Suna Valo

• Designer: Ode
• Publisher: Game Builders / Capstone Games
• Players: 2
• Age: 14+
• Time: 75mins
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3HRmLFx
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Suna Valo, two individuals take on the task of establishing their own farm in the Solarpunk world of Overgrown. Located in the picturesque “Sunny Valley” (Suna Valo), nestled at the foot of a mountain and crisscrossed by a broad river, the village of Foriro has been erected — a place of new beginnings! The farmers in this village supply valuable goods using their transport drones and river ships.

The construction of your farms is made possible through farm cards across various categories. Cultivate vast grain fields, and harvest beautiful water lilies or blue flowers. Deliver your sheep’s wool to the village for clothing production or collect eggs from your free-roaming chickens. But amidst your explorations of the surrounding lands, don’t forget to reinforce your fleet of transport drones!

Suna Valo features an innovative purchasing mechanism. Secure the right cards before your opponent does, snatch up the more valuable ones, and host prestigious events! Each time you acquire a new card for your farm, you activate an entire column of cards, causing your farm to flourish. However, you must also earn the resources to cover the costs of these cards.

After three game rounds, the player with the most victory points emerges as the winner of this peaceful competition, having contributed the most to the development of Foriro!

To start, place the game board between the players, setting up the Public Delivery cards at the top and the Ship Order cards at the bottom.  Progress Bot tiles and end game bot tiles are also placed on the board.  Each player assembles their 2-part player board.  Players start with one of each of the 5 types of Farm Goods as well as 1 Energy stone marker.  Markers are placed at the start of both of the bot tracks on the player board.   You will find a set of  storage crates for your goods on the central part of your board. For the most part, while playing, goods must always be stored in an appropriate crate.  If you do not have storage space when you gain a good, you must forfeit it.

 The main board is given a market of 3 farm cards and each player also gets 3 cards face up above their own board.  Each of these three cards above the player board is given a price by the respective player, moving a good or an energy stone onto the card (from their own setup supply).  Finally, players are dealt 2 character cards, of which they keep one for the game.  Each character comes with a unique asymmetric ability.

The game is played over 3 Eras.  In each era, there are three distinct phases: Setup, Taking turns (usually 6-7 turns each), Income.  The bulk of each era is spent taking turns.  On a turn, the active player must either A] Buy and Resolve a Card or B] Fulfill a Ship order.  The turn then ends by adding a card.

When you buy a card, the cost depends on where you buy it

• From your own board: simply discard the goods that you had placed on it yourself
• From your opponent’s board: match whatever goods the opponent had placed on it; the opponent gets both sets of goods back.  If he cannot store them all, this is the one exception to the storage rule, and goods which cannot be stored can be immediately converted to 1 Energy token
• From the central board – pay the sum of the cost on the card plus the cost from the space of the board.  You can use any combination of goods here.

Once you have the card, you place it in the row of matching color under your player board.  Some cards have multiple colors and you can choose either column to place it in.  Then, you activate the entire column you just placed in, executing the actions of all the cards in the column as well as in the column header.  You can do them in any order you like. 

If you activate good production (left three columns), you must place the produced good directly on the card which makes the good.  If the storage crate is not empty, you may not produce the good and store it elsewhere. 

 If you activate the discoveries column (4th), if you make goods, they can be stored in any suitable storage area on your farm. This column may also give you advances on your bot tracks. Steps on the two bot tracks may be blocked by crates, ships or barrels – you will have to remove those from the tracks (by doing things in the game) in order to progress further on the tracks.  The right bot track gives you victory points and the ability to add bot tiles which give special ongoing bonuses.  The left bot track gives you an end game multiplier to the points gained on the right track. 

The fifth column is the transport track, and this usually means making deliveries via the drones on these cards; each drone can deliver one resource to a delivery card.  You can partially fill deliveries and then go back to complete them later.  If the space you deliver to has a bonus, you get that bonus as soon as you deliver the good there.

The final column is for personal deliveries. If you add a card here, you are allowed to use the drones from the column to the left to make deliveries, but you can only deliver to the activated column (i.e. you cannot deliver to the public delivery cards).

As you place cards, you get a bonus for each complete row of 6 cards (one of each type)- take a row completion bonus marker and then either place it 5VP side up, giving you an endgame bonus, or activation side up – and you now immediately activate the first 5 cards in the newly finished row  (you do not activate your personal order in that row)

There is one exception to the placing card rule – if you buy a Village Festival card and choose to execute it, you get the bonus in the upper left of the card and then both players take advantage of the special action found in the upper right.

One other option with a card is to place it facedown in any column. When you do this, you activate that column and all the faceup cards in it as well as the column header, but you do not get any benefits from the facedown card(s).  In this way, you could buy a Village Festival card but not have to activate it.

At any point in your turn, you can also always use the village market at the lower left of the player board – this allows you to exchange energy stones for resources.

You could also choose to fulfill a ship action. To do this, first discard the rightmost farm card from your  board.  Then, choose any active Ship which you have not yet fulfilled, and pay all the costs for that ship at one time.  Place one of your Ship markers on the card (so that you cannot fulfill it again) and then take any actions seen on the ship card as a reward.

Finally, replenish the card markets.  If you bought from the central board, slide all the cards to the right and then fill in the left most spot from the deck.  If you bought from your own board, choose one of the 3 cards from the central board, and then place at least as many goods on it as the minimum price shown on the bottom of the card, and then refill the central board as above.  If you bought from your opponent’s board; they get to make the decisions on replacing the card.

As you are going through the round, you might flip up special action cards which cause you to reveal a Village Festival card, a new public delivery order or a new ship order.  As soon as the last of the public deliveries and ship cards are revealed, the end of the Era is triggered – and the Era ends whenever both players have played an equal number of turns.  Well, except in the last Era where everyone gets to take one final turn before the game ends.

At the end of each era, there is an Income phase.  Anywhere you see the universal open hand symbol for Income, you get what is shown. 

In between rounds, you set up the new decks of cards for the new era.  You additionally deal each player 3 cards from the new era’s deck, and the players can choose to replace any of their current for-sale cards with new ones.  Additionally, players can modify the prices of any of their for sale cards so long as they still meet the minimum price shown on the card.

At the end of the game (after the third Era ends), tally up your points:

• Fulfilled Ship Orders and bonuses from Ship Orders
• Completed Public Deliveries
• Completed Personal Deliveries
• Village and Farm Cards that score points
• Exposed points on the board from removing crates, barrels and ships
• Row Bonus Markers that are VP side up
• Bot Tracks – multiply the score seen on the right by the multiplier on the left
• End of Game Bot Tile – if you took one of these, score the criteria on the tile
• Farm Goods – 1VP per 5 goods left over
• Shortage Marker – negative 1VP for each one you have

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player who did not start the game.

My thoughts on the game

Wow – this is a really involved dedicated 2p game – but not surprising considering the chops of the designer. Ode has designed a number of complex games, and this well-crafted duel fits nicely in that collection.   It is set in the same fictional Solarpunk world of Overgrown as Planta Nubo (did you know that there is even a novel of fan fiction set in that world?!  (https://amzn.to/45YuBq4)   

The action system here is really interesting with many things to consider.  First, the pricing of the cards is really fascinating to me.  You can buy cards from the market, your opponent or yourself – and there are pros/cons to each.    The cards from your opponent are always available, but you’ll be paying the cost directly to them – so they can make a tidy profit from you; especially if they have a high asking price for a card they know you want!  The market cards can be expensive, but at least you’re not giving anything to your opponent…  You can always buy from yourself, but you turn in the resources on it to set the price.  You can try to set the price low – but if you do – your opponent has the first chance to buy that card and can steal it from under your nose if you set too low a price!

One other thing to consider than price is the action on the card itself.  Surely, you’ll want a card that provides you with the actions you want to do now.  Of course, you might just be looking for the right color of card – as you get to activate the entire column that you put the card in – this is also an important part of the calculations.  

Don’t forget (like I did in my first few games) that you can always buy a card and then place it facedown in a column – you won’t get any benefit from that particular card, but you will then trigger the rest of the column that you place it in.  Once I remembered this rule, I did make a great play where I bought a cheaply priced card from my opponent (it was priced cheap because he didn’t think I would want it at all) – and then placed it facedown in a different column.  Not only did I get a lot of useful actions for myself, I was also able to deny my opponent of a card that was vital to his own strategy!

As if that wasn’t enough, this 2-player duel constantly pulls you in different directions.  You’re competing over the cards in the market, you’re racing to finish the different deliveries in order to get the higher bonus points, you’re racing to finish the ships as well.  And, let’s not forget that you’re also trying to prep the “engine” on your player board – you need to remove the various wood bits off the board as well.

On the player board, you’ll also have to be figuring out your resource usage and storage.  You can only store goods in specific containers, and when you generate resources, you can only make them if you keep them.  There is a bit of ebb and flow then between making resources and then using them efficiently to allow for the most advantageous refilling.  If you’re only one or two resources short, you can always use your own trading post (made cheaper if you’ve removed the correct wooden bits), but that’s a pretty expensive way to go.

As you can see, there is a lot to consider in the game, and you only have about 20 turns to make everything happen!  Though it comes in a small box, it will take up much of your regular sized gaming table…  The rules are pretty easy to navigate, and don’t be intimidated by the 40 page size!   The length of the rules ensures that just about everything is contained in said rulebook, and lots of examples to help illustrate sticky points.

Though I’m not much of a 2-player gamer, this is one of those games that would certainly be the centerpiece of a 2-player session.  I was sad to have missed this at SPIEL 2024, but now that it has a domestic release from Capstone, it’s better late than never.   Suna Valo is chewy, puzzly and intense.  Highly recommended.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Tery: I bought this knowing very little about it, other than it was a 2 player engine builder. I like engine builders, a lot of my gaming is 2 player, and overall I have been pretty happy with every game I have bought from Capstone, so I decided to try it.  I am so glad I did.  The engine building portion is really interesting, and combined with the tensions related to deliveries in all locations and the fact that the game has a set timer for rounds makes it a puzzle I want to try to solve.

Lorna: I hadn’t heard anything about this game but a friend suggested that I might like it. I’m glad they did because this game is great. I play mostly 2 player these days and this hits the perfect spot, hinky but not that long. I feel like I’m still learning the game and really haven’t begun to scratch the surface on strategy. This is a good thing as it will hold my interest for a long time. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, Tery N, Lorna
• I like it.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

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