The box is small, it has animals on the cover, it’s all about combining colors… There are many reasons why a game like I cried You could end up falling into the classic board game prejudices. The reality is that the last of damn games Seems like a gambler to me.
With one of those formulas that are easy to understand but hard to master, I cried It is not only an art that undoubtedly enters through the eyes, but also one of those experiences that, despite the fact that it could last you two afternoons, ends up becoming a much deeper well than it seemed.
How to play Nimalia
The idea behind I cried is that up to four players can compete to create the best possible animal reserve. By means of four-box cards, each one dedicated to a type of animal or terrain, we must place them on the table to unite families or biomes in the most efficient way that allows us to steal.
Starting each round with three cards in hand, we will keep one and pass the remaining two to the partner on our left or right, depending on the round, and the ones we receive will serve to continue the cycle, keeping one and passing the rest.
The only limitation when it comes to placing your cards on the table is that the structure of the sanctuary cannot exceed 6 x 6 cells, and that any new card that you place must partially or totally cover another of the cards that is already in the structure. It does not matter if you are stepping on only one quadrant or covering four different cards at the same time.
So far so good, but then the mechanics that I was telling you about comes into play, the one that makes each game I cried may be completely different from the previous one in terms of strategy, pace and difficulty: the variable objectives.
Variable objectives: Nimalia’s great asset
The central area of the table will be the place where we will place the objective card, the one that marks which ones are active in each round, and the four scoring patterns that we must follow to get the most out of our reserve in each round.
With different difficulties and challenges, in a round of I cried We could be accumulating as many savannah cards as possible to score and, in the next one, having to get rid of them to avoid losing points, so the game forces you to constantly adapt to what is to come.
You can get really lucky one round and then your build becomes a pain in the next, or you don’t get the right cards to score now, but the right ones to get you ahead the next. It’s amazing how something so apparently simple can get so twisted by changing one objective for another.
Serving as both a family game and a filler to leave presumptuous experts shaking, I cried It is one of those little gems that, due to the accessibility of its front door and the depth of its mechanics, can easily end up on the bookshelf of games to turn to when you don’t know what to play.
