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Tucana Builders Board Game Review

Tucana Builders builds, pun intended, off the great work put into Trails of Tucana, although it cannot be stated enough that these games are wildly different, aside from the Tucans. That said, Builders do feel like a roll and write experience without the rolling or the writing. This experience feels light enough to be widely accessible, but with some strategy to keep veteran board game players engaged. My issue – how much does luck play into the game? Let’s take a look.

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Even before my first half dozen games of Tucana Builders, I was impressed by the setup variability. Sure, this doesn’t change how the game is played, but a varied setup from game-to-game is a great way to extend the lifespan of an experience, and I’m glad to see a good number of setup cards included in the box. In Tucana Builders, players are selecting and placing tiles on a central board creating paths, with the ultimate goal of creating paths for specific animals to get home to specific huts, earning players points.

At the start of each turn, one player will flip a central biome tile and then all players select a random tile from the supply and must place that tile in the indicated biome on the board. Earlier, I spoke about the idea of luck in Tucana Builders, and this is never more evident than now. You might want a specific tile to create a great loop and score some solid points, but if you come up with a somewhat useless tile, at least for the biome you are forced to play it in, it can be a bit deflating.

More often than not, though, you’ll find some use for the tile you are holding, and trying to determine how best to use it is a great deal of fun. Frustration at times, yes, but still loads of fun. The true struggle comes when spaces become limited. The more limited your board becomes, the more random drawing from the middle seems. Each player does have a wild card to use which will allow them to place a tile in any biome, but that alone isn’t enough to mitigate multiple bad tile pulls.

Ultimately, you are placing all these tiles attempting to link colored animals back to specific huts, and doing so will move you up on three different tracks. Ideally , you move up on these tracks rather equally because you will score points for your lowest track at the end of the game. I like the simplicity here: count up the animals and wild Toucans, check that it makes it back to a hut, and score that many in that color. That does two things for me: 1) it makes the game more accessible for a wider audience; and 2) it is so much easier to teach!

Outside of the potential luck of the tile pull – and to be fair, everyone is dealing with the same luckiness here, so it doesn’t feel targeted – the only other thing to consider is scoring points. This can be a bit of work, especially for younger players. Trying to trace paths and count animals can be tough, so be prepared to help those around the table. And if scores are tight, be sure to double check scores because more often than not, someone has messed up their paths!

I am a fan of having easy to play, easy to teach games available for our gaming group. This isn’t my favorite game in my collection, but it’s yet another option for when we have some time between larger games, or some time at the end of the night. It’s easy to get going, which I appreciate, and isn’t overly taxing mentally. This isn’t the best game I’ve ever played, but it is worth keeping around, at least for my group.

 

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blank Adam Roffel has only been writing about video games for a short time, but has honed his skills completing a Master's Degree. He loves Nintendo, and almost anything they have released...even Tomodachi Life.

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