Uber den Wolken

• Designer: Konstantinos Karagiannis
• Publisher: Zoch
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Winter is coming, so it’s time to head south!  In Über den Wolken (“Above the Clouds”), players maneuver their birds to ideal starting points for their great migratory journey, whether that’s at the front of the flock or nestled somewhere amongst their companions. To set up, shuffle three birds for each player with three neutral birds, then place them at random on the rows of the game board.

On a turn, you either take one of the four standard actions — with the cost of an action increasing for each subsequent player — or pay the cost of a a maneuver card in hand, then play it. The standard actions allow you to swap adjacent birds, add a new bird to the flock, or take a new maneuver card, whereas the maneuver cards let you swap distant birds or take unique actions. (You can pass as well, but that still has a cost.)

Once all players have exhausted their action cubes, the first bird in each column lands. The more birds you land at once, the more you score — with a bonus if you land a male and female pair at the same time. What’s more, you can use maneuver cards to score birds still in flight should they be in ideal positions. After the first and second rounds, move birds in flight forward, then fill gaps with birds from the deck. After three rounds, whoever has the most points wins.

To set up the game, place the action board on the table with the game board beneath it.  Each player chooses a color and then takes the bird tiles and cubes of that color.  The board is set up with 2 female bird tiles from each player, 1 male tile from each player and three neutral birds.  The remaining bird tiles (from all players and neutral tiles) are shuffled to form a deck.  Each player gets 2 maneuver cards and then a market is placed above the board.  Finally, reveal one nest card for the round.

The game is played over three rounds.  In each round, players will use their action cubes to try to put their birds in the best position.  On your turn, you can perform a standard action, use a maneuver card or pass out of the round.  

The four standard actions are found on the action board

• Swap tiles to your Left/Right
• Swap tiles to your Up/Down
• Add a new bird to the flock – either to the front or in the back, pushing everything else forward
• Take a maneuver card (max 4 in hand)

The cost for the first action of each type is a single action cube.  The cost increases by one cube for each further time someone chooses that action.

If you choose to play a maneuver card, you will use the action portion of the card – spending action cubes as shown on the left to take the action shown on the card.

If you choose to pass, spend 2 cubes if you have it and do nothing. You can take any action you want on your next turn so long as you have cubes for it.

When all players have used all their cubes, the stage ends and landing occurs.  The frontmost bird in each column lands, scoring points as shown on the nest card for the stage.  You score for the number of birds that land as well as a bonus/malus for pairs of males/females that land.   All players can also now score their maneuver cards – each card on the scoring half shows two specific spaces of the game board, and if your bird occupies those spaces, you’ll score the points shown.  You can get an additional 2 bonus points if you are in both locations shown on the card.

Renew the bird formation to the starting setup and repeat for a total of 3 rounds. The player with the most points after 3 rounds wins.

My thoughts on the game

Uber den Wolken is a medium complexity game that has players trying to organize their tiles – sometimes trying to get their birds to the front of the columns in order to land them while other times trying to get them to into scoring positions on their cards.

The action point system is quite interesting, and it definitely places a premium on taking actions earlier in the round to keep the costs down. At the end of the round, you can even sometimes shut out other players from an action by taking one you don’t really need but causing the cost to be even higher for the next player.

In our group, the cards seem to be the most desired action early on as the cards give you both actions as well as scoring opportunities.  As the supply of the cards is limited in each round, it’s not uncommon for the six cards to be amongst the first 8 or 9 actions of a round around here.  Sure, that might be group think – but that’s how it goes around here.  The only downside is that you have to pay twice for the action; once to get the card and then once again when you play the card – but it’s really nice to have the flexibility as well as the fixed costs at the end of the round to make sure that you can take necessary actions when the main board costs are too high. The action cube mechanism is quite interesting, and it does take a game or two to get the hang out of how to best use your cubes.  

There is plenty of maneuvering over the rest of the round – with birds moving here and there, and at times inserting new ones into the flock. There is a surprising amount of “attack-y” actions here, especially where there are maluses for landing pairs.  It’s not uncommon to try to move other birds into landing spaces in order to trigger the penalty!  Also, near the end of the round, it’s not uncommon to use cubes to take an action to simply move around opponent birds assuming that you’re likely disrupting their scoring plans no matter what.

In the first two rounds, there can be a bunch of maneuvering, and the players have the option of scoring their cards or not at the end of the round.  The competition for certain spots in the flock feels a little bit less as a result.  At the end of the 3rd round, there is no more waiting, and this makes the fight for the particular scoring spaces a bit more harsh.

Component wise, everything is adequate, though my eyes had a hard time differentiating between the orange and the pink at times. In one way it was nice to not play with the standard four gaming colors; but on the other hand, I’d prefer a set of colors that were as easily distinguished as the red, yellow, blue and green that are more commonly used.  The icons on the cards are pretty easy to understand, and the explanations in the rules are very clear on the few that we couldn’t immediately translate.

Uber den Wolken has some interesting strategic plays in each game, combining the actions on the board with the actions on the cards that you acquire along the way. The rules are easy to understand, so this could be played by families and newbies for sure.  I do like the strategy of getting my tiles in the places I want them to be – but I do get frustrated at times when a capricious play disrupts my carefully laid plans.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Doug G.: Shelley and I enjoyed this one, playing it a couple of times at Essen 2025. It’s certainly light, but worked quite well with 2 players. We didn’t end up picking it up, but I wouldn’t mind playing this again. We reviewed it on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/vQitNI5KlgM

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Doug G.
• Neutral.  Dale 
• Not for me…