Door 4

Behind Door 4 of our MechanXmas calendar is Flip & Write. We have many great games in this genre like Trails of Tucana, Welcome to… or Cartographers, but today I’d like to showcase 🧱 Hadrian’s Wall, which we just got to play for the first time(s)!

This game is considered to be one of the best and most complex flip and write games out there, so we were happy to finally put it to the test. It is quite beefy, you get 2 sheets, a personal deck and even a little board. 🙀

Each round a card from a central deck determines the resources you all get, but you also draw 2 cards from your personal decks from which you have to choose one to play as a scoring condition, and the other as additional bonus resources (this card is also important for some other actions during the round).

From here you are basically let free - you can fill any box you can afford. Of course paying attention to the requirements, and usually going from left-to-right. The most fun feature of the game are definitely the insane amounts of combos it provides: many boxes you fill show certain icons or resources, meaning you get something. With those things you get you can fill additional boxes and get even more stuff, sometimes feeling like you are going infinite.

This might make the game a bit prone to analysis paralysis though as you’ll find yourself trying to execute a mastermind plan each turn to squeeze more combos out. After a really long first game we tried playing with a timer for the second game and it was much much faster - we finished in about 60 minutes as the box also states.

Playing Hadrian’s Wall is a bit like writing an exam (in a good way I guess 😂). During the game you can’t really talk. There are so many things to consider, so many decisions to make, so many combos to keep track of. So to summarize, this is not a social game with much banter. 😅 Take that as a pro or a con.

We really like it so far and understand why people love it so much. There are so many boxes to fill and not enough resources to go around, so repeated plays should allow you to try different things.