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Reef

Patterns in coral reefs!

Coral reefs grow and form patterns! Coral pieces in four colors and point tokens are in stock. You begin with three point tokens value 1 and two cards plus a player board and one coral of each color which are placed on the middle cases of your board. Three cards are displayed as open stock; cards show corals that you take in their top half and patters that you can score in their bottom half.

As the active player you have turn options: 1. Take a card from the display – maybe with markers – or from the stack; if you take it from stack, you must put a value 1 token on the card with the lowest number in the display. Or 2., play a card to expand your reef and/or score a pattern. You take the corals depicted in the top half and put them on your board, on empty cases or on top of a coral or a coral stack, up to maximum height of 4. Then you check for the pattern in the bottom half, in all orientations when looking at the board from above. When the pattern on the card shows no numbers, the level of a coral does not matter as long as it is the top one. When the pattern shows corals with numbers, however, the coral must be the top one in this level to count towards a pattern for scoring. When patterns are visible more than once, you also score them that many times.

First tiles, now corals – Reef impressively continues the series that was begun with Azul; components and visuals are marvelous; the mechanism, however, is much more chance-driven and planning ahead is difficult, and it plays like a multiplayer solitaire game. All in all, an ideal introduction, with a lovely topic, to the genre of abstract games.

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 30-45+

Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi

Artist: Chris Quilliams

Price: ca. 35 Euro

Publisher: Next Move / Plan B Games / Pegasus Spiels 2018

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Pattern formation

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: cn de en es fr it nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Very beautiful components and design

Simple rules

Very much chance-driven

Compares to:

Abstract games with pattern formation on several levels

Other editions:

Broadway Toys (cn), Next Move (en fr nl), Ghenos Games (it), Asmodee/Next Move (es)

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0