on one of the sheets. If you cross out a symbol in a box, you get the thing that symbol represents as a bonus. That bonus could be another person to use, a step up one of the various tracks, or even favour, which can be used to help when the Picts invade. Where the game gets really juicy though, is when these actions combo up and give you more and more things.

Anyone who’s played a good roll-and-write, like Ganz Schon Clever for example, knows how rewarding that dopamine-releasing feedback loop feels. It feels disproportionately satisfying to cross out a box just because you crossed out a different box. Trust me, when you scribble out a box that ends up seeing you tick another three boxes and grab another tiny wooden meeple, you might as well have just found a tenner in your trouser pocket.

It’s a good job it’s such a satisfying exercise, because when you first lay down the two sheets in front of someone, to call it daunting would be an understatement. Everyone has the same “Woah…” reaction. When I said there are boxes to tick, I meant, there are a LOT of boxes to tick. In the interests of public service, I’ve just counted all the little boxes and circles on the sheets, and I make it 412. That’s a lot of boxes. So you sit there, stunned, looking at two big sheets of paper with hundreds of boxes, and you’ve got no idea where to start. Fear not, reader, because things are not as complicated as they seem.

Just start playing

That’s my advice to anyone playing Hadrian’s Wall for the first time – just start playing. The rule book is fantastic, and follows a great logical order. You’re instructed to lay one sheet on the left, the other on the right, and each of the different sections on the sheets has its own section in the rulebook. Those sections are clear, concise, and give specific examples for each one, and they’re in logical order.

If you want the rules for forestry and mining (top of the left sheet), they’re near the front of the book. If you want to find out how to Scout (bottom of the right sheet), it’s at the back of the book. I wouldn’t normally talk about the rules as much as this, but in a game which initially looks impenetrable, it’s important to understand how easy it is to learn to play Hadrian’s Wall.

Once you start ticking boxes and seeing how the various tracks interact, it’s a game that you’ll pick-up very quickly, and at the same time you’ll start to see just how much fun it is. Hadrian’s Wall is awesome. I’m addicted. For every review I write there’s a (secret!) minimum number of times that I play each game, and let’s just say that my play count for this one is far in excess of that number.

Building a landmark

Hadrian’s Wall is a landmark game for me. It’s the first time I’ve played a flip-and-write that feels like a full-on game, and it’s a fantastic game too. Fleet: The Dice Game is a great roll-and-write game, but it doesn’t quite bridge the gap between filler and feature in the same way as Hadrian’s Wall does . It feels like a big Euro game in the Garphill Games universe, because it is a big Euro game, and because Shem Phillips saw a natural fit between Bobby Hill’s design and his own games’ settings. The only difference is it just uses paper and pens instead of cardboard and wood for the main game.

It’s important to understand that this game could have been made a couple of different ways. The pads of sheets could have been a few player boards, and each step on each track could have been a wooden cube on a square, but they aren’t, and I’m so glad that’s the case.

Scribbling on the sheets and filling in boxes is a tangible, personal thing. It feels good to colour in the boxes. By using pens and paper, the setup and tear-down time is tiny, and that’s something I appreciate more and more these days. As a dad and full-time employee, my free time is really precious to me. I can get Hadrian’s Wall setup in a couple of minutes and play a deep, thinky, satisfying game in half an hour. That’s amazing to me, and one of the reasons I keep coming back to it.

Final Thoughts

Hadrian’s Wall doesn’t feel solvable. There is too much to do in any one game, and too much variance in the setup and goals – which are card-driven – to make it possible to solve. This is huge for me. Ganz Schon Clever is great, but when I realised how to ‘solve’ it (or at least score 300+ each game), it really killed it as a game for me. I’ve chatted to lots of different people about strategy for Hadrian’s Wall, including folks at Garphill, and everyone has their own strategy, and they all work to some extent. This makes me very happy, because it means I know I will get a good way through the 100 pages per sheet and not have the game solved.

Hadrian’s Wall is not a game for someone looking for a light flip-and-write. This is way deeper than the likes of Silver & Gold or Metro-X, and that’s why I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who enjoys medium-weight games, and upwards. There’s a ridiculous amount going on, but it’s all tied together cohesively, and it’s so, so satisfying, in every aspect. From the combination of scribbling in box after box, to the tension of revealing the invasion cards at the end of the round and seeing if your defences stand up, it’s just brilliant. Please, don’t judge the game by looking at the pages of boxes. Play it once, just once, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it just as much as I do.

Hadrian’s Wall is my favourite game of 2021. I know there’s still two-thirds of the year still to go, but it’s drawn a line in the sand for me, and other games are going to have to go some to top it.

Review copy kindly provided by Garphill Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Hadrian’s Wall (2021)

Designer: Bobby Hill
Publisher: Garphill Games
Art: Sam Phillips
Players: 1-6
Playing time: 30-45 minutes

The post Hadrian’s Wall Review appeared first on Punchboard.

What’s In The Box?

Silver & Gold comes in a small box and comprises of some cards, a small rulebook, and some dry-wipe pens. There are four score cards for the players, one round tracker card that sits in the middle of the table, eight expedition cards, and finally 47 treasure map cards.

The cards are wipeable, but don’t feel overly plastic. Along with the cards are four dry-wipe markers which feel really nice to draw crosses with, and cover well when you write. And that’s all there is, I told you it was a small box game.

How Does It Play?

Setup

The idea of Silver & Gold is that the players are treasure hunters, landing on small islands and exploring, looking for gold. The way the game works is by players choosing two of the four treasure map cards they’re dealt, which go face-up in front of them. There are eight expedition cards, each with a polyomino shape on them. Before each round these are shuffled, and one discarded, unseen by the players. The round marker card shows a reminder of the eight possible shapes, but you never know which one won’t be in the current round.

Four treasure map cards are turned face-up in the middle of the table to create a supply, and then each player takes a marker and a scorecard, a starting player is chosen, and it’s time to play.

Gameplay

For each turn of the round, the starting player turns over the top card of the expedition deck. The card shows a shape. All of the players now cross that shape out on either of their treasure map cards. The shape can be rotated, mirrored and flipped, as long as the structure of it remains the same. If a player cannot (or doesn’t want to) cross the shape out, they can choose any one square on either card and cross that out instead.

Once every player has drawn their crosses, any player who has completed a card (starting with the starting player and working clockwise) can put the completed map to one side, and choose one of the four in the supply in the middle of the table to take. Then a new card from the treasure map deck takes its place.

Bonuses

Some of the squares that get crossed-out have bonus symbols on them, and each of them does something different.

Red crosses – when you cross out a red cross, you can immediately cross out another square of your choice on either of your cards. This can be worked into combinations where you might cross out a red cross, then choose to cross out another one, which then lets you cross out another one, and so on.

Coins – If you cross out a coin, you cross out the next available coin space on your scoring card, working from left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Once an entire row is crossed-out, at the end of that turn each player (starting with the starting player again) crosses out the next available trophy on the round marker card, and writes the number on that trophy in the space at the end of that coin row on their score card. As the trophies get claimed, the rewards decrease.

Palm trees – When you cross out a palm tree you immediately score one point for that tree, plus an extra point per palm tree visible in the four card supply in the middle of the table. That score is written in a box at the bottom of your scoring card, but timing is crucial as you can only score palm trees four times in total during the game.

Scoring

After the last of the seven expedition cards is revealed, it’s the end of the round. The next round marker on the round card is crossed off, then all eight expedition cards are shuffled, one removed, and play continues just like the start of the game.

After the fourth and final round, final scores are calculated. Each map card you’ve completed has a point value at the top, and these are all totaled. Some cards also have a wax seal at the top, which award bonus points. As an example, if you had a card with an orange seal with a 2 in it, and another with a 1 in the seal, you would earn 3 (2 + 1) points per completed orange map in your possession.

You also score every crossed out coin, the trophy bonuses, and finally the palm tree bonuses. There’s a space for each of the subtotals on your scoring card. The winner is the person with the most total points. Now all you have to do is wipe the cards with a piece of try tissue, and it’s ready to play again!

Final Thoughts

Silver& Gold is a light, quick filler game. It’s perfect to begin or end a games night, or to play with the family if you’ve got younger children. I really like it, it’s very easy to teach, and for those of us who like heavier games and competition, there’s plenty of optimisation to aim for here. Aiming to always be able to cross out an entire shape with each expedition card is important, and using the red cross combos to fill in the awkward gaps on nearly-finished cards feels reminiscent of Ganz Schon Clever (check out the review here).

Similarly, it’s not always best to take the highest value cards you can see on the table either. You have to take into account palm trees, coins, and what seals you may be working with for bonus points.

It’s never going to be a game you play for hours, or ever every week, but it’s a charming, fun game, and a great one to get non-gamers engaging in something new and starting to think tactically. Given the fact you can pick it up for less than £12, delivered, if you’ve got a space in your collection for a lightweight filler, or even just a small gap in your Kallax that needs filling, you could do a lot worse. If you’re a fan of games like The Isle of Cats, Patchwork or Cartographers, I think you’ll really enjoy Silver & Gold.

The post Silver & Gold Review appeared first on Punchboard.