America is proud of its pristine wilderness. Much of it is protected through the National Park System. Over the years it has inspired both artists and board game designers. The latter has given us a range of titles, from hobbyist Cascadia to mainstream gaming. National Park – OpoliBut 2019’s PARKS aims to offer the best of both worlds in accessible tactical play fused with the art of the 59 Parks print series.
what’s in the box
The stylized waterfall art on the PARKS box cover is a nice piece of work, but the treasure inside is unprepared. Beneath the rules booklet are two custom his trays of sun and water drops, mountains and trees, all dyed in charming pastel tones. There are also several brown wild animal tokens, each cut to resemble a different animal.
Below that is a blank tri-fold board, and below that are some large and small decks of cards. The biggest cards are those of the national parks themselves. They don’t have to be very big, except to showcase the glorious artwork from. 59 park sprint series adorn each. The smaller card doesn’t have a very striking image, but it’s compensated for by details like the fine layout and subtle gold glitter, giving it a luxurious feel.
The enamelled first player tokens, the wooden hiker pieces, and all the counters needed for stamping (such as board segments and an amazing array of nature ‘pictures’) all have the same stylized touch as the park cards. You can see Everything is neatly and safely stored in the carved trays that line the bottom of the box. That tray shows how much thought went into the physical design of PARKS, and the results are impressive.
rules and how to play
In PARKS, your goal is to pilot a tag team hiker pair through as many of the biggest and most spectacular national parks as possible across four ‘seasons’. To do this, he uses his four resources in the game (relatively common sun and water, and the more rare forests and mountains) to buy park cards from the face-up choices. You can also get wildlife tokens that act as wildcards and can be used in place of any resource.
New boards are randomly built each season from different board segments, so you have to change your strategy slightly each time. Seasons have associated special effects, such as getting bonus sun every time you get a forest, and weather patterns that place bonus resource markers on some segments. The first player to land on that segment receives bonuses along with special effects offered to all visitors. These built-in effects allow you to gain or trade resources in most cases.
So far so normal. The tricky thing about PARKS is that hikers can move as far along the trail as they like, but only forward. So if you have a space you specifically need, get it now and skip all other useful spaces in between, or risk another player pipping into the post. Of course, they also suffer from the same dilemma. Blocks the space you occupy, but the player can use his campfire token to snuggle up to you if needed.
Campfire tokens are refreshed when the first hiker reaches the end of the trail. This is her second problem. Once there, spend resources to buy parks, use Sun Tokens to buy gear that offers future bonuses or discounts, or reserve park cards for your own future purchases and The first player in the round of Shiny to get his token. .
Buying a card, the most common action, adds a new card to your display. And this is both angry and annoying. There is a certain satisfaction in snatching a precious card that someone else has clearly saved up, and it adds to the strategy for pacing hikers along the trail. But the fast turnover and random swapping of cards tends to undermine long-term strategy attempts, and PARKS is much more of a tactical issue.
You can choose secret objective cards to tackle at the end of the game, such as buying at least 7 suns worth of equipment, but these are extremely difficult to achieve and offer paltry rewards that are rarely calculated. Rather, the game’s strategy is to ensure that you have the chance to get what you want. Most often these are from the canteen card. You can start with one of the former and get more in certain spaces: they are cards that require 1 water to activate, additional resources or other types of resources get the opportunity to exchange
So playing well in PARKS is knowing when to speed up and slow down the trail to seize the opportunity when it presents itself. You have to balance the time it takes to take advantage of the water bottle and resource exchange opportunities with the flexibility to constantly change the composition of cards offered. You can also get bonus points by taking pictures in some spaces.It takes 2 resources, but we provide you with a camera. You can take additional snaps at the end of the . Knowing the right time to steal a camera is a timing-based tactical decision you should add to your growing arsenal.
Despite the gorgeous presentation and occasional flourishes of themes, like the way season cards determine the weather, parks are strange birds in that they convey their subject matter. Nothing connects the constant rotation with the actual act of hiking. It’s really very abstract. Still, the game does such a great visual evocation of the great outdoors that it really feels vaguely confusing, as if it needed some extra rules or game elements that aren’t there.
