POLYNESIA

Passive aggression in the polynesian pacific

Peer Sylvester has been on a bit of a roll this year. Following the pastoral garden rivalry of Village Green and the long awaited second edition of The King is Dead (reviewed in issues 47 and 49 respectively), Sylvester is back with

Polynesia; a lean and beautifully produced game of route building in the Pacific.

Taking an already attractive theme in the form of the seafaring triumphs of ancient Polynesia, Sylvester takes things up a notch through the addition of an imminent volcanic explosion. Players will be attempting to save their tribes from this molten fate through the exploration of the vast Pacific seas, hoping to establish safe routes between distant islands. Along the way they will fish for resources and trade navigational knowledge with other tribes, in an effort to prosper in the wake of a natural disaster.

Gameplay involves players calculating the most efficient means of claiming the routes needed to transport their tribes to a variety of islands. But, to win, not only must they flee far enough from the main island, but also occupy valuable

Ludo Nova

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ Double sided map board

◗ 4 Personal boards

◗ 18 Tide cards

◗ 4 Player Aids

◗ 52 Tribe members

◗ 60 Boats

◗ 30 Fish

◗ 30 Shells

◗ 8 Resource tokens

◗ 14 Island tokens

◗ 10 Point tokens

◗ Starting player token

◗ Cloth bag

◗ Phase marker

◗ 10 Lava stones

Polynesia’s want

Lookout Games

With a delicate flutter, Piepmatz, a set-collecting bird game, lands on the gaming table as a surprise in both looks and gameplay. At first glance understated, its antique-like art style reveals more detail the longer you look. While the cards maintain the faded grey look throughout, it is the songbirds that really stand out. Piepmatz may not have the naturalistic level of detail of Wingspan, in drawings or information, but every card clearly holds a reference to the little songbird depicted on it.

Gameplay equally unfolds to reveal layers of detail unexpected for such a little game. There is the conventional part of the game: where players try to collect as many birds as possible of the same species, bird mating pairs and seed cards to score points at the end of the game. Yet in order to do that, they have to do something quite interesting. Birds gather around the bird feeder, but it has only a couple of spaces available, so more are waiting in line on the