Matthew BaileyToday we’re going to be talking about Under the Mango Tree, a brand new tile drafting and set collection game from Pegasus Spiele that reminds me of Draftosaurus, but has enough ideas of its own to stand on its own two feet.
Played here with Jack(10) and Toby(7)
Each player gets their own board, showing five different areas: your mango tree, the animal reserve, the coast, a beehive, and rubbish that you’d really rather get rid of. The game takes place over a few rounds (five if there are 2 or 3 players, just three rounds with 4 players), and each round is made up of three phases. You start by dealing cards – four each for 2–3 players or five each for 4 players.
Every card in the game is split in half, and each half corresponds to one of the areas on your board. On your turn, you pick one card, choose which half you want to use, and secretly slot it into your storage tile with the chosen half facing you.
Then everyone flips their cards, tucks the chosen half under their board in the right area that matches that card (so only that bit is showing), and passes their remaining hand of cards to the next player. Repeat until all cards are played.
After every round, you rotate your storage tile – which changes the direction you pass cards – just to keep everyone on their toes. This works really well when playing with younger kids, as it means they aren’t always getting passed to or passing to the stronger/weaker player.
You keep repeating this until all the cards have been used, at which point it’s time to tally up the scores.
Each part of your board scores differently:
Mango Tree: Multiply your mangoes by your lorikeets. More fruit + more birds = more points! This, along with the coast, is the strongest section, as getting two high numbers here makes your total shoot up quickly.
Beehive: Got more bees than the players to your left and/or right? You’ll earn points for each.
Animal Reserve: Collect matching animals – two of a kind scores 6, but three or more of a kind scores 12.
Coast: Gather unique types of fish. The more different fish you have in a set, the more points you net. This is the second “big hitter” along with the Mango Tree.
Rubbish Pile: If you collect enough bins (four in a 3-player game), you get to remove the garbage tile from your board and avoid a nasty point penalty. This is a really interesting one, as it’s a removal of a penalty for a straight number of tiles. Toby decided he was going to get the bins first, and I left it a bit later. No idea who did it better, but it is an interesting concept.
Highest score wins.
Well, there’s nothing completely new here in terms of how the game plays – it plays a lot like a drafting, set-collection game – but there’s a fun mix of different things to go for, and there’s definitely enough here to make it enjoyable for fans of the genre.
I think I would have enjoyed it more if there had been multiple rule sets for each thing, like there often are, so that you can customise the game and play different variations. But equally, I know full well from previous experience that usually once you’ve found the set you enjoy, you end up just playing with those over and over again anyway.
The artwork is really nice, and the whole thing works together really well. It also comes in a reasonably small box, which is always a plus, and while you’re not slinging a copy of this in your bag, you could easily take it on holiday with you in a suitcase. A small gripe is having to put the double-sided boards together at the start. One of my boards was actually snapped (largely because the sections are so thin), but luckily, when putting it all together, a little bit of double-sided tape fixed it, but still, it was a pain.
All in all, we really like Under the Mango Tree. It works well with young children, and there’s enough difference and variety to keep it interesting in terms of ways to score. Even if this isn’t something that you might buy, this is a perfect board game café game.
Disclaimer – “Under the Mango Tree” was provided by “Pegasus Spiele” for the purpose of review. All of our thoughts and opinions are our own.
