Great Plains

Note: This is a short really early legacy review before I started posting longer form review in our Facebook Group.

Game 3 of “Games that we have played kinda recently that I should have shared on here but didn’t get round to it because none of my kids ever sleep” is 2 player strategy game Great Plains played with Jack (6) as Toby had a doctors appointment and was taken by mummy leaving the two of us with some rare one on one time.

My usual disclaimer: My boys (Jack(6) and Toby(3)) have both been brought up playing games and as such can play games usually beyond their years. Great Plains is stated as 10+ but the theme and basic rules are def suitable for younger kids.

You start the game by setting out the hexagonal tiles in a random grid and then each placing your 3 starting caves for your “army” to spread.

One player plays as foxes and one as snakes and you then take turns to place animals either next to a cave or next to a piece already laid. you can only move on lowlands and meadows (green and yellow) spaces and in the end, you score for each yellow square based on who has the most pieces in each (similar to how cities work in Carcassonne).

There are 3 special tiles you can pick up along the way:

Eagle – allows you to jump space over a mountain

Horse – allows you to move 2 spaces including through the opposing player.

bear – allows you to push the opposing player’s piece one away.

This is a fairly quick game that Jack really enjoyed and it’s over pretty quickly and is easy to understand.

I do have a few issues with it, however.

Firstly I feel there are not quite enough powers. You only get 3 of each between you which never feels like quite enough.

Secondly, in the 3 games, we played the winning player only won by one. Now while this could just be because we were fairly evenly matched it also feels like there isn’t enough to really let you get considerably ahead of another player.

Component quality is good and the meeples are lovely. Absolutely no insert again which is always disappointing but overall a good product and not too expensive. I could def see this appealing to many.