Leelawadee is a very cute looking game of butterflies and flowers; however, whilst it’s a simple game I think there is some interesting gameplay decisions within.  Players take turns taking flowers from the random selection available for that round and placing them on their garden.  Players pick 1 flower going clockwise and then pick another going in reverse order.

If a player’s garden has a particular mix of flowers, they attract the relevant butterfly; for example, single colour butterflies are attracted to any garden which as the most (or equal-most) contiguous group of flowers that match their colour.  There are two-colour butterflies that are like single-colour but are attracted to groups of flowers comprised of both of their colour.  The five-colour butterfly goes to the connected area of flowers that have the most variety of colours.

At the end of a round, players score points for any butterflies they have at their garden (though they get fewer if the butterfly was there the round before).  Players lose quite a lot of points for every colour that is not present in their garden at the end of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Some years ago a friend of mine who is a teacher told me about a co-operative exercise he’d created for his students where they organised search-and-rescue operations.  It sounded great and we discussed how it had potential for a board game as he plays some Eurogames.  So, I was very interested when Meltdown 2020 was announced.

In Meltdown 2020, players are trying to evacuate their meeple from the area where reactors are starting to meltdown.  Each player starts with 3 vehicles which each have a speed (spaces it can move) and a capacity (max number of meeple it can carry simultaneously).  The vehicles are a bus (spd:2 cap:4), car (spd:3 cap:3) and a helicopter (spd:4 cap 2). Read the rest of this entry »