Waddle

• Designer: Corne van Moorsel
• Publisher: Allplay
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4pKevrZ
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Strategically place your penguins to form groups and claim fish to score the most points! Turn order matters a lot; in Waddle, it’s tracked by marbles on a two-column track!
On your turn, you’ll have two options:

1. “Place a Penguin” onto any unoccupied hex adjacent to the lowest numbered water hex. Then, pick up your marble and place it on the top of the same Turn Tracker column
2. “Scout Ahead” by picking up and placing your marble on top of the inactive Turn Tracker column.

How players “Scout Ahead” will be massively important! Going earlier in the future could allow you to grow or connect into a large waddle (group), claim a big fish, or block an opponent’s important play.

To set up, you first have to make the board by finding all the tiles with the correct player count on their back and then randomly arranging them in a single area, roughly hexagonal.  The active hex marker is placed on the #1 water hex.  Each player takes their marble (to be put on the cool player order slide) and 20 penguins – 18 singles and 2 doubles.  

On a turn, the active player must place a penguin next to the active hex OR scout ahead for the next round.  If you choose to place, take one of your penguin tokens (can be single or double) and put it in any unoccupied space adjacent to the current active water hex.  Then, move your marble from the bottom of the active turn order track and put it back on the top of the SAME track.

If you choose to scout ahead, take your marble and place it on the top of the other line.  You will not get to place any more penguins in this round.

If you happen to be the only person left in the active turn order AND there are still empty hexes available to place, you are obligated to place penguins in all those spaces.

When the round ends – that is when all the hexes around the current active water hex are filled – a new round starts.  Move the active hex marker to the next highest number.  If anyone scouted, they go first in the next round and the other marbles stay in their current order.

The game ends when every hex on the map has a penguin on it.  Each player now scores their points:

Waddles – for each contiguous group of penguins, score points based on the chart in the player aid.  The maximum size of a waddle is 8 penguins.

Fishing pools – for each fishing pool (set of water hexes), players are placed in rank order based on the number of penguins they have surrounding the pool.  The highest rank scores the most valuable fish, the second rank scores the next highest fish, …  Ties are friendly, and all tied players score the same fish for their rank.

My thoughts on the game

Well, Gipsy King is one of my all time favorite abstract games, and I was thrilled to hear that a new updated version was coming out.  To start – this new version comes in a pleasingly tiny Allplay box, and that’s a huge plus in my book.

The game is very similar, but there are a few notable changes.   The most notable is that there is only one round in the game.  Here, you play the water tiles from 1 to 15 (or whatever the highest number is for your player count), and then you determine a winner.  In Gipsy King, you played 1 to 15, scored, then cleared the board and then played 15 to 1.  

While this change obviously shortens the game, and it might reduce a bit of the strategy and/or planning – overall it feels like a plus.  Additionally, the fish score more in this version – which gives people more reason to want to play around the lakes, and thus there are more strategic options open to the players.  In a similar light, scoring of Waddles is capped at 8 penguins, and this prevents people from just going for the largest blob… 

The game plays super quick as the actual choices on any given turn are few.  There are plenty of important moments in the game where you have to decide whether it is worth it to place a penguin or if you are better off passing and getting to go earlier on the next water hex.  As the hexes are numbered, you can always look at the board to see where placement will happen next.

There is also an expansion out – Orcas and Ice Floes.  There are actually three separate modules here which can be combined in any way you like:

• Orcas – place an Orca on each water hex marked with a fin.  At the end of the game, the player with the most penguins next to orcas scores -7 VP. The player with the fewest penguins next to orcas gets +7VP
• Eggs – place an egg on each hex with a nest. Each player also gets 1 egg.  If you place a penguin on a hex with an egg on it, collect that egg.  On any turn, instead of placing next to the active hex, you can spend an egg to place your token on a hex that is 2 hexes away from the active hex.  Any unused eggs are worth 2VP at the end of the game.
• Ice Floes – Each player is given the ice floe in their color at the start of the game. Once per game, after placing a penguin, you can place your floe on an adjacent water hex (no orcas or other floes) to that penguin.  When scoring waddles, penguins count as being adjacent to each other if they are adjacent to your floe.

Waddle is a great new version of one of my favorite games – sure it’s not entirely the same, but it retains almost all of the qualities that I loved from the original and has the bonus of coming in a super small box!  I’ll admit that I haven’t really been keen on the expansions as I feel that they take away from the beautiful simplicity and elegance of the game, but it’s always nice to have options, and after a bunch of plays, maybe I’ll be in the mood to change things up.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Joe Huber (1 play) – I suspect that, for those who have played Gipsy King, their feelings for Waddle will be similar.  That certainly was the case for me; it’s a fine game, but not really my thing, and the changes didn’t notably improve – or mar – the game for me.

Dan B. (1 play) – It’s been a long time since I played Gipsy King, but as I recall it was fine but did not grab me. I feel pretty much the same about Waddle – I’d be perfectly willing to play it, since it’s a nice clean game and moves along quickly, but I don’t care if I don’t play it. I think the changes from the original are probably good ones, but it’s hard to say given the long gap between plays. I also note that the fish numbers are very hard to read.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale (base)
• I like it. Dale (with expansions)
• Neutral. JoeH, Steph, Dan B.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4pKevrZ