Fantastic Trails

• Designer: Jordy Adan
• Publisher: NSV
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Fantastic Trails challenges you to help ants through the forest by creating valuable trails that will cover lots of ground, ideally picking up honeydew along the way.

To set up, each player chooses two of four random forest floor cards and places these cards in front of themselves. You will note that some of the spaces already have numbers written in them.  Each player also gets a scorecard and an erasable pen.  Shuffle the number and pattern decks separately.

The game is played over 3 rounds, each having 9 turns in the basic game.  The round end is simple to track, it happens when the decks have run out of cards.   On a turn, reveal the top number and pattern card, placing them side by side.

Each player can then write the indicated number in spaces showing the indicated pattern. Jokers are available in each deck, allowing you to write the number of your choice in the indicated pattern or vice versa. An anteater is also in each deck, and if an anteater is revealed, no one writes anything that turn, and you simply skip the turn and then reveal new cards.

You start with four worker ants and can spend them to adjust the value of a number for one ant or let you write in any pattern you wish for two ants.  If you decide you don’t want to use the cards on a turn, you instead gain an ant.  

If you finish a task written on a forest floor card, such as surrounding a space or filling a line or section, you receive the indicated bonus, some combination of worker ants, honeydew, and the ability to mark indicated spaces. It is quite possible that you will even chain together actions using your bonuses.

The round ends when the number and pattern decks are empty, score points equal to your honeydew – however many you have circled on your card – then receive a new forest floor card. Do this again at the end of the second round, then after the third round score honeydew a third time, then score a trail on each card. 

To create a trail, mark a continuous line on each card through adjacent spaces with the numbers on this line being the same or one higher than the previous number; score points equal to the number of spaces covered.

My thoughts on the game

Though the genre of X-and-writes (XAWs) has become a bit full in recent years, I still have found some games with interesting combinations of ideas – and Fantastic Trails fits that description.

Each of the forest floor cards is different and has different goals and rewards; I like the variety that this provides me each time I play it.  In the beginner game, the rules specify that all players get the same type of card(s) each round, but even in this situation, the colors on the cards and the rewards are different.  When you play the full game, everything is different for each player right off the bat.

In this game, players will always have a different “board” to write on as they will likely have different cards each time.  It definitely pays to become familiar with the different bonus actions available from your cards so that you can most efficiently use them.  For instance, make sure to leave yourself empty room to fill in bonus regions awarded thru bonus actions; and if they specify a numerical value, you can plan ahead on that card to make sure that you can generate the longest ant trail possible. It can also be extremely pleasing to set up a chain reaction of bonus actions as you move from card to card.

As the game progresses, you’ll get a new card each round to give you both new places to write numbers as well as new bonus actions to take.  Much of the scoring will come from the length of your ant trails on each card at the end of the game – but the power of the honeydew should not be underestimated.  Each honeydew obtained in the first round will score you 4 points by the end of the game, so there is certainly a decision to be made on how soon you try to gain them.

Fantastic Trails gave my overall opinion of XAWs a nice little boost as this release did prove that there are still new games in this crowded genre that can stand out from the crowd a bit.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Doug G.: Shelley and I always swing by the NSV booth at Spiel and grab a couple of their titles, as they’re usually interesting. Fantastic Trails was the better of the two games we brought back this year, and it’s a fun puzzle. We discuss it on Episode 1032, which drops February 15.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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