What if you were an entrepreneurial woodland creature searching for the best glass? River Valley Glassworks Allplay allows you to do this and fill your glass factory with the most colorful river glass pieces to get the highest score.
I just bought my first game from Allplay. River Valley Glassworks It’s definitely fun and fast The experience is there, but without expansion it may feel light and missing elements.
What’s inside the box?
River Valley Glassworks 1 bag to hold all glass pieces, 1 lake tile, 6 river tiles, 5 portmanteau tiles, 5 player glasswork boards, 5 inventory markers, 1 first player marker, and 9 colors. Comes with 132 pieces of glass (only black is used). 5 player game).
Overall the game components are really great. I have the Kickstarter version, so there were a few errors on the player board (which will be replaced for free), but the glass pieces are a lot of fun. In my case, there was no paper backing, so I didn’t even have to remove the paper backing. I like that each of the five “player” creatures has a unique personality and the back of each board is set up for solo play. I also got the expanded version. This is six different modular expansions that change the way players need to strategize.
For example, in Lake Diving, each player has a shape that helps them collect additional glass to add to their glasswork when placing lucky shaped pieces in the river. Also, equipment allows players to earn additional scores based on equipment cards. We will discuss these in detail later. My actual criticism is that the bag is too big for the size of the glass pieces. You’ll have to actually dig to get the pieces out, but if the bag is about 75% of its current size, it’s perfect.
How about playing?
Setup and gameplay River Valley Glassworks Both go fairly quickly. The six river tiles are placed in a random order next to the lake tile. River tiles draw glass shards based on the number of stones printed on them, and lake tiles have 5 stones placed on them. Each player randomly takes three glass tiles and places them in their bag, player board, and zeros their inventory marker.
The goal of the game is to fill the glass factory with more river glass. but This is to ensure that all columns and rows are aligned when scoring. This is because we only score the rows up to the point where there are no gaps and the top two columns on the far left. So in the Hopington example below, players would score on the red and blue columns, earn points on the green tiles in the second row, and earn points on the purple tiles in the last row.
During your turn, you can take one of two actions. Put one piece of glass from your bag into the river and place it on a tile that matches its shape, then collect all the glass pieces from there. one Place the tile next to the tile you placed earlier and place the new tile in the glass factory. Alternatively, you can place two pieces of the same shape on any tile and take all pieces on adjacent tiles. In both cases, the empty tile is moved to the edge of the river, and the number of stones on the tile next to it indicates the number of glasses taken from the bag.
The pieces are arranged from left to right, bottom to top, and each row is one color. The board tells you which colors are more rare, which helps you plan your strategy. When you reach the 8th color, the piece goes into overflow. This hasn’t happened to me, but it probably will happen every time there’s a lot of color coming out of the bag.
The second option is to take glass pieces from the lake and refill your bag. In this action, you select four pieces from the lake and add them to your bag, but the bag can only hold five pieces, so if you have extra, you have to put it in the overflow. Each overflow piece subtracts 3 points at the end. Next, we backfill the lake.
The game ends when one player reaches or passes 17 pieces. Each player with less than 3 pieces in their bag draws from their bag until they have 3, and the current turn continues until all players are gone. Then everyone takes their final turn and the scoring begins.
What’s the verdict?
I had a lot of fun playing River Valley Glassworks;It’s a fun and quickly immersive experience. Without the expansion, the game looks a bit light and players may not find it very interesting. The modularity of the expansion is a nice addition, but it feels like it should have been part of the base game from the beginning. Ideally, players would be able to choose which extensions to use for each game, immediately adding a layer of customization and replayability. The scoring mechanism is particularly clever, making it difficult for players to strategize between filling in the rows and columns, and with 17 pieces to start the endgame, players can quickly change strategies as they earn more glasses. Must be.
Being able to collect tiles from adjacent tiles by “paying” for additional glass pieces is also a great feature that enhances gameplay. It gives you more strategic options, allows you to play smarter, and makes each turn more impactful. The solo mode is also surprisingly well done, offering varying levels of challenge depending on the character you’re playing against. This adds depth and keeps the solo experience engaging. Setup is so quick that solo mode games are over in no time. I’ve played games that took just as long to set up to actually play solo.
Overall, I recommend River Valley GlassworksHowever, if you want the most comprehensive experience, you should also purchase the extended version. You can get your copy Directly from Allplay Or buy FLGS now for $39!
Image provided by: Allplay
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