IELLO Legendary Forests

Product Information

The edge of each tile has a crescent shape which, when connected to another tile, forms a complete circle. A key concept is the creation of sizeable forests of the same trees, with more points gained if the forests are closed rather than open. Choosing tree tokens well is important so that you don’t find yourself needing a color that has run out. After the construction round, the token moves to the left with the next player starting the next construction round.

We mainly cover Warhammer 40k, Fantasy, Age of Sigmar, Warmachine, Hordes, X-Wing, Infinity, Horus Heresy, and Star Wars Armada.First, the Architect draws the top tile from their stack and announces the number printed on its face. You end up with such a nice little forest scene as well, which is pleasant; I like tile-laying games a lot because they leave me with that sense of progression, and I think Legendary Forests is no slouch in that department. He is a contributor to The Dice Tower Podcast and has written for Games Trade Magazine and Meeple Monthly.

This leads to the outcome being much more about a player’s strategies and planning rather than lucky tile draws. Each person has the exact same tiles to work from, which takes out most aspects of luck from the game.You only receive points from Tree Tokens and their value depends upon the type of area in which they lie. As with most tile-laying games, the two edges of the tiles you connect must match and you have to place a tile such that it matches up edge-to-edge against another tile. I like that you can expand upward with player count without too much trouble, since players shouldn’t really be interacting over the course of the game (save to pull trees from each other, which does matter, yes, but not as much as other things). It is simple enough to teach children in around 5-10 minutes, but still keeps their interest due to the vibrant art and the simplicity of the strategies.

I would even have been fine with some way to keep the tiles separated, but we ended up with nothing. The architect player throws away 5 of his stack at random and the rest of the players build face up based on the random draws of the architect. Whenever the Architect draws a tile that has a number set on a white background, each player selects a tree token to place on their tiles. Monuments come in three colors (while the landscapes have areas in four colors), and you use only two monuments of a color for each player in the game.The game is complete when the full set of 19 tiles have been revealed, and each of the players have created their unique forested world. It plays like Carcassonne (in case you can't read the title), but it has the interesting twist that all players have the same tiles and the variation comes in each player building their own 'planet'. I like that each player makes their own choices and risks; you can copy your opponents but that just means that you would score the same and tie, that's not a win!