All Roads

• Designer: Markus Kettunen
• Publisher: Lautapelit.fi
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 40 minutes (publisher says this should be corrected to 20 mins)

“Develop the surroundings of Rome by building houses, villas, spas, and monuments. Just make sure all roads lead to where they’re supposed to… All players get their own set of wooden buildings (houses, villas, spas, and monuments) and a stack of tiles, which they shuffle and draw four tiles from as their starting hand. On each turn, the players play two of their tiles on the table to build the area surrounding Rome (the starting tile) and draw two replacement tiles for their next turn. All tiles contain roads—some more than others. The goal is to build roads so that they are always connected to Rome while offering the players dead ends to build their houses on. Encircling areas with roads triggers the houses inside to be upgraded to villas or spas, depending on their location. Alternatively, players may create empty areas, encircled by roads, to erect monuments. The player with the fewest buildings left (by total value) at the end of the game is the winner.“

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Deities

• Designer: Gary Kim
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Mandoo Games

“You’re one of the ancient gods, revered and feared by a young civilization.  With your help, your people are going to thrive and prosper.  However, other gods also want their share of the glory.  Will you be able to surpass them and be the highest deity?”

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Reflecto

• Designer: Roberto Fraga
• Publisher: Mandoo Games
• Players: 2
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Mandoo Games

Roberto Fraga has a history of making games that use reflections as a main component of play (Princess Jing immediately comes to mind) – and in Reflecto, the idea is used in a word game.  According to the rules, the game is set in the seventh story of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen”.  After a long journey, Gerda found Kai alone in a frozen pond. The Snow Queen agrees to save him if Gerda solves a puzzle of matching frozen letters and words. In this game, players take on the roles of the Snow Queen and Gerda – trying to either complete their own word or guess what their opponents word is.

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• Salad Master
• Designer: Yu Miyazaki
• Publisher: Homosapiens Lab
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Homosapiens Lab at SPIEL 2022

Salad Master is a competitive game where players try to use their knowledge of the nutritional properties of different types of vegetables.  It is a companion game to Meat Master, which we looked at last week – which has players working with meat sources instead of plant sources.

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Garden Nation

• Designers: Nathalie and Remi Saunier
• Publisher: Bombyx
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 60-75 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Flat River Group

In Garden Nation, players take on the role of one of 4 factions of garden denizens; each working to have the most influence over the garden.  The garden itself is made up of 7 territories, in a familiar hex pattern, and each of those territories has 7 action spots, which mirror the orientation of the larger territories.  The territories are numbered, and they are randomly placed in the frame.  Each player gets a scoreboard, the building pieces in the matching color, and each is dealt 4 secret missions, of which they need to keep 2 different ones.  A display of 4 common projects is placed on the board. The torticrane is placed near the board; you will use it soon.  A starting player is chosen, that player starts their population counter at 38.  All other players start at 35.  The starting player places their turn order marker on the first spot of the turn order track, and the other players place theirs next to the track.  

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