Matthew BaileyGame 2 of the “Let’s Play Spiel des Jahres winners and nominees leading up to the UK Board Game Expo mini-marathon.” is the game I think will most likely win this year’s “Spiel des Jahres” and that is “Dorf Romantik: The Board Game” played by Jack(8.), Toby(5) ad myself.
Now “Dorf Romantik” is an interesting property to start with. Originally released back in March 2021 as a video game that was kinda intended to be a video game version of Carcassonne. This is now the board game version of that video game that was trying to be a board game.
“Dorf Romantik” is a cooperative game where up to 6 players work together to create the best landscape possible by drawing tiles and trying to complete objectives.
You must always have 3 objective tiles in play and this will give you a number that you need to have of exactly that amount of tiles touching that number to complete the objective. Tiles are spread into village, grains and forests (with non-scoring grass to hold it all together as well as railways and rivers.
if you imagine villages, grain and forests working like cities in Carcassonne and railways and drives working like roads you are already halfway there rule-wise. A key idea though is that you do not have to line forests, villages or grain up with matching tiles but you do have to with railways and rivers putting some restrictions on where you place items.
When you finish you get the scores for every objective completed, points for the longest river and road, as well as points for the 3 “flag” tiles if those areas are all contained.
This all adds up to your final score that you record on your achievement chart which lets you unlock new cards, tiles and rules.
If you have played one of the Zombies Kidz/Teenz games it works very similar to this.
I adore this game and it has quickly become a firm favourite of mine and the kids. It says 8+ on the box but Toby(5) fully got what he was doing and as you can discuss as you go you can help younger players with their turn.
To top it all off the whole thing is a quality package with a lovely insert and wonderful artwork.
I have only unlocked 2 boxes as I write this so I can’t comment further but I look forward to playing and unlocking more as I go. There are some mechanics in the video game that I haven’t come across yet that I hope are in the boxes otherwise there is great promise for expansions.
Cannot recommend this more highly.
I really like Next Station London (which we reviewed here back in August of last year as game “26” of my summer marathon (see link below))
But this is an absolute class and is my pick for this year’s winner!
