Elios

• Designer: Philippe Proux
• Publisher: Helvetiq
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 7+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with copy provided by publisher

Elios is an abstract wooden game where the goal of the game is to be the first player to get rid of all your sticks.  To start the game, a sun made up of 2 discs stacked on each other is placed in the center of the table. One beam of each of the 8 colors is placed around the sun in random arrangement.

Each player then receives some colored sticks at the beginning of the game (the number varies with the number of players) as well as 1 or 2 joker (white) beams.  There is a chart in the rules telling you how many of each to get.   Then, all the players arrange their sticks to create sets of 1 to 3 sticks in front of them.  A group can never have more than one stick of any color in it.

The last player to finish arranging their groups goes first.  They must play a group that includes a joker beam.  All other players, then will do one of the following actions:

• play a full set on the table
• or place a disc on the Sun
• or divide one of their sets into 2 sets.

Of course to play a set, you need to follow certain rules:

• all the sticks need to be at the same level
• the set can’t be at a higher level than the disc in the middle.
• All beams must be played on top of a matching color beam OR on top of a joker beam

In a 4 player game, you can play in teams where teams sit in alternating positions around the table.   The first player or team to play all their sticks to the table wins the game.

My thoughts on the game

Elios is a beautiful game that can be deceivingly complex at times.  There are only three action options, and each of them is pretty easy to figure out – but yet trying to work out the timing of things can be difficult indeed.  The restrictions on when you can play a set can make it quite difficult – other than the first player who is guaranteed to be able to play a three beam set on their first turn (though they lose one of their white beams in the process), it is not common to see this play later in the game.

Therefore, the setup is crucial – you need to figure out how to best hedge your bets to play your beams quickest.  Obviously, if you can play sets of 2 or 3 beams at a time, it will be much faster than a bunch of turns when you only play 1 beam.  That being said, if the circumstances become impossible to play a larger group, you’ll end up spending a turn each time just to break a larger group down into two smaller ones, and in the end, it takes longer to do this than if you just started with single beams in the first place!

That’s honestly the bulk of the strategy – during the game itself, I always look to maximize the number of beams that I play on a turn, and then if there are multiple options, I maybe look to see what the next player has set up and then try to choose an option that restricts the next player’s turn.

The team game is also interesting, and the rules make it so you want to keep your team balanced during play.  When one of the teammates goes out, their turn is skipped, so this means the opponents always get two plays in a row – and this ability often lets them come up with plays to catch up.  

The components are all wood, and the game definitely looks good on the table.  Games rarely take more than 10 minutes.  The target audience is casual gamers and/or families, and given the paucity of rules, you could go pretty far down the age range with this one.  

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor