Carnuta

• Designers: Yohan Goh, Hope S. Hwang, Gary Kim 
• Publisher: Repos Production
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 25 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Welcome to the annual ceremony that brings together druids from distant lands! Eight secret ingredients have been selected, and your task in Carnuta is to combine them carefully and assemble your runes to create an exceptional potion.

Each player takes a player board, 1 starting card at random and 4 runes – 2 Sun and 2 Moon.   In the center of the board, mark a market, 4 cards each from the Day Ingredient and Night Ingredient decks.  You will note that the back of each card shows the four types of ingredients found in each deck.  Near this, place the bonus ingredient tokens as well as some reserve supply of Runes.  Players get 2 sickles to start.

On a turn, the active player can take two actions from this selection:

1] Take a Card – take one of the 8 face up cards from the market and add it to your hand. You can only have 3 cards in hand at the end of your turn.  Replenish the market.  

2] Play a Card – Play a card from your hand, paying the cost shown at the top. This might require you to flip the runes over or may require you to discard them.  Put the card in your area, stacking them with similar ingredients.  Move your counter forward by one space so that it matches the number of cards played.  If you reach a bonus on the track, you gain that benefit.

3] Take Runes – take as many runes of one type from the supply to fill your board. You cannot flip the runes over

4] Flip Runes – Flip runes on your board so that you only have one type face up on your board

The actions can be done in any order, and the same action can be done twice on a single turn if desired.  Also, for free, you can discard a Sickle to refresh one of the two rows of ingredient cards in the display.

When your turn ends, check to see that you have 3 or fewer cards in your hand; if you have more, discard down.  Also, make double sure that your counter matches the number of cards you have played.

The game end is triggered when a player has played their 11th card. Finish the current round so that all players have the same number of turns.  Now, score all of your cards, going ingredient by ingredient.  The cards might score straight VPs, some may give points for other ingredients in your display or for sets of ingredients.

The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the highest single ingredient score.

My thoughts on the game

Carnuta is a resource management game that rewards efficiency in the use of those resources as well as rewards synergistic combinations of cards purchased from the market.  Interestingly, there are only two types of resources here – the suns and the moons – and much of the game revolves around gaining, flipping and managing these runes.

Each player starts with a basic starting card that gives some incentive to two different types of ingredients.  This may help you focus on your initial purchase, but as many cards require you to have different types of cards to score – you’ll have a constantly changing set of needs.  Certainly, if you can get multiple cards that need the same ingredient (or need each other), you’ll likely be able to rack up the points.

As you would expect, the cards with the higher return tend to cost the most – in this game, that means that they require you to discard the most number of runestones – though this cost doesn’t seem overly high as you can refill your entire supply with one type of rune in a single action.  

Most players will bounce back and forth between the light ingredients and then the dark ingredients because many of the purchases simply flip the runestones over.  So, you might start with 4 suns, you’ll buy a card, but this will leave you with 4 moons.  On the next turn, you might buy a dark card then leaves you with 2 suns (having had to discard two of the moons).  If the market works out nicely, you might still be able to buy a card with those remaining  2 suns – thus getting 3 purchases out of one full set of stones.

That being said, it doesn’t necessarily behoove you to buy cards just because you can – because they really should do something positive for you, whether that is having a scoring condition that gives you points OR at least contributing to scoring another one of your cards. You’ll only get a max of 11 cards in the game, so you really don’t want to waste any of those spots with a card that doesn’t score you anything. 

The game speeds up a bit as you gain more cards – you’ll unlock two more inventory spots, and this can help you get some nice chains going with buying cards, flipping stones over, and then repeating.  There also is a little bit of a race to get to the bonus ingredient tokens as you’ll certainly have certain ingredients you’d prefer over others – and the only way to make sure you get the one you want is to pick first.

Though it doesn’t have much bearing on the game itself, I do really like the magnifying bead component used on the player board.  The art on the cards is appropriately thematic, and it is helpful to note that the back of each ingredient card helpfully shows the four ingredients that are to be found in that deck of cards. 

Carnuta is a pleasing entry level game that is simple in its mechanics but still leaves room for players to make interesting decisions and improve their play by making better choices in the cards that they buy.   If you want to try it, you can get a copy or play it online at BGA – https://en.boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=carnuta

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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