Matthew BaileyGame 1 of the “Bailey Family Summer 2023 Board game bonanza” is “My Shelfie,” played by myself, Jack (_8), and Toby (5).
“My Shelfie” is a fairly simple game for 3-4 players where you have to arrange coloured items on your “Kallax” style bookshelf.
At the beginning of the game, each player receives a card that reveals their designated colours for placement on their shelves. These colours must be arranged strategically to accumulate points. Additionally, there are shared objectives that grant extra points if completed before other players. Points can also be earned by having adjacent shelves with three or more colours, excluding diagonal placement.
During your turn, you must take 1, 2, or 3 item tiles from the living room board (shared by all the players), following these rules: • The tiles you take must be adjacent to each other and form a straight line. • All the tiles you take must have at least one side free at the beginning of your turn.
Then, you must place all the tiles you’ve picked into 1 column of your bookshelf (a 3D connect 4-style display) to meet the personal goal cards, which grant points if you match the highlighted spaces with the corresponding item tiles, or the common goal cards, which grant points if you achieve the illustrated pattern. You also score points if you connect item tiles of the same type.
When you run out of tiles on the shared board, they then get randomly refilled (more on that in a minute). The first player who fills all the spaces of their bookshelf triggers the end game and takes the end game token that grants additional points. The game continues until the end of the turn of the player sitting on the right of the player holding the first player token.
The player who scores the most points wins the game.
Both boys got their heads around it, and we ended up having a couple of games, which is unusual (normally they want to play lots of different games).
So yeah… I really like this… it’s simple but thought-provoking enough to make it fun.
My issue actually has more to do with the components and a few practicalities.
Firstly, the “Connect 4-style displays” are fun and way cooler than if the game had simply been laying tiles on a flat board, but they feel fairly cheap compared to the ones found in “Fairy Tale Inn” or even a “Connect 4” set. Sometimes the tiles overlap by accident, and it’s a real pain to fix mid-game.
Secondly, the cardboard tokens are a little thin.
Finally, laying out all of the tokens and then taking them off the board is a pain. You end up nudging the board, and they all go everywhere, even with the best will in the world. When they run out, relaying them into the grid is a pain. A plastic grid-type thing to fit them in would have been useful here. Also, it’s hard to be random as pulling them out one at a time would literally take 10 minutes, so you end up grabbing a handful, and then it’s hard to put them in randomly and not get swayed by “we haven’t got much pink out the bag yet.”
If there was a game crying out for a fancy deluxe edition, this is it, and I would trade this in and rebuy if that were the case.
So, do I recommend…? Yes… this is a really good, fun game you could play with kids of various ages, and I reckon a “with it” 4-year-old can comfortably do this…
I just wish the components were a little bit nicer.
