I’ll start off by doing what I liked about this game. It had very indepth tactics and fun play styles right from when you drew your template card. Drawing the rolling the dice I found very fun and I enjoyed how theres a benefit to going last, first or somewhere in the middle every turn. The tool cards really shook up the play of the game and the boards felt very immersive. Towards the end of the game is where things get very tactical and difficult, with lots of people backstabbing each other and the tool cards really coming in to play. But the end is sort of what I didn’t like about the game. It got very technical and all previous decisions you ended up regretting. You ended up kicking yourself multiple times and the game grew frustrating. But that’s whats also made the game very interesting, and I liked the forward-thinking aspect.
In the balance of luck and skill to make a great board-game, this was slightly too much skill for my liking. It was like azul but with an added layer of complexity in the numbers and not being able to place anything similar next to something of the same number or colour. We found that if there was a bad tool card draw then the game became very difficult. I liked the use of objectives that added another layer of thought but again, they just bumped up the complexity even further.
I would definitely recommend this game to more experienced gamers over newer gamers, as it acts a bit like an expansion to Azul. Overall I give this game an 8/10 for very interesting game gameplay
