In case you didn't know, beehaw.org decided to defederate both lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. You can read about it here. Essentially it means beehaw.org users can no longer see my posts/comments, it's like they shadow banned my entire server. Thanks to @donio@feddit.de for messaging me about it. I have created this account on feddit.de just to post these reviews, hopefully it reaches our fellow boardgamers in all servers.
Today's game is an underrated gem: Menara
TL;DR
Score: 8.5
Positives
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Very easy to teach
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Cooperative
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Fun for both casual & experienced players
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Sliding difficulty is well ballanced
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Everyone wants to take a picture at the end of the game
Negatives
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Table bumps can prematurely end the end, it's always sad
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Can be frustrating if one person wants to play "mission impossible" on every turn
The review
Menara is one of my most successful gateway games and I definitely recommend it to everyone who enjoys dexterity games.
At the start of the game you randomly draw 3 odd-shapped tiles, called Temple Floors, to create level 0. The Temple Floors have small colored circles on them. During the course of the game you will be placing pillars on these circles. Red pillar goes on red circle, and so on. The objective of the game is to end the game with 4 levels of temple floors, excluding level 0.
Every player has 4 colored columns (depends on number of players and difficulty) and there is a community camp which hosts 6 columns. At the beginning of your turn you can swap your columns with the community camp as you wish. It's important to coordinate with your team and try to distribute the colors among everyone else. Then, you draw a card from the easy, medium or hard pile and perform the corresponding action. The most common action is fairly simple: place a column. All you have to do is place one of your columns in a base with the same color. Easy, right? Well, I'll let you discover the tricky ones by yourself :) If all the circles of your temple floor are occupied you stop your turn and place a new Temple Floor on top of whatever columns you want. Hopefully you added a new level and you're closer to the goal!
At this point you're probably thinking this game is super easy. I assure you, it is not. The game does not end after you made it to level 4. Oh, no. During the course of the game you'll find that you draw a card and the action is impossible to perform. Maybe it asks you to put 2 columns but unfortunately you don't have circles matching your column's colors. Then, the target goal increases by one level. Now you need to make it to level 5. The game only ends when you're either: out of cards, out of columns or out of temple floors. You lose the game if any floor falls.
This game is currently ranked #783 but I think it's one of the best dexterity games out there. It's very easy to teach, very intuitive. You draw a card and place a couple of columns. Easy. What sets it appart from the competition is the cooperative aspect of the game. It REALLY makes everyone very engaged with the game. No one wants to see the whole structure fall and everyone is trying their best. Quarterback/alpha gaming is basically not a thing. People can throw you hints on how do balance the floors or something but you're the one who's gonna have to do it, no one can play for you. The game get increasingly tense with time as the strugle starts to wiggle, everyone starts like controling their breathing to prevent anything from falling. It feels great to succeed in this game and at the end of the game everyone is gonna take a picture of what you built!
Context Information
I only log games with scores so unfortunately I don't have any logs for Menara
Suggested player count: 2-3 players is best, 4 players is also great but you wait longer
Win-rate: Well below 50%
Honorable mentions
- I'd really like to try Crokinole, seems like something I'd enjoy. Unfortunately it's super expensive :(
I do own the expansion, we have mixed feelings about it. I think I bought it for like 20 euros, which is a decent price. The expansion consists on several modules that you can mix, match and swap at any time.
Things I like:
It has a deck of cards with the temple floors. Instead of "shuffling" the temple floors, you shuffle the deck of cards which makes it much more practical and less ambiguous to find which is the next temple floor to use. There's also a variant we use where we keep the top 3 temple floors cards visible and you pick whichever one you prefer
2 golden columns - These columns can be placed by any player in any color. The trade-off is that these columns are shorter in height, meaning you can't stack anything on them. They also cannot be moved ever. I find these are really nice for those momments where you really need a specific color but the bag is being stingy about it
New temple floors - There are a couple of really nice temple floors
Things I do not like:
Adding the new temple floors to the pool is a pain. Whenever you add a new temple you also need to add a couple of colored columns and easy/medium/hard construction cards. There's a table telling you exactly what colors and construction cards to add for each new temple floor. This means that if you want to try different floors you'll have to keep messing with the number of columns and cards. If you accidently lose track of which setup of columns/floors you have in the bag... Boy that's gonna be a boring setup. We found the floors we like, shuffled the construction cards and keep it that way.
New construction plan cards. I don't think they're particularly great but they do add variety. My problem is that you're supposed to mix & match them before each game, which is a setup step I don't particularly enjoy
Blue/Red crystal stones variant; There are some crystals placed in the temple floors and you can discard columns to collect them. It's not harmful, just didn't find it enjoyable. At least it doesn't add any work in the game setup
Rituals variant; At the start of the game you can randomly draw one of the 13 rituals in the game. The ritual is something that will change one of the game rules. Example: you can ONLY select the light side of a temple floor. I find the game already hard enough as it is but these might be useful for those looking for an extra challenge.