I Affectionate There were lots of nature-themed board games, so I was really looking forward to trying them out. Biomos From NorthStar Game Studio, designed by Gricha German and illustrated by Baptiste Perez. Biomos It’s an engaging drafting game that players of all ages can enjoy.
Create a planet filled with amazing landscapes! It’s an easy-to-learn, fun and immersive puzzle game where players use terrain tiles to terraform planets and race to complete biome cards that represent new life on the planet. It features three different game modes with one ambitious goal: develop the most biodiverse planet!
What’s in the box?
Biomos Includes 60 terrain coins (12 each of ocean, desert, forest, mountain, and glacier), 40 biome cards (30 basic and 10 giant), 1 black hole card, 4 planet boards, and a pouch to store all your pieces. Biomos So beautiful! It was great to see all the different locations. The terrain tiles were made from high quality chit board and fit perfectly onto the planet board.
I especially liked the art of the different biomes – they’re all real! You can learn more about them all on Subverti (the original publisher). Website.
How is it when you play it?
Gameplay Biomos is incredibly simple, yet offers enough challenge to be fun and competitive. Each player starts the game with a double-sided planet board. On one side, having a lot of a certain type of terrain awards bonus points at the end of the game, with the Moon awarding 3 points per terrain. On the other side (the family side), only 3 points per terrain are awarded. Four giant biome cards and four basic biome cards are placed on the table between the players. Any remaining giant biome cards are returned to the box, but basic biome cards can be drawn to replenish cards as the game progresses.
Players take turns choosing one of five terrain tokens and placing it on an empty space on the planet board. You can make space for a token by sliding an existing terrain token left or right, but you cannot pick up an existing token tile on the board. When I first played with my friends, we thought we could only move down because gravity moves things down. This actually made the game more difficult and I might play it that way from now on, but you can definitely get a higher score if you don’t.
At the end of your turn, if you place a terrain token in a pattern that matches one of your biome cards, you score that token at the end of the game. After removing five tokens, place five more on the table. The game continues until every player has filled their player board, including a moon (in a small space on the board). In the game’s storyline, the moon needs to be formed because without it, the planet’s weather and climate would be in big trouble.
During a turn, a player can also perform one of four planetary events if they want to change one of their terrain tokens to fill in a pattern. For example, if an ocean is adjacent to a mountain, they can freeze the ocean and replace the ocean with a glacier. However, there is no way to create oceans or mountains.
Family mode removes this game element, giving you two fewer spaces to fill.
Biomos There is also a fun solo mode where you play against a black hole and have to score more points than the black hole. You take three terrain tokens randomly from your pouch, place one on the board and the rest on the black hole card. When a biome card is completed for you or the black hole, you can either take it or place it with the black hole that “consumed” the biome. The goal is to score more than the black hole or you will lose the planet.
What’s the verdict?
Biomos is one of those rare games that I really have nothing to criticize. It’s beautiful, easy to learn, fun to play, challenging enough to make it worth playing, and the game is over quickly. Setup is just as quick, and putting everything back in the box is just as easy. For me, that’s a rare 10 out of 10. I know I’ll be playing this game many times, and if I’m taking games anywhere, this is the game to take.
Available to purchase directly for $29.99. North Star Or at your FLGS!
Images and review copy courtesy of Northstar Game Studio
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