Upland & Prairie

• Designer: Peer Sylvester
• Publisher: Osprey Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 15-25 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Race to rewild the land in this quick and charming strategy game. Return species to their native environments, from the Eurasian Lynx to the Burrowing Owl, as you create vital routes between habitats in a shared landscape.  Choose to play in two distinct biomes: the lush Scottish uplands and the windswept shortgrass prairie of Montana, each with their own set of animals to rewild. Secretly champion one species, balancing which animals to release and which to hold back, as you work to restore the eco-system and guide the return of wild, thriving nature.

To start, decide which side of the map tiles you’re going to play with – there are slightly different rules for the Upland Side and the Prairie Side.   For the purposes of this review, I’ll use the Upland rules for the rest of the explanation.  Generate the map based on the player count; making sure that the paired goals are opposite each other.  Each player takes a screen and then draws 2 random animal discs from the bag to hide behind that screen.  Put 4 rewilding discs into the bag and then place 1 on the first space of the rewilding tracker.

On a turn, the player draws 3 discs out of the bag then secretly puts one back into the bag and one behind their screen.  The last disc is placed on the map – this one is obviously visible to all players.  Discs cannot be placed on impassable spaces nor on goal spaces.  Additionally, map spaces have a disc limit; initially one, but it will grow as rewilding occurs.  Each time a rewilding disc is drawn from the bag, it is placed onto the tracker, and this can increase the disc limit on a space.  A new disc is drawn to replace it.

The game ends immediately if one of the two game end criteria are met: either one animal type has an unbroken path between the two paired goals OR one animal type connects all three triple goals.  Players now reveal the animal discs behind their screens.  The winner is the player who has the most discs matching the color of the winning path. Ties broken in favor of the next player in turn order should the game continue.

The game also ends if there are fewer than 3 discs in the bag at the start of a player’s turn.  At this point, the player with the most sets of all three animals is the winner.

My thoughts on the game

So this is a new Peer Sylvester design from Osprey.  Back in the day, when I was just cutting my teeth in Eurogames, Peer was one of my favorite designers.  It’s been awhile since I’ve played one of his – this one is a tactical game of building paths on a map.  Peer has always been able to make very interesting games, and I was very interested to see how this one would play out. 

The central idea here is that the player with the most of the connected color wins.  Of course, unless you are particularly good at drawing pairs of that color, each time that you play the color to the board, you’re likely not keeping one to score.  And, if you’re keeping that color to score, you might be playing a different color to the board.

If the bag is emptied before a goal is met, then you want the most diversity – as the player with the most sets of the three colors wins; but so far in our games, it seems like this isn’t going to happen that often.  While the game looks like it will play long, I’ve yet to have a game go longer than 15 minutes!  The board ends up being smaller than it looks, and it really doesn’t take too many discs to make a connection for one of the colors – especially with two options for a winning connection.  The only game that was slower to play out was one where the rewilding discs remained in the bag for awhile, so we were a bit locked in on our choices of where to play onto the board.

I also like the way that there are two different modular boards in the box, and you therefore get two different, though obviously still related.  The game(s) play quick enough that it’s likely that you will play one, and then flip the boards over to play the other version.  

When I say the game is quick, I mean it.  It’s one of those games that I wish maybe was a few turns longer because it feels like it’s hard to really come up with a good strategy before the endgame is near. Yet, all players are restricted by the same brevity, so I guess that I just have to adapt to the conditions and learn how to play better/faster!  

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor