SCOREPAD CONTAINER: A simple container adjusted to the Scorepad. Indentation facilitates taking it out. Even though the gameplay in Planet is very light, there is a lot of forward thinking that is required to win the game. As players can see all the cards laid out at the start of the game, you really have to start planning ahead for which ones you want to grab. The obvious choice is to go for animals matching your terrain type. The whole two birds with one stone thing. Yet the nice thing about the card mechanics is that it rewards you for collecting animals NOT matching your secret terrain type. This helps create some interesting situations where you clearly want to grab those snow cards to hit the bonus, but also want the other terrain for the extra VPs they grant. Overall the card art was pretty well done. On each turn, players will take turns to draft one tile from the pool of available tiles. Tiles are split into six zones which could each have a different terrain; mountains, ocean, forest, desert and ice. A tile could be 100% one terrain or have multiple types. When you place it onto your globe, you can place it anywhere, perhaps extending an existing zone of a particular terrain.

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In later rounds you will each compete over end of round cards which reward you with animals based on whether your planet is most well suited to their needs. Some animals want the largest zone of a single terrain next to another terrain type or not next to a specific terrain type. Others will go to the player with the most of a specific terrain. At the end of the game, points will be award for the different animals and the player with the most points wins. After round three players have the opportunity, each round, to add animals to their planet. Each animal has specific requirements as set out above. Players look at their globe to see if they meet the requirements of that animal and if they do they take the card and place it face up in front of them. If no player meets the requirements or there is a tie the animal gets moved under the next pile and is available to be claimed in the next round. The main draw in Planet has to be the 3D model players will be building on. It is definitely fun to hold and rotate, will be sure to turn the heads of people walking by. However, in practice, it ended up being a bit of a mixed bag. First, the magnets weren’t as strong as I would have liked. In one of our games, someone dropped their planet on the table accidentally and half of their magnets fell off. This pretty much ended the game right there as there was no way to remember where all the magnets were. Much stronger magnets would have helped alleviate situations like this. Each round cards will be awarded based on majorities. Starting in round 3, animals begin to appear. These cards are awarded via a simple majority mechanic—for example, whoever has the largest forest next to an ocean gets the card. These cards are worth 1-2 points at the end of the game. In the last (12th) round, if an animal card cannot be won by having the most of one kind of region, it is returned to the box. With both the other card scenarios if there is a tie, the players look at their second-biggest suitable habitat area and the winner takes the card. In the unlikely event of another tie, they look for a 3rd suitable habitat area. Game EndIt sounds complicated but the rules are easy to follow and the game is very straightforward to play. Which is a good indicator of a great game. Terraforming Mars marries a delightful science fiction setting with sophisticated strategy. It puts players at the head of the various corporations intent on terraforming the red planet, raising the oxygen and temperature to foster growth and ultimately create a second home for humanity. It’s a visually compelling space as the barren planet slowly begins to adapt to your will before capitulating entirely in the endgame. The final result is a surface teeming with life, not altogether foreign to the environment of Earth.

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Good Dungeon Masters are hard to find, and that’s part of the reason why Gloomhaven has proven to be so popular with fans of board games. Inside Gloomhaven’s nearly 20-pound box is an elaborate, branching narrative campaign set in a unique fantasy world. But the mechanics are what truly make this game spectacular. The set contains: Resources organizer, 2 card trays, Players' component organizer and Scorepad container. Second, it makes it difficult to see what you and other players have going on. There is a lot of asking people “how many mountains do you have” or rotating around to count your total oceans. Depending on how serious your players are in the game, this could be a non-issue or a majorly frustrating. While I think that the game would have functioned a bit better with just flat tiles on the table, it would have been much much less cool.If an animal card cannot be won due to a tie, or because no players have the correct habitat, it is placed in the column for the NEXT round. Tile-laying games appear to be growing in popularity at the moment. This is the latest such game from Blue Orange games. I think Planet is going to be a nice hit for Blue Orange Games’ core audience. As a family weight game, it not only has a cool 3D element that’s sure to be a crowd pleaser, but the rules are light enough that you can get it to the table with just about anyone. The only downside is that the magnets aren’t as strong as they should be. Updated September 3, 2023 by Via Erhard: Five-player adventures are some of the best of the board gaming universe since they're a blend of strategy and camaraderie. Some of these five-player board games will whisk players away to vivid worlds with complex ecosystems, allowing them to become guardians of nature or leaders in the wild. Others might plunge them into the intricate world of craftsmanship or have them decipher celestial patterns. Players can go on thrilling adventures while using their management skills and taking calculated risks.

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Splendor is the quintessential modern family game. Players take on the role of Renaissance gem merchants trying to collect various precious stones. But that’s not important. What you’re really doing is buying cards that help you buy even more cards, eventually grabbing ones worth a large number of points. It’s a simple game of either buying the card you want or reserving one that you can’t yet afford to keep someone else from grabbing it. All of this is supported brilliantly with a simple yet warm physical production of chunky plastic chips and well-illustrated cards. Planet is a 2-4 player game, designed by Urtis Sulinskas. In Planet players are trying to attract as many animals as possible to their planet. This is done by creating a planet with terrain which meets the animal’s requirements. Animals either require players to have the most of either one type of terrain touching another, one type of terrain which does not touch another or simply the most segments of one type of terrain. Every stage of a mining expedition to Mars boasts its challenges. Each ship can only hold a few passengers, and with so many astronauts headed towards Mars, you may need to resort to subterfuge and sabotage to launch your astronauts into space. Once landed, you could be forced to fight against other mining corporations for control of a zone. Your astronauts could be ruthlessly killed by another corporation, or you might need to eliminate a few astronauts yourself. You may find that a zone's deposits are rich beyond your expectations, or that they contain less ore than you hoped. No matter what, you’ll need to be wily to win the race for Mars’s resources. Planet is published by Blue Orange Games – a publisher well known for their great family games with high production value and Planet is no exception. The dodecahedron domes are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before in a board game and the big chunky magnetic sides are a joy to play with. Planet is a great choice for families and is certainly a game that will turn heads.RESOURCES ORGANIZER: It has 4 sections for: Biomass, Meteorites, Lifepods and Rovers. One organizer is dedicated for a half of resources, so 2 of them should be 3d printed. Thy can be placed on 2 sides of the table, so all players can reach for components easily. Set up is relatively straight forward. The magnetic terrain tiles are shuffled and placed into ten piles of five. Space needs to be left for additional piles at the end of the line although no tiles are placed there during set up. These piles will be populated by tiles discarded in earlier rounds. Each pile denotes a round of the game. For your gamer group, you can consider Planet to be a “super filler”. It’s got too big of a footprint to work as a pub/travel game, but the gameplay is light enough that you can play it in about 20 minutes. And at the end of the game, you really get a nice feeling of creating something when you look at your planet in all its 3D glory. Part of the appeal is that Crokinole has a presence much larger than the physical space it occupies. It feels like a full-fledged parlor game, akin to billiards. This is all due to that central majestic piece of hardware, which can be hung on the wall as a piece of folk art. Blue Orange Games seems to be carving out quite a name for themselves with their accessible line of family games. Kingdomino was a fantastic take on dominoes, and Photosynthesis was a mean little game with some pretty 3d trees. Both have made their way to my tabletop quite often.

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Add into that the secret objective card and the fact that you score less point for an animal that is from the same habitat as your habitat objective card, and you get a game that has a lot more depth to it than its appearance suggests.Like many of Blue Orange’s family games, the gameplay in Planet is easy to learn. The game plays out over 12 rounds, with each player drafting a terrain tile each round. Tiles are made up of a variety of terrain types (snow, ocean, forest, etc…) and after being selected, a tile is magnetically attached to a player’s globe. The 5 player count also ensures that more competitive games remain fierce and balanced, with no clear decisive sides forming due to the odd number of players. With so many games to choose from, here are some board games that shine for 5 players. Finally, overall I think the art in Planet is pretty good. The animal art is nicely done on the cards and the box cover looks great. My only quibble is with the terrain art on the magnet tiles. In general, it feels a little generic and I would have liked to see a bit more variety with a more rendered look. In comparison to the other art in the game, the tile art feels a bit mailed in. Final Thoughts: The Planet board game ends after the 12th round; when the player’s planets are fully covered and the last animal cards have been won. Each player then randomly draws a secret objective card. The cards each have a different type of terrain and if a player obtains enough terrain segments of that type they will gain points. Players should be aware that they will need different numbers of segments to score points for different types of terrain; this is linked to the frequency with which they occur in the game.