This game appeared on my radar just before leaving for Spiel '23, as it was a late addition to the preview list, but the description intrigued me enough to put it high on my want-to-try list. The designer Piotr brought an advanced prototype copy to Spiel (only the art on the cards is placeholder). We got to squeeze in a few rounds between lunch and the meet-up at the math trade, so unfortunately we couldn’t do the whole demo of 6 rounds (a complete game lasts 12 rounds), but even after 4 rounds or so I got a feel of the game and I like what I saw and played.

Tableau building

In this game, players build a tableau with 2 rows of 6 action cards. Each turn, the active player rolls two dice which determine which action in each row all players get to activate. Your tableau starts out with basic actions, but as the game progresses you will buy more powerful action cards to be more fitting to your strategy. Most of the action cards give you resources like cows, money and cowboys. But there are also some icons on the cards - if you manage to trigger two cards with the same icon, you get a bonus action! So that's another thing to keep in mind as you build your tableau. Cards come in three types, each with a separate market row: production cards, which are the most basic cards: they have one icon on them, and give you some resources; animal cards, which give some end game scoring and often have a wild symbol for even more combo opportunities, and building cards, which have 2 symbols and give more vp at game end.

You mark the actions you took with cubes – if a die roll would trigger an action you already triggered in a previous turn, you move on to the next available action. You remove the cubes when all actions have been taken and all your actions become available again. If you manage to trigger a few bonus actions (with the aforementioned icon combo), you move through your 12 actions faster and that might be beneficial if you invested in some powerful actions. You can upgrade your actions even by overbuilding previously built (bought) cards, but only if that card slot hasn’t been activated in that round (so there is no cube on the current card). This seems cool, because it allows you to use your brand new action asap, but on the other hand it might force you to overbuild an action card that you are not quite ready to give up on yet… Choices, in games as in life, are tough I tell you!

During the demo I quickly learned how important it is to get your economy up and running asap: you need different resources (coins, cows (which are also wild and can replace any other resource), cowboys) to do so many cool things with in this game, and if you can get those expensive building cards in your tableau, you will get even better rewards and end game vp! On top of that, the game has some asymmetry as each player board has affinity with one specific icon in the game – at the end of the game you will get vp for all these icons in your tableau. But this isn’t deterministic, as you can change that favored icon with a certificate in the course of the game.

Speaking of victory points: I love how the vp track, that borders the “map” on the central board, is integrated in the gameplay: as you move along the vp track, you will get access to new regions you can interact with as long as your meeple on the vp track is adjacent to that region. Towns in a region have an end-game scoring mechanism where you get points depending on the number of discs you have placed there over the course of the game. To put down your disc in a town, you pay a combination of resources. Also, some regions have bandits you can fight for glory - or pay off to leave you be on your merry way and try their luck with the next player who comes along. So it might be more beneficial for you to stall your progress on the vp track a bit to be the last player to have the opportunity to add (extra) influence tokens in a town, or maybe you want to rush to be the first player to face a group of bandits because the reward is just too sweet to leave up for grabs for your opponents.

Yeehaa, I love this game!

This is a decent medium weight game with familiar game mechanisms like tableau building and set collection, but it does manage to add a fun twist to those crowd favorites. It is fast-paced: we felt like rounds moved along at a brisk pace, we played 4 rounds with 3 players in less than 30 minutes. Of course as the game progresses and you get better cards with more/better combo options, you will get to do more stuff during your turn, which will also feel very rewarding as you keep building and upgrading your action tableau.

If you love tableau building and set collection, I really recommend keeping an eye out for this game, as it feels fresh and unique - I can’t wait to see the finished product and play a full game of this, so I will definitely be backing it!