• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Ravensburger
• Players: 2 – 4
• Ages: 10+
• Time: 30-60 minutes
• Times Played: 5 (with 2, 3, 4 players)

Wettlauf nach El Dorado (Race to El Dorado, or simply El Dorado) is a new game from Reiner Knizia, the famed German designer of classics such as Tigris and Euphrates, Ra, Ingenious, Keltis, and Lost Cities. El Dorado is currently nominated for the 2017 Spiel des Jahres, where it faces Kingdomino and Magic Maze for the coveted German Game of the Year prize. At heart, El Dorado is a streamlined deck-building game in which players use cards to race across a modular map. The game is excellent–charming, simple but deep, and expandable. I’ve enjoyed it with gamers and family alike and expect it to have a good shot at winning the Spiel.

Walkthrough

El Dorado is … Dominion with a map. In brief, players start out with a small deck of cards that allow them to move forward on a map, and to purchase better cards. The goal is to be the first to reach the fabled City of Gold.

The board consists of large hex-shaped tiles, made up of smaller hex-shaped spaces of several varieties. Most of the spaces have a movement cost associated with them, indicated on the space. Green spaces have one, two, or three machetes on them, blue spaces have one, two, or three paddles on them, and gold spaces have one to four coins on them. To move onto these spaces, players must play a card with at least that many matching symbols. The cards can’t be added–that is, to move onto a space with three machetes you must play a single card with at least three machetes. If the card played exceeds the cost required to access the space, the “left over” symbols on the card may be used to move onto additional spaces. The large tiles are separated by smaller “obstacle” tiles with a movement cost, paid like other spaces, with the payor collecting the obstacle to be used as an end-game tiebreaker if needed. Players cannot move onto spaces with other players, creating the potential to block each other in tight areas of the map.

Some of the spaces require you discard a card rather than matching symbols (boulders), some are impassable (mountains), and some require you trash cards (basecamps). (I’ll resist a “trashing the camp” pun from Disney’s Tarzan movie.) The tiles are cleverly set up to create interesting situations in the suggested maps. For example, the penultimate tile on the introductory map has a range of mountains that spans much of the tile, with a “trash three” camp in the middle and a difficult water territory on the other side. Do you try to work through the water, or give up three cards in the middle of the tile? Does it depend on what other people are trying to do? Continue reading →

Sheep ‘n’ Sheep

• Designer  Hisashi Hayashi
• Artist Ryo Nyamo
• Publisher Okazu Brand
• Players 2-4
• Time 20-30 min

Sheep ‘n’ Sheep is one of the new card games from the prolific Hisashi Hayashi and Ryo Nyamo. It’s deceptive simple and cute appearance belies a sharp drafting and placement game.  

The cards come in 6 colors and have icons which are easily understood. Each suite of cards also has numbers 1-5. The primary information on the card gives a VP value and a symbol showing the number of same color cards in a grouping required to score it. For example, the 8 VP card requires that I have exactly 4 grey cards placed orthogonally adjacent in a group to score at the game end. Green card icons allow the drawing of an additional card. Players can score additional points for having the most heart or star icons or connected bell icon at game end as well. Each 1 VP icon adds a VP.  Finally the number of cards in the height and width of the pasture are totaled and subtracted from the score. The winner has the most VP.

To play, on a turn player may draft one group of two cards from the display or place card(s) in their pasture. When playing cards into the pasture any number of cards with the same number or cards numbered in contiguous ascending or descending order. These cards must be placed in the pasture next to an existing card there which fits the pattern.

The game end is triggered when the display can no longer be filled. The round is finished and each player gets a final action. 

My thoughts:  Fantastic little filler that works well at two players or more. I like it because you must account for so many things when drafting, all the different ways to score as well as hindering your opponent. Also trying to maximize placement is not as easy as it sounds. I love tile placement games and this one is portable and challenging.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers:

Joe Huber (4 plays): While I’ve enjoyed most of Hayashi’s larger designs, his smaller games have been hit-or-miss with me.  Still, it’s been a high enough hit rate that I was happy to take a chance on the game.  And I’ve been very pleased with it so far.  There is plenty of room for clever play, both in placement for scoring and in placement for maximizing options for future play.  As Lorna notes, it plays well with two and as a multiplayer game, increasing the opportunities to get it to the table.  I need to play it more to know it’s long-term fate for me, but for now I like it, and am looking forward to playing it more.

Just a brief note to spread the word that the Spielfrieks user group has started the two-week process of conducting the Meeples Choice Awards, in which we select our three favorite games of last year.  Right now, we’re choosing our 25 nominated games.  Next week, we will weed those nominees down to the three winning designs.  If you’re a member of Spielfrieks, please head over to the Yahoo User Group to place your votes.  If you’re not a member, but would like to help us with this most sacred of responsibilities, all you have to do is send an email to spielfrieks-owner@yahoogroups.com and you will be signed up and ready to join us.  I’m looking forward to a fun two weeks of voting!

Kerala

• Designer: Kirsten Hiese
• Players: 2-5
• Ages: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Times played: 4, with review copy provided by Thames&Kosmos

Kerala is the name of one of the provinces of India which is well known for its elephant sanctuaries.  In the game Kerala, players try to collect and arrange colored elephant tiles to make the most magnificent fairground (i.e. personal tableau of tiles). Continue reading →