Redwood

• Designer: Christophe Raimbault
• Publisher: Sit Down!
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

From the rules: “At the fringes of a wild landscape, nature-loving photographers travel great distances and flex infinite patience to immortalize animals in their natural habitat.  In search of harmony, these trailblazers compose sumptuous shots that depict the marvels they encounter during their wanderings.”

The circular board is placed on the table, and then a Sunrise (setup) card is chosen at random. The objectives, large animal tiles are placed on the board (in the hexagonal holes) based on the card.  There are also plenty of flower and tree icons printed on the board. Each player takes two pawns in their color and places one on a signpost space on the outer border of the board.

The game is played in 5 rounds – to start each round, you move the sun token clockwise one space and reveal the next objective card that it passes over.  Then players each take a turn – choosing templates, moving and then taking a photo.

Choosing templates – there are brown movement templates and grey photo templates.  Using only your eyes, you must choose one of each from the table.  You are not allowed to keep the ones you had from the previous round.  If you take one from an opponent, they get a victory point.  As soon as you touch one, that is your choice for the round!

Moving: clip one end of the movement template to your pawn on the board and then lay the template on the board; it cannot lie over any of the animals or other player pawns.  If you cannot legally place it, you can’t move.  Place your other pawn at the end of the template and then remove the original pawn and template.

Taking a photo:  clip your photo template to your pawn and rotate it as you like, you cannot cover another photographer. Look down the axis in the middle to determine which biome is in focus and then take a panorama card from the top of the stack in that biome.  Place this to the left or right of your growing line of panorama cards.  If you take a picture in the biome where the sun token is, place a sun token on your matching card.  Now look at your template, any animals, flowers or trees which are completely covered by the template are captured in your picture!  Take one chit matching each thing captured.  Now, place them onto the panorama card from this turn on the target spaces.  If you have an excess, simply discard the extra chits.  Now, going around the board starting at #1, score each of the visible objective cards.  Finally, move any animals that you photographed this card by moving them to an empty hole in one of the two biomes they prefer.

Do this for five rounds and then tally up the points:

• Points for all your VP chits collected in the game thus far
• Points for different animals captured in the game (0 to 21 pts)
• 1, 2 or 3 pts per animal chit (score based on species)
• Points for the longest stretch of panorama cards you have with matching borders (3 to 15)
• 0 / 4 / -2 points for 0 / 1 / 2 sun tokens on your panorama cards
• 1 pt per flower token on your panorama cards
• -1 pt for each unfilled target space on the panorama cards

The player with the most points wins, tiebreaker going to the most photographed animals.

The rules recommend playing a team game when you play with 4 players.  Teammates sit opposite and they essentially take their turns simultaneously.  This essentially halves the amount of time it takes to play the game.  Add up the scores of each team and the team with the highest score wins.

There is also a solo mode in the rules where you use specific objective cards as written in the rules and then try to maximize your score.

My thoughts on the game

Redwood is a game that I have been anticipating since I first heard of it at Spiel 2022.  The artwork looked fantastic, and the theme feels unique; especially with the use of the templates.  On top of that, the designer has a great track record, having already designed one SdJ winner – Colt Express.

I’ve played the game a few times, and I’m quite enchanted by it.  It does such a good job of putting you into the experience of photographing things, and I love the visual/tactile way that the plastic templates are used.  That being said, I think this game will be pretty polarizing; I think many/most will love it like I do, but for some the templates will be decried as gimmick-y.  Pfft.  

It’s a real challenge to try to visualize where you want to stand to take the perfect shot, and then you really have to work hard to figure out which movement arc you need and then which photo angle template to use.  In my limited experience with the game, I can’t even count how many times I’ve been millimeters off in one dimension and thus prevented from getting that shot.  I’m pretty good at the movement part, but man, I seem to always choose the wrong photo template.  

I’d also caution everyone to take a moment to swivel their photo template around – I’ve ended up with a few surprising turns where I managed to get an even better picture by happenstance than the one I had intended!  It never hurts just to swing the grey plastic around and see what it captures.

I like the way in which the game slowly builds up with the addition of one extra goal card each round.  When you get to the end, and you are trying to manage four or five goals, you could end up in AP hell – but adding them on one at a time really helps you internalize what the goals are.  Additionally, it’s probably nearly impossible to achieve all of them, so you just try to hit a couple each time to max out your score.

As far as scoring goes; this is one of those games where it feels like everything helps you score; and sometimes it’s not apparent what your best move is.  So, just take the picture and figure it out in the end…  This is a game that is pretty hard to figure out your score until you’re done.  The panorama bonus can be a huge part as can the arithmetic sequence scoring for the seven different species… And trust me, until you lay that danged photo template on the board and see what you’re able to capture, it’s all up in the air!

All of my 4p games have been in the recommended team mode, and I really like the addition that this brings – now you and your partner have to jockey over templates and also your photo targets.  Neither set of templates can overlap, so there is an interesting ballet of movement and photography happening.  On the bright side, you do get someone who can help you strategize or give you advice if you’re between two templates that are similar to each other.  As you merely add your scores together at the end, there really isn’t any other teamwork going on.  

The rules state that the 4p game is best played in teams to limit the downtime, but I think the communication as well as the coordination of action seems to take about the same amount in the end.  However, I suppose this does keep a player involved for 50% of the time as opposed to 25% – so that’s still an improvement.

In the end, Redwood is a game to experience.  There will be highs and low.  You’ll be buoyant when you find out that you picked exactly the right photo template to get two animals, a tree and a flower in your shot.  You’ll be extra ecstatic when you also get three of the goal bonuses.  But, then, you’ll be despondent when you take the wrong movement arc on the next turn, and you have to completely change your plans on the fly because you didn’t end up where you thought you wanted to be…

I’ve played the game a few times, I’ve won and I’ve lost.  Sometimes it’s been close; other times it has not. But each time, I find that I look forward to playing the game again.  Probably no stronger recommendation could be given.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale
• I like it.
• Neutral. John P, Ryan P
• Not for me…  James N