Blue Orange | Planet | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2-4 Players | 30 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

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. 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. 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. The set contains: Resources organizer, 2 card trays, Players' component organizer and Scorepad container. 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.

Mission: Red Planet - Fantasy Flight Games Mission: Red Planet - Fantasy Flight Games

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. 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: 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. Tile-laying games appear to be growing in popularity at the moment. This is the latest such game from Blue Orange games. 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.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. You begin the game with a secret mission to carry out on the Red Planet, and you may gain another mission in the course of the game. It might entail controlling all of Mars’s southern hemisphere, stationing at least one astronaut in every zone, or amassing heaps of sylvanite, celerium, and ice. Other players won't know for certain what your secret mission is until the end of the game. The more subtly you can work towards it, the less chance there is of your opponents guessing your agenda and working to sabotage your efforts. 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.

ISS Vanguard by Awaken Realms - Gamefound ISS Vanguard by Awaken Realms - Gamefound

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. 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 EndTerraforming 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. In Mission: Red Planet, two to six players compete to occupy Mars and mine its celerium, sylvanite, and ice. You earn points from not only harvesting ores and ice, but also from completing a secret mission, which may involve controlling specific zones of the planet or amassing a certain type of ore. Whoever has the most points at the end of ten rounds wins. 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.