LogFAQs > #985708442

#18: Wild Realms
My Score: 4.0
BGG Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/347587/wild-realms

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This was one of the first games I played at this convention, and I played it in the demo area. I played this 1v1 against the guy giving the demo and honestly I was not impressed.

The goal of the game is the be the first one with four closed habitats (Each player starts with one closed habitat of a different type). A closed habitat requires having the appropriate habitat card (I believe its something like ocean, forest, fire and air), an animal for each of the five symbols of which one is a leader.

The basics behind this game is you are drawing up to 5 animal cards each turn, placing them freely on either a habitat that you have the card for or your bench. You can then use your bench to attack another players habitat if you have a leader on your bench. To attack, the color of the creature has to match the habitat it is attacking, then you can use any abilities the creature has and roll however many dice the card says and if you match the number on any of the creatures in that habitat (To clarify, each creature has a color, a symbol, a number, and possibly an ability) you can choose one to discard.

So I have a few issues with this game. The main one is that attacking generally just feels bad. You are using one of your cards to have a chance at discarding another players cards. At most its a one to one trade which is slightly beneficial because you are likely only attacking with symbols you don't need, but a lot of the time it just whiffs.

My next issue is that the cards are not balanced, some abilities are borderline useless or super situational (I had one that discards all off an opponents fish, but since it only can attack one habitat and he had no fish in that habitat it was basically useless) while others are really strong (There's a rhino that makes an opponent shuffle all but one card in a habitat back into the deck, which is usually 2-3 cards).

I don't particular care for the color mechanic. In a 1v1 both players start with one realm closed, so 1/4th of my cards can't attack from the get-go. You also have to draw each of the three habitat cards you don't start with, which I could easily see being super frustrating if you dont draw one while someone else draws them all from the get go.

There's also a legendary creature mechanic which is fine but you have to draw the card to trigger it, and there was only one drawn in my entire game so it was rare enough to not be a huge factor. And another mechanic called a realm battle where you can have a closed realm attack another and it is basically just dice rolling until someone loses (The guy did say this was largely disliked and they are changing it in the next version so I won't hold it against them).

I will say the art is nice and cool, but the game just had too many things that feel bad. Attacking generally feels bad, not drawing what you need feels bad, not drawing a habitat you need feels bad, drawing a habitat you already have feels bad, being on the receiving end of a super strong card feels bad, being on the receiving end of a situational card that you didn't know about feels bad.

I will say the games not super long so it's not the end of the world, and some of these issues would be lessened with four players (BGG has 2 players as the best for some reason which I can't see how it's true). But honestly I don't really see enough potential even with 4 players for this to be worth playing over something else.

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Likely to Trend*: Slightly Upward
Future: Would likely not play again

(Likely to Trend means basically what I think the game score has potential to go to if I give it another chance. In this case I could see it maybe going up to a 4.5 or even a 5 if I played it with 4 players.)