In pursuit of enlightenment

Did I ever tell you that I love cute anthropomorphic animals? No? I’ve heard people complain about them being overused, but I am a sucker for them. 🤭 That said, we recently got our hands on Snowcrest by @grailgames which is quite a fun and interesting game, once you wrap your head around it.

In Snowcrest, you lead a mountain village, in pursuit of enlightenment and long lost knowledge. You meditate at the monastery, bring offerings to appease the spirits, claim scrolls of forgotten secrets and, of course, race for the most victory points 😉. It is a light tableau-builder for 1-4 players, with everyone tending to their own village of animals.

The tableau-building itself is very clever: You can play (and activate) cards from your own deck or from the display into your 3x3 tableau which starts with a few preset cards. Cards you activate are always flipped face down, and whenever any row or column of 3 cards is face down you must (!) take a rest action, where cards that are still face up generate resources. The beauty lies in how you usually want to activate your stronger cards… but also keep them face up for resting. It is a big part of the strategy to catch the right rhythm of these turns, as scrolls are used up faster than one might think! Once they run out, the game ends.☝️

So, how do you get scrolls? You can “meditate”, which starts a closed auction with prayer bells. You can also perform the veneration action by flipping a guardian card and paying the required offering. Another way is appeasing spirits after chopping down forests. The trick with the last two actions is that you don’t know the exact cost beforehand, and they can impact other players—so you have to be ready to pivot. 😉

💭I have to mention how quick the game is. Our last 2p game was finished in 25 minutes. In our very first game this seemed disappointing as I was expecting something more grandiose, but then thinking back on all the actions I did and decisions I made, it all clicked for the second game. 😊 The more we play, the better it gets - you really have to concentrate on a few small things and time the actions right to win the game.😍