Postcards

• Designers: Eric Dubus, Simon Kayne 
• Publisher: Synapses Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-45 mins
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4wh4iVY
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Bonjour, and welcome to Postcards, a board game about exploring the beauty of France — one postcard at a time! Hop on your bicycle and set out on a picturesque adventure, as you compete with your friends to enjoy the most unforgettable holiday! Designed for 1-4 players, Postcards is a family friendly game that takes you on a journey across France, filled with inspiring culture, stunning landscapes, and delicious local cuisine.  

Are you ready to set out on a journey of a lifetime?  Postcards is a simple game that the whole family can enjoy, but has plenty of strategy to keep you thinking as you play! Lovingly designed and illustrated by a team of self-professed francophiles, Postcards is sure to make you want to plan your own trip to France.

The aim of the game is simple: cycle through the 13 different regions of France, visit as many iconic locations as possible, and share your travels by sending postcards back home. Each postcard you send brings you one step closer to victory, so grab your friends, get pedaling, and let the adventures begin!

To set up the game, place the board on the table, and set out the market for the Gift Cards and the Travel cards.   Each player gets an Itinerary card which tells them their starting space on the map. Players also get their own board, with their 13 Camp tokens placed on it.  3 Postcards are dealt above the board.  Someone becomes the first player.

On your turn, you’ll be playing exactly 3 Travel cards to perform the different actions available (based on the icon on the card or the color): 

• Take a new Postcard – draw from the supply 
• Set up Camp – place a marker down on a camp, take a souvenir token for your postcard if you have a matching icon
• Put a Stamp on one of your Postcards – based on the color of the card, add a stamp to one of your postcards
• Move to a new region – use your bike to move to any adjacent region

At any time, you can play any 2 cards as a substitute for your desired icon or color.

Postcards are the main way you’ll be scoring points during the game, so be sure to look out for postcards from areas which match your travel itinerary objective! Certain Postcards are worth more points than others, but be careful: the higher its point value, the more stamps you’ll need to send it off.   At any point, you can send a Postcard, but when it’s fully stamped, you have to be in the region it’s from, so make sure you have enough Travel cards to get there!  When you send a postcard, you’ll often get to collect a gift card as well – each of these provides an endgame bonus scoring criteria.

The game ends when one player has sent their fourth postcard, and the winner is the player who’s collected the most points through their travels:

• Points scored during the game for postcards and other actions
• Points for postcards sent from regions on your itinerary card
• 1 point for each unsent postcard
• Points from gift cards
• 3 points for triggering the end of the game (first player to send 4 postcards)

The player with the most points wins the game. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most postcards sent.

My thoughts on the game

I’ve been traveling a lot this year, and I think as a result, I have had great experiences with travel themed games as they remind me of such great experiences.  Postcards takes players on a tour of France, and the sumptuous art on the postcards really does create such a great visual experience for the players.

The possible actions on each turn are quite simple, and you’ll have to try to maximize your 3 cards on each turn.  You’re limited somewhat by the selection in your hand, but generally you’ll have plenty of valid choices – it’s just a matter of figuring out which one is best for you.  There are a number of things to consider: your itinerary, the types of souvenirs on your current postcards (as the extra actions gained from placing camps in those icons can be huge), the cards you happen to have in your hand, etc.

I’d definitely remind players to pay attention to the locations on their itinerary card.  In this cozy game, most of the actions slowly but surely move players towards the goal of sending off a postcard, so this bonus can be a big determinant of success.   As the game ends when a player sends their fourth postcard, you don’t have a lot of leeway for extra cards.

That being said, the postcards that require more stamps definitely pay off with a higher VP reward than those with fewer stamps – and you might be able to overcome some of the itinerary bonus if you’re able to stay local and use fewer actions moving around the board and instead gathering stamps and mailing off more valuable postcards. Additionally, if you’re lucky with the gift cards, you might be able to get enough extra VP from quickly sent low-value postcards; but in my experience, this is an unlikely scenario.

The artwork is really amazing, and as I mentioned, it definitely adds to the thematic feel of the game.  The only component issue that we had was with the standees.  It definitely makes sense to have the bikes represent the travelers, but they unfortunately obscured the view of the board and the types of camps in each region.  Our group decided to use the flat score markers on the board and use the bikes as oversized score markers to allow us to more easily play the game. 

I would definitely classify this as a “cozy game”.  The game mechanics are simple, and the rules are easy to understand.  There are admittedly no new groundbreaking game mechanisms here, but all of the familiar pieces here work together so well.  Given my current love for travel themed games, this will surely remain in the collection and come back out when I want to relive some of my previous travels to France.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Doug G (Garrett’s Games Podcast): Shelley and I enjoyed this one, and agree wholeheartedly with Dale’s comment about the amazing artwork. The game does have a ‘cozy’ feel and everything works well. That said, I think there are other travel-related games that we have enjoyed more (the recent Abroad from Portal and 1 More Time Games comes to mind). We discussed it on Episode 1028 of our audio podcast, and on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/NpgwN62okGA

Mark Jackson: I’ve enjoyed this both as a two player game AND as a solo game… for many of the same reasons as Dale & Doug. It’s not going to set the gaming world on fire – but it really is a “cozy game” with enough meat on the bones to make it enjoyable for gamers.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4wh4iVY