Queensland
Designed by: Matt Wolfe
In Queensland, players are farmers struggling to protect their crops from the infestation of cane toads: imported to Australia from Hawaii in the 1930s to – in theory – minimise the beetle population, the toads famously and catastrophically ignored the insects in favour of other foodstuffs and, lacking any predators, proceeded to take over Queensland, where they continue to croak to this day.
Each player has a starting set of tiles that make up their nascent farm. On your turn, you choose one of three available tiles and must add it to your farm so that the sides – sugar, wheat, soil – match any previously placed tiles. The catch is that everything comes with a supply of between one and three toads, and these are placed on the tile as you add it to your farm. You can rotate the tile if you wish and each tile also comes with a direction that – depending on how you orient it – will cause all your farm’s toads to move in that direction either one or two tiles. One exception: toads in ponds don’t move, and ponds will stop any toads that may have moved further.
The goal is to gather at least five toads in a pond: do that, and not only do you score points (5pts for 5 toads, 3pts for 6 or more) but the scored toads are now removed from your farm. And it’s a good idea to remove them, because when the tiles run out at the end of the game any tiles with toads still on them are removed from your farm. Each remaining pond is worth a point, but the juice is really in completing large un-toaded sugar and wheat fields, and totalling up the scarecrow, cattle and tractor symbols that also appear on the tiles: diversity is not the name of the game here as several of the same type is more rewarding than diversity.
The player with the most points after the toads have finally gone is the winner.
Sam says
Queensland doesn’t hop into my personal hall of fame but it’s a more than decent way to spend a half-hour or so. I think I’d cap it with three players (-and it’s probably best with two) as the pace can start to drag with four, but as the Brain Burn section implies, it’s basically offering you three overlapping challenges and the player who bests navigates that space will be winner. What I like here is that the challenge is in the implementing: the rules themselves, whilst erring on the abstract side, are easy to pick up (-much easier with the game pieces in front of you). It makes Queensland an accessible puzzle with a reasonably dramatic arc: tiles are running out, you have toads in the wrong places and need them gone!
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Take That!
Precious little from the other players.
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Fidget Factor!
With two the game moves along at a clip. As you rise to 3 or 4 players the down-time between turns will naturally rise as players puzzle over which tile serves them best - or does the least damage.
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Brain Burn!
A combination of three things: the spatial challenge of the tile-laying, the collecting of symbols and the management of moving parts (-the toads)
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Again Again!
There's enough going on here for the game not to feel exhausted after a few plays - as long as you enjoy the puzzle it offers, of course
