played for you

Sandcastles

Crabs versus buckets versus seagulls

Sandcastles at the beach – you try to complete as many as you can before the Big Wave arrives.

At the start you are dealt three cards, three more cards are on display and the Big Wave tile is shuffled into the bottom ten cards of the stack. Bonuses for the current game are prepared from the separate stack of bonus cards.

The active player can begin a new sandcastle or add to an incomplete castle; you can have several incomplete castles laid out. Or you can attack another player’s castle or swap a card with one from the three on display. To build you put down a tile to begin a new castle or add one to a castle, adjacent edges must correspond. Crabs, buckets and seagulls can be included in a castle; buckets and crabs only at the lowest level, seagulls can cover other cards, walls must be connected. You use those elements also to attack another castle – take care, a castle cannot be split by an attack! – and they attack following the rock-scissor-paper mechanism: Crab beats bucket beats seagull beats crab. When a player cannot defeat an attack with a suitable card, he loses the attacked card, which must be added to the castle of the attacker instantly. His attacking card is added to his scoring cards.

A completed castle is checked for possible bonuses – highest tower of seagulls or greatest area etc. – and then the tiles of the completed castle are set aside for scoring. When the wave appears, you add up your points from completed castles, attacks and bonuses.

This is a good mix of standard mechanisms, attack and the necessity to immediately incorporate an attacked tile are nice details. A nice game for the beach!

Players: 1-7

Age: 6+

Time: 30+

Designer: Andrew Harman

Artist: Andrew Harman

Price: ca. 20 Euro

Publisher: YAY Games 2015

Web: www.yaygames.uk

Genre: Place tile, complete castles

Users: For families

Special: Many players

Version: en

Rules: en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Nice mix of mechanisms

Good Family game

Cute attack/defense mechanisms

Compares to:

Carcassonne and other placement games about completed areas+

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0