Blue Orange | Planet | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2-4 Players | 30 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

You begin the game with a secret mission to carry out on the Red Planet, and you may gain another mission in the course of the game. It might entail controlling all of Mars’s southern hemisphere, stationing at least one astronaut in every zone, or amassing heaps of sylvanite, celerium, and ice. Other players won't know for certain what your secret mission is until the end of the game. The more subtly you can work towards it, the less chance there is of your opponents guessing your agenda and working to sabotage your efforts. Every stage of a mining expedition to Mars boasts its challenges. Each ship can only hold a few passengers, and with so many astronauts headed towards Mars, you may need to resort to subterfuge and sabotage to launch your astronauts into space. Once landed, you could be forced to fight against other mining corporations for control of a zone. Your astronauts could be ruthlessly killed by another corporation, or you might need to eliminate a few astronauts yourself. You may find that a zone's deposits are rich beyond your expectations, or that they contain less ore than you hoped. No matter what, you’ll need to be wily to win the race for Mars’s resources. It sounds complicated but the rules are easy to follow and the game is very straightforward to play. Which is a good indicator of a great game. Each player then randomly draws a secret objective card. The cards each have a different type of terrain and if a player obtains enough terrain segments of that type they will gain points. Players should be aware that they will need different numbers of segments to score points for different types of terrain; this is linked to the frequency with which they occur in the game. The set contains: Resources organizer, 2 card trays, Players' component organizer and Scorepad container.

Exoplanets | Board Game | BoardGameGeek Exoplanets | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

The 5 player count also ensures that more competitive games remain fierce and balanced, with no clear decisive sides forming due to the odd number of players. With so many games to choose from, here are some board games that shine for 5 players. Set up is relatively straight forward. The magnetic terrain tiles are shuffled and placed into ten piles of five. Space needs to be left for additional piles at the end of the line although no tiles are placed there during set up. These piles will be populated by tiles discarded in earlier rounds. Each pile denotes a round of the game. In Mission: Red Planet, two to six players compete to occupy Mars and mine its celerium, sylvanite, and ice. You earn points from not only harvesting ores and ice, but also from completing a secret mission, which may involve controlling specific zones of the planet or amassing a certain type of ore. Whoever has the most points at the end of ten rounds wins. Updated September 3, 2023 by Via Erhard: Five-player adventures are some of the best of the board gaming universe since they're a blend of strategy and camaraderie. Some of these five-player board games will whisk players away to vivid worlds with complex ecosystems, allowing them to become guardians of nature or leaders in the wild. Others might plunge them into the intricate world of craftsmanship or have them decipher celestial patterns. Players can go on thrilling adventures while using their management skills and taking calculated risks.

Secrets and Surprises

Planet is published by Blue Orange Games – a publisher well known for their great family games with high production value and Planet is no exception. The dodecahedron domes are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before in a board game and the big chunky magnetic sides are a joy to play with. Planet is a great choice for families and is certainly a game that will turn heads. In the last (12th) round, if an animal card cannot be won by having the most of one kind of region, it is returned to the box. With both the other card scenarios if there is a tie, the players look at their second-biggest suitable habitat area and the winner takes the card. In the unlikely event of another tie, they look for a 3rd suitable habitat area. Game End

Mission: Red Planet | Board Game | BoardGameGeek Mission: Red Planet | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Part of the appeal is that Crokinole has a presence much larger than the physical space it occupies. It feels like a full-fledged parlor game, akin to billiards. This is all due to that central majestic piece of hardware, which can be hung on the wall as a piece of folk art. If an animal card cannot be won due to a tie, or because no players have the correct habitat, it is placed in the column for the NEXT round. Add into that the secret objective card and the fact that you score less point for an animal that is from the same habitat as your habitat objective card, and you get a game that has a lot more depth to it than its appearance suggests.Blue Orange Games seems to be carving out quite a name for themselves with their accessible line of family games. Kingdomino was a fantastic take on dominoes, and Photosynthesis was a mean little game with some pretty 3d trees. Both have made their way to my tabletop quite often. On each turn, players will take turns to draft one tile from the pool of available tiles. Tiles are split into six zones which could each have a different terrain; mountains, ocean, forest, desert and ice. A tile could be 100% one terrain or have multiple types. When you place it onto your globe, you can place it anywhere, perhaps extending an existing zone of a particular terrain. Planet is a 2-4 player game, designed by Urtis Sulinskas. In Planet players are trying to attract as many animals as possible to their planet. This is done by creating a planet with terrain which meets the animal’s requirements. Animals either require players to have the most of either one type of terrain touching another, one type of terrain which does not touch another or simply the most segments of one type of terrain. Terraforming Mars marries a delightful science fiction setting with sophisticated strategy. It puts players at the head of the various corporations intent on terraforming the red planet, raising the oxygen and temperature to foster growth and ultimately create a second home for humanity. It’s a visually compelling space as the barren planet slowly begins to adapt to your will before capitulating entirely in the endgame. The final result is a surface teeming with life, not altogether foreign to the environment of Earth.

Planet | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

After round three players have the opportunity, each round, to add animals to their planet. Each animal has specific requirements as set out above. Players look at their globe to see if they meet the requirements of that animal and if they do they take the card and place it face up in front of them. If no player meets the requirements or there is a tie the animal gets moved under the next pile and is available to be claimed in the next round.

Splendor is the quintessential modern family game. Players take on the role of Renaissance gem merchants trying to collect various precious stones. But that’s not important. What you’re really doing is buying cards that help you buy even more cards, eventually grabbing ones worth a large number of points. It’s a simple game of either buying the card you want or reserving one that you can’t yet afford to keep someone else from grabbing it. All of this is supported brilliantly with a simple yet warm physical production of chunky plastic chips and well-illustrated cards. What if you could hold the whole world in your hands? Build your own world of rich and varied habitats to make a home for your favourite species? Carefully balance the oceans, forests and deserts to build a thriving animal kingdom? In Planet, each player begins the game with an empty planet and ever the course of the game you’ll at 12 magnets to the 12 faces to build you own world. Even though the gameplay in Planet is very light, there is a lot of forward thinking that is required to win the game. As players can see all the cards laid out at the start of the game, you really have to start planning ahead for which ones you want to grab. The obvious choice is to go for animals matching your terrain type. The whole two birds with one stone thing. Yet the nice thing about the card mechanics is that it rewards you for collecting animals NOT matching your secret terrain type. This helps create some interesting situations where you clearly want to grab those snow cards to hit the bonus, but also want the other terrain for the extra VPs they grant. Overall the card art was pretty well done.