Brettspiel-Reviews

Hans im Glück probably is my favourite publisher and I enjoy their midweight line of games. But Paleo is a disappointment. It’s a cooperative game that sets out tell a story in multiple episodes and fails to deliver.

Never during my two plays did I have a feeling of being a stone age human battling nature. I always saw it for a mechanical exercise of collecting enough symbols of a certain type to match the requirements for a round and ultimately fulfil the victory conditions.

The decision making is lacklustre. Choosing one of your first three cards to play in coordination with the other player(s) is more of a crapshoot than an interesting decision based on incomplete information. Choosing which card effects to use quickly becomes an unremarkable exercise in linear engine building. I have no interest to dive deeper and I’m honestly surprised by the exceptional rating of Paleo.

I barely played any boardgames in 2020 and for the first time in almost 15 years I didn’t follow the new releases closely. I noticed that Arnak was one of the hottest games of 2020 but never looked into it.

After my play, I understand its attraction and I like it. Each turn is an interesting puzzle how to make the most out of the situation at hand. There’s some interaction with the other players in terms of blocking a spot or reaching something first. But it’s on a level that can be expected from a typical modern euro. The theme shined through and elevated the game from an accumulation of well-known mechanisms like action selection and engine building.

I wouldn’t want to play it multiple times in short succession as I’m afraid the norm strategies are a bit too similar but I like to replay it occasionally as I enjoy a good puzzle from time to time.

I was prepared not to like Everdell given its massive overproduction, Kickstarter lineage and catering to everything which is popular nowadays on BGG. But I liked it although only on a good level of enjoyment, not outstanding as its rank indicates.

The tableau building is solid although a slow burner with not much happening in the first and second stage. But things snowball toward the end and the last turns can be a long chaining of cause and effects when having built a synergistic tableau.

The worker placement is tight, especially in the three-player game I played. Probably the best player count giving a good degree of turn-angst while the cards played to the tableau offer enough alternative options to get needed resources or perform actions if you miss out in the worker placement part.

One thing which I generally don’t like but which is all too present specifically in modern American games are take-that elements. Quite a few of the cards offer negative (as well as positive) effects targeted at a single other player. We didn’t use those too much, keeping Everdell a pleasant experience. I understand that those effects are considered to be a balancing feature but I rather have the game being balanced by the designer.

The single innovation which makes Everdell stand out from the crowd (beside the irrelevant 3D tree) is the way turns work. When you are done with your worker placement for a round, you choose to move to the next round. You will already perform turns in the next round while your competitors can still do turns in previous rounds. This is interesting while at the same time it can have the effect that you are already finished with the game while others continue to play. In our game, one player was finished while we continued to play for around 20-30 minutes (we were slow).