Summary
š„ a game for 1 to 4 players
ā³ Play time is 40 – 80 minutes
š¢ Publisher is Bad Comet
Introduction
Step into a world full of fantastic creatures! š As an admirer and lover of magical creatures, you are at the beginning of an adventure to build the world’s most impressive creature sanctuary. In Wondrous Creatures, you combine unique worker placement with an engaging hexagon puzzle. Each worker you deploy affects the icons around them, collecting resources, cards and activating special effects. As the game progresses, powerful new effects appear on the map.
Use your creativity to create ultimate combos and get carried away in this magical world! šāØ
Let’s get in on the table
All players have one turn each, clockwise, until the end of the game. You may perform 1 Basic Action out of 4 Basic Actions during your turn.
Action 1 Place a Crew Member; Select a Crew Member from your Player Board and place it on the Card. If a Crew Member is placed on a Hex with an egg, pick up the egg and place it on your Player Board. Collected eggs are placed in number order on the Player Board. Egg Storage Reward: If a reward is shown on the spot where an egg is to be placed, receive the reward immediately. The placed Crew member interacts with all adjacent Habitats. From each adjacent Habitat you get a corresponding resource or a Creature card with the corresponding Habitat Icon from the Wilderness. When you obtain a resource from an adjacent Habitat, move the corresponding Resource Follower 1 space to the right.
When obtaining a Creature card from an adjacent Habitat, take 1 Creature card from the Wilderness with the corresponding Habitat Icon and add it to your hand.
From one Habitat, you can only obtain 1 resource or 1 Creature Cards. You cannot obtain both from 1 Habitat.
Action 2 Play 1 or 2 cards; You can play up to 2 Creature cards from your hand to your reserve.
A Creature card you obtain through the āPlace a Crew Memberā action is not yet a Creature you collect in your reserve. You must play the card by paying the cost required by each creature as food. Only cards played this way are treated as Creatures collected in reserve, and only then can you use the Creature’s abilities.
Select a Creature Card from your hand to play and pay the cost listed on card, after this place the card at your game board. If you have played an Energy Card, take the number of energies listed on the card from the supply and place it on the card.
Depending on the type of card you place, the card effect can be activated as soon as you play this card or at any other time, e.g. during rest or at the end of the game.
You can play a maximum of 2 cards during this action. If you play a second card, repeat these steps.
Action 3 Complete an achievement; If you meet the conditions on an achievement card,
you can complete the achievement. To get a high score, it is important to complete achievements that fit your strategy faster than the other players. Select an achievement marker from your player board and place it on the card. You can get max 6 achievements.
Each target space can only occupy 1 marker. Players who later fulfill the conditions for an achievement cannot place their marker in a space already occupied by another player’s marker.
Let op: Je kunt elke prestatie maar Ć©Ć©n keer voltooien!
Hatching used eggs: If you have used eggs to complete an achievement, you must hatch all used eggs. Hatched eggs cannot be used to complete other achievements until you can turn them over with an action on e.g. a card.
Achieve a Trophy: Take 1 trophy from the main board and place it next to your player board.
Unlock your captain ability: Once you complete your first achievement, your captain ability is unlocked. Remove the lock token from your captain board to indicate that the captain skill is now accessible.
Action 4 Recharge; The recharge action can only be performed if all 3 of your crew members are on the map. If your 3 crew members are on the map and there are no more basic actions you can or want to perform, bring your 3 crew members back to your player board to reload.
Advance the Time Tracker one space to the right, if there is a Time Token on the advanced space, check the token and place Eggs on the Map. If there is an icon on the newly advanced space, perform the
icon’s effect immediately for example, you receive a Butterfly Net, Full Sweep of the Market or Remove 1 Trophy from the Main Board.
Discard cards from your hand if you have more than 5 cards in hand.
Activate all recharge cards in your reserve in the desired order
Free actions
Players can perform as many free actions as they want during their turn. Free Actions can be performed before, after and even during a basic action.
There are 2 Free Actions to choose from;
Use a Butterfly Net; At any time during your turn, you can use your Butterfly Nets to
obtain an adjacent egg or to activate a special effect icon in an adjacent habitat. You may use multiple Butterfly Nets in one turn; after use, they go back to the supply.
Butterfly Nets can be obtained through various in-game rewards such as the score track, achievement marker rewards, captain skills, Habitat and Creature Card skills. When you purchase a butterfly net, you take 1 from the supply and place it on the player board.
You may have a maximum of 3 butterfly nets, if you can receive more you get 1 VP instead of a butterfly net.
Use an Energy token from a card; At any time during your turn you may discard one of your Energy tokens to activate the ability of that card.
Solo gaming
In solo mode, you fight against āTingent,ā an AI opponent. Tingent does not need a player board, captain board, butterfly net, castle token or resources. In addition, Tingent does not receive creature cards at the beginning of the game.
Set up the game for 2 players except:
- Place 8 trophies on the main board instead of 10;
Choose your captain and crew members;
Determine the difficulty level of Tingent you want to challenge, take the corresponding difficulty Tingent board and place it near you; Shuffle all Tingent cards and make a pile of them, place them next to the chosen Tingent board.
Place a turquoise Tingent target tile on the leftmost single-species achievement card, a yellow target tile on the leftmost multi-species achievement card and a brown target tile on the leftmost main achievement card;
Choose a color for Tingent and grab the parts that match the chosen color. Take 2 crew members (1 magnet, 1 regular) and place them next to the Tingent board as well and place the captain on the crew member.
Take 6 achievement markers and place them next to the Tingent board;
Take 1 Resource Finder and place it on the first space of the Tingent board. In solo mode, this resource tracker becomes the Tingent tracker.
Take 1 score tracker and place it on the boat icon near the score track;
You become the first Player and start the game!
Your goal is to finish with a higher score than Tingent at the end of the game. You and Tingent take turns playing until the end of the game.
When it is Tingent’s turn, the following steps are performed:
Draw a Tingent card: draw a card from the deck and place it face up on top of the previously drawn card.
Activate the Tingent card: depending on the location of the Tingent tracker, activate the yellow or brown field on the Tingent card.
Move the Tingent tracker: if there is a red gear icon in the center of the Tingent card, move the Tingent tracker on the Tingent board to the next field. If there is an icon on the advanced field, the effect of the track icon is immediately executed. As soon as the track tracker lands on the first brown gear field of the Tingent board, immediately shuffle all Tingent cards and turn them over brown side up. From the next turn, when the Tingent cards are drawn, activate the brown area of the cards, not the yellow.
The game ends once all the trophies are distributed, if you are the last to take a trophy, Tingent may take his last turn and the game ends. If Tingent plays the last trophy, the game ends immediately.
After the game ends, you calculate your score in the same way. Tingent’s score is calculated in the following order.
Depending on the difficulty level you played, Tinget gets VPs for each open card collected.
- Lazy Tigent: 1 VPs
- Easygoing Tingent: 2 VPs
- Wild/Terrifying Tingent: 3 VPs
Tingent does not activate the end card to gain VPs, but scores 5 VPs per end card.
- Ending Scores of all face-up cards in Tingent Area.
- Ending Scores of Tingentās completed Achievement slots.
- 3 VPs per Trophy.
- 1 VP per Egg collected.
The Game Ends
Once the last trophy is taken from the main board, the remaining players take one more turn. The player with the highest score wins.
When the game is over, you get points for:
- 1 VP for every 4 resources and/or Butterfly Nets.
- End Card Scores in your reserve.
- Ending Scores of all Creature Cards in your reserve.
- Ending Scores of all your completed Achievement Slots.
- 3 VPs per Trophy.
If you score more than 50 or 100 VP, take a score token and place it next to your player board with the 50-side up. Turn the token over to the other side if you score more than 100 VP.
Conclusie & eindscore
Difficulty: 3.00/ 5
Re-playability: 8
Our score: 9 out of 10 dice
The game looks really great including the wooden meeples with a magnet on which you place your captain is genius! The game has a good replayability especially because of the different cards that look different every time, the different captain you can choose and especially if you also have the expansion which allows you to play the game just a little bit differently.
Playing goes very smoothly, because during your turn you only have a few actions to choose from and also because you only have three meeples to place on the board the game runs pretty well. The only thing is that with a larger game group of four players the game can take a bit longer and there can also be a bit more Downtown, especially that playing time can still scare some players. We ourselves did not notice this at all and found it a very nice game to have on the table both solo and with multiple players. The first time I saw this game I had to think of Everdell, it really has nothing to do with it, but the cute meeples, the captains and the super nice artwork gave me this feeling.
Still something keeps gnawing because we also noticed that the game does have a huge luck factor, don’t pick up the right cards even though you can pack a huge amount of cards here during the game and take them back into your hand if you just don’t manage to build up a motor, your opponent can be hugely out of the game in terms of scoring. This did not happen very often, but it did make this feel like a downside of the game. The fun part, receiving eggs and using them again for other actions or for points does make it a lot of fun. Set collection is very present in this game and you can collect four different types of cards and also in this you would like to place something of each type of card around your player board during the game. After all, this can earn you something immediately between rounds or at the end of the game.
As you can see, the game contains different mechanism and that makes it a very fun game. The game rules are not difficult at all. You can play the game fairly quickly. Only you will have to learn the cards, but you can get used to it during the game. Also obtaining resources is not a problem in this game so you can perform different actions over and over again.
Wondrous Creatures is a somewhat heavier game but the actions you can perform are really simple! It’s a matter of getting to know the cards well for a while but you’ll soon manage that during the first game. If you don’t mind spending a little more time at the table, then this one is really recommended!
Thanks to Bad Comet for this review copy and the opportunity to write aboutĀ thisĀ game. In this review we also showed you the deluxe edition, that’s included with golden trophies, wooden tokens and expansions with creatures, captains and cards.
