LogFAQs > #985737344

That's the basic gist of all the rules. I will say I don't hate this game, but I just feel like everything doesn't mesh well together. It feels to me like they made the card dancing part and then designed a board to make use of it. I'm going to start with my negatives and I will end on a positive note this time.

As someone who generally enjoys deck builders, I do not consider this a deck builder. There are two reasons for this: you have no actual deck, every card is either on the board or in your hand. And more importantly, you start with 6 cards and can draft a total of 4 more during the game. That's right you will end the game with 10 or fewer cards.

Perhaps my biggest complaint is centered around this. Each player starts with a different deck which kind of almost forces you to go down that path. For example I was very heavy on the wood, and had a ton of wood generation but not many options to get berries. I wouldn't be surprised if its found that some starting decks are just better than others.

The second part of this complaint is drafting a new card doesn't feel great. You get to pick from one of the five on the board and I ran into multiple situations where there was nobody I wanted so I held off on building a building so I didn't have to choose one. I think I was generally happy with 1 of the four guys I drafted, 1 was good, and I don't think I even played the other two I got. It just didn't feel good and I've read a review about someone getting in a stalemate where nobody would take any of the cards on the board. Only drafting 4 cards also doesn't give you a ton of flexibility to adapt. And some cards are super situational (For example there's a card that lets you take a resource off of another players card, but we only saw one card that actually put resources on itself)

Drafting the bonus cards feels similar, sometimes there's nothing up there that helps you, or its too late to make feasible. Early on taking one felt like guessing, late it felt like hoping something was there you already had done. It didn't feel too bad in the middle game cause you can pivot but at points it gave the thing I'm not huge on of "I don't want any of this so let me look at what everyone else has and deny them it' which I feel just slows a game down.

I also don't like how the Victory tiles are handled. Only the last person getting something means nobody wants to do the second to last action so it creates a stalemate unless you get the rare combo that lets you do the thing twice in one turn. For clearings if it was whoever has the most buildings in a clearing or for the banner track whoever has killed the most monsters I think it would be a lot better.

Ambiguity between the resource and the symbol is also another minor complaint. A big case of this was on the animal tracks on the top, we weren't sure if those meant get another resource of the type or it counts as a symbol on your board. I think they should have had a colored border or something around them to make it a lot more clear.

Getting resources vs storage limits and spending them also felt off. It was super easy to generate your primary resource, but generally a lot harder to generate other resources or use them. Storage limit also felt low even after upgraded, I could easily generate 10 resources in a slide action if not more, but only store 12 total.

Moving/Monsters also kind of felt tacked on, I wasn't a huge fan of it but it's not a huge deal. I feel like it should have probably just been move lets you move one space rather than move one space per foot.

Time wise it ran a little long and I think bgg recommends 3 which I think makes sense for this.

Now onto some positives. I like the card dancing concept itself, it has some interesting choices. The upgrades on your board largely feel meaningful, more symbols is great, the spaces on the right column have some great actions (including a Build action space which is imo insanely important) and I like the idea of spaces having unique things when uncovered or when played on.

I like how the 4 animal tracks on the top can be done in any order (still left to right for each track) which gives you some flexibility. For instance if I don't like any card choices I just choose a different track for now and wait. (I don't like how the first of each track is the draft though which means your first building you HAVE to take a card).

Art is great, bonus cards are pretty well done and varied.

Overall it's not a terrible game with some interesting ideas. I'd rather play Viscounts of the West Kingdom, it's "card dancing" is a lot simpler but I think that works in its favor. I would love to see a game implement this style of card dancing again with a better rest of the game to go along with it. Or maybe one that's more pure and literally just about the card dancing with no man board, i.e. a Dominion of card dancing. But as it is its simply a game I wish I liked more, and am not quite sure why it's rated so high on bgg.

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Likely to Trend: Slightly Upward
Future: Would try again if someone wanted to, but won't go out of my way for it

Next Game Hint: This game reminds me of azul in that your competing with the other players for colored tokens. Also it's only two years old and there's already a newer game with the same name as it.