Matthew BaileyToday, we are going to be looking at “Chomp,” a very easy-to-understand tile-laying game produced by All-Play (formerly Boardgametable.com) in their small box range. Played with Jack (.8.) and Toby (5).
The general concept of the game is that you are drawing tiles and laying them by overlapping or placing them next to each other in a way that scores you the most points at the end of the game.
You set up by starting a draw pile (nine cards per player), placing three gold side-up cards in a line and three land side-up cards in a line. As you go through the game and draw a card, you replace that card with either a gold or land card, meaning you always have the ability to draw three golds or three lands. Each player gets a starting card, and you’re good to go.
On your turn, you take a card. If you take a land card, you have to place it in your land either by overlapping another card by quarters or half or by placing it next to another card. If you take a goal card, you simply place that near your land, providing you with extra scoring possibilities at the end of the game.
Essentially, you’re trying to have herbivores next to plants, carnivores next to meat, and tar pits next to nothing.
When you add a card to your land with an egg on it, you can place an egg token on an empty space in your land. This also scores you points at the end. If you have exactly the same dinosaurs next to each other, then they count as a herd and mean that you can link together dinosaurs that are third on either plants or meat, allowing you to score higher and require fewer dinosaurs to be directly adjacent to what they need to survive. Some cards also have mountain ranges on them, which allow a way to block things off.
After eight rounds, it’s time to score. All dinosaurs that are next to tar pits go extinct and therefore don’t score. Carnivores that are next to meat will be fed, and if they are not next to meat, they will eat all adjacent herbivores of the same size or smaller (making those herbivores extinct). Herbivores that are next to plants are fed. Any dinosaur that is not fed also becomes extinct.
Then, you score up all your remaining dinosaurs, gaining three, two, or one point(s) for large, medium, or small dinosaurs, respectively, two points for every egg that you’ve got in a nest, and extra points for whatever is on your gold cards, which can range from things such as extra points per dinosaur, points per sectioned-off mountain range, or points if you have the most fed off something in the game.
There is also a solo game, which essentially works in exactly the same way where you are trying to get as high a score as possible.
I really like “Chomp”; it’s a very simple-to-understand tile and game that plays in about 15 minutes and requires quite a bit of thinking. Because of the relatively small number of cards you get, it’s fairly equal, and there wasn’t a massive amount of difference between first and last place in all of the games we played.
Component-wise, it is really good quality. The artwork is lovely, the cards are well-made, and everything works well. I know it is a bit of a weird grumble, but the size of the cards is really large. I appreciate you’ve got to be quite large because you’re overlapping them, but for such a small box game, it actually takes up a massive amount of space. The game in its entirety is very similar to “Nimalia” that we played last year, and the cards in this are smaller and a lot more manageable, and I wish that the Chomp cards were the same size as the ones in Nimalia.
On that subject, it is very similar to “Nimalia”, and I feel very much the same about both of them. You don’t necessarily need both, so pick the one that has the theme you like the most, and if you really like it, then potentially it’s worth getting the other one as they do have slightly different ways that scoring happens as well as drafting.
Overall, I really like “Chomp”; it’s a really nice small box game, but just be aware that even though it is small to carry, it is not small in terms of table space.
