Fairy Ring

• Designers: Laurence Greniew and Fabien Tanguy
• Publisher: Repos
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-40 minutes
• Played with review copy per Asmodee NA
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3B2nSye

A ray of moonlight shines in the clearing. The fairies wake up and stretch their wings. Mushrooms pop up from the ground, forming a circle. The first fireflies start to land. Magic is returning to the forest, and now it’s time to prepare for winter…

In Fairy Ring, you want to create a mushroom village to house the fairies in the clearing. Guide your fairy carefully, from village to village, through the fairy ring to gather as much mana as possible. You have two seasons to develop your village before winter begins. Each decision counts towards winning the game.

To set up, shuffle all of the Mushroom cards (based on the number on the back), then give each player a random starting card (has a zero on the back). Each player gets a village board, places their starting card on top of it, and then places their mover on top of that card.  Each player also gets a scoring wheel, with the score set at zero.  A first player is chosen, and they get a marker card which they place at the bottom left of their board (in the passing space).  If you are playing with the objective cards, choose three of them for the game and place them face up on the table.

In each of the game’s two rounds, players are dealt a hand of 7 cards from the deck for the round.  In a round, there will be six turns, each following the same pattern.

A] Draft cards – looking at your hand, choose one to play this turn, and place it face down in the slot on the bottom right of your board.  Place the rest of your hand in the passing space on the left.   The card you choose has a movement allowance in the upper left corner and a mana production rule in the bottom left.  Some cards will have fireflies in the bottom right.

B] Resolve – starting with the first player, the player’s card is revealed and placed in the village – it must be placed to the left or the right of all the existing cards; you cannot play between two previously placed cards.  Alternatively, it can be placed on top of a card of the same type, layering them so that you can see all the symbols on the bottom portion of all the cards.  You are limited to a stack of four cards high.  

Once the card is played, you then move your mover a number of cards clockwise equal to the number in the upper left corner of the card that you played. 

C] Gather mana – if you stop on one of your own mushrooms (above your own board), gather mana from the card you landed on.  Each type of mushroom has its own rule for producing mana.  If you activate a stack of mushroom cards, you collect mana for all the cards in the stack.  If you stop on an Opponent’s mushroom – they gather Mana from that card you stopped on.  However, if you have a mushroom(s) of the same type in your own area, you can choose one and gather mana from it.  As soon as you have more than 20 Mana, return 20 to the supply and then increase your score on your dial by 1.  At the end of your turn, also check to see if you have completed any of the objectives – if you have done so, place one of your tokens on it and increase your scoring wheel by 1.

Repeat this process six times in each round.  One card in each player’s hand will not be played; this card is simply discarded.  After the end of the second round, the game ends. Players reveal their scoring wheel, and the player with the highest score wins.  Ties are broken in favor of the player with the most Mana left over.

My thoughts on the game

Fairy Ring is a game which looks like it should be nice and light, but it really has some surprisingly strategic moments – and this has allowed the game to be played and enjoyed by both novice and veteran gamers.

The mechanics of the game are super simple. I can teach the game in three minutes.  Just show everyone the six different varieties of cards and explain how they score.  Throw a few out on the board, show an example turn, and that pretty much is all you need to play.

With the simultaneous selection of cards, it can be a tricky thing to choose the right card – certainly as you get later in the turn order on a particular turn.  I would definitely pay attention to the place in turn order when trying to choose your card.  You’ll know that players before you will have to add a card, though you don’t know the location – and if it is placed on top of another card, that may screw up your movement counting as an entire stack of cards only counts as a single space for movement.

This is one of those games where your position in turn order will definitely affect your card choice. When you are going first or second, you have a pretty good idea where your movement will take you, and definitely less likely when you are third or fourth.  I try to set myself up so that I am moving towards my own board when I’m first in order to be able to max out the scoring – or at least towards a player who has a mushroom that I also have.  In the end, in a 12 round game, everyone gets to be first and last an equal number of times, so that bit evens out nicely.

The game itself is pretty light, but gets meaty enough when you add in the goal cards.  The extra three goals give you a bit more to think about when choosing your cards and placing your mushrooms, and this helps add an extra dimension to the game.  The fact that each is worth 1 point on your dial (i.e. 20 Mana) is also a huge score, and one that makes it worthwhile to pursue. 

Speaking of scoring, I’ll admit that I’m not a big fan of the scoring dials used in combination with the mana tokens.  As all scoring happens in the open, trying to hide the scores on the wheels seems like an unnecessary step.  Or, why have the tokens at all, and just have all the scores be kept on the wheels?  In the end, as the tie breaker is the mana tokens left over, you’re really ranking yourself on the total score – so why make it difficult?  Also, the wheels add an extra element for mistakes to be made in scoring – so going forward, we’ll probably just use poker chips or scoring bits from another game rather than the wheels.  Sure, there may be times when the scores want to be secret (though every mana collection is public so someone could easily track on paper) – so that you don’t help out the player in the lead; but in general, your range for movement is so narrow that you’re likely going to end up on the same player’s patch of mushrooms regardless of the number you pick; so in most cases, keeping the scores secret is of no use.

The artwork on the cards is fantastic – both in quality and in theme (fantasy mushrooms).  The player aid cards are well done, and there are enough for everyone to have their own recap of how the mushroom cards score.  

All things considered, Fairy Ring is a delightful easy going game.  The twelve turns in the game fly by, and I’d be surprised if you played a game of this that took more than 30 minutes.  You’ll try to do your best to choose the right card, but there will be moments that surprise you when your opponents do something that you aren’t expecting.  It’s closer to a gateway game for me, but it still played well with my regular group too.  

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3B2nSye

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Steph H
• Neutral.
• Not for me…