INTRODUCTION
As I feel the warmth of the afternoon sun radiating from the window in my study, I can sense how summer is coming to an end; the morning air feels crisp as dew creates a kaleidoscopic shimmering on the grass and greeneries, while the sunlight bathes the pasture next to my house in a fiery palette of golden and orange hues. Soon the blueberries will be ripe for picking and before long one will be able to pick mushrooms, scavenging the woods for delicacies like chantarelle and trompet de la mort. In other words, the perfect setting to solo review Meadow; a game for one to four players about experiencing the wonders of nature whilst cataloguing your treks in the form of mementos and observations. Designed by Klemens Kalicki and originally published by Rebel Studio, Meadow has been generating quite the buzz for its wonderful aesthetics and interesting game mechanisms. As such I was excited to see how this tranquil game of observing nature would fare as a solo experience.
Full disclosure: a review copy of Meadow was kindly provided by publisher Asmodee Nordics.
COMPONENTS
In my eyes board games are works of art, not just in a figurative sense but also as physical items of beauty. In fact, one of the driving reasons that I created Table for ONE in the first place was to showcase this belief whilst emphasizing the talents of artists and designers currently working in the board game industry. Nowhere is this notion of innate beauty more evident than when observing a game like Meadow being displayed on the table, it really is an aesthetic tour de force. How else would one describe a game that features more than 200 cards, each with unique artwork containing hand-painted watercolour drawings penned by talented nature illustrator Karolina Kijak. Or the card deck holders shaped like an old beloved rucksack, the sides adorned with sketchbook illustrations and keepsakes discovered on your hikes through the wilderness. Or the fact that the accompanying appendix lists not just the game effect of each and every card but also interesting facts and the scientific names for the depicted wildlife. There is even a column where players can make notes, marking the time and date they observed the specimen in real life! Meadow is the sort of board game that I want to introduce to friends and family who are new to the hobby, to show just how beautiful something made from cardboard can be.
GAME PLAY
For the solo player, the core rules and mechanisms of Meadow as a multiplayer experience remain unaltered when playing the game solitaire. Over the course of six rounds, you will acquire cards from the main board which are then added to your personal player area known as the meadow. Essentially you are trying to create a thriving habitat which will attract different type of plants and animals thus earning you precious victory points during the final tally at the end of the game. The main board is divided into a four-by-four grid; each column populated with cards from one of the decks represented by the four cardinal directions of a compass. Each deck composition differs from one another, for example the South deck features predominantly animals and plants whereas the East equivalent exclusively contains what are known as ground cards. These cards constitute the literal foundation of your meadow upon which additional cards depicting wildlife can be added on subsequent turns, provided your current tableau contains the prerequisite icons needed to satisfy the condition of any given card. For example, to add the inquisitive, yellow-necked mouse your meadow needs to have both a tree and a litterfall ground symbol visible amongst your cards whereas the peaco*ck butterfly wants to settle in a habitat that contains grass and a larva icon. Once added to your meadow the card will then be able to serve as a prerequisite for new observation cards, thus completing the figurative circle of life.
But the act of adding a new card to your meadow from the central board is not as simple as choosing any of the available offerings without restrictions. Instead, Meadow presents a spatial puzzle of sorts by having players make use of path tokens. These tokens, which are shaped in the likeness of an old wooden street sign, each have a numerical value at the top and a combination of icons at the bottom end of the token. In order to acquire a new card, you place a path token into one of the notches on the outside rim of the main board. Once added, you count up the number of spaces in the direction the path token is pointing and take the card on the spot the corresponds to the numerical value of the path token. Anyone who has played Quadropolis from publisher Days of Wonder will instantly recognise this mechanism, as it adds an interesting layer of tactical consideration versus long-term strategy: do you hold on to your high value path tokens in the hopes of no one else takes that particular card you been eyeing, or do you spend it potentially leaving you with less options during the later turns of the round?
But path tokens are not just used exclusively to acquire new cards, they can also be slotted into the campfire board thus allowing you to activate the action indicated by the bottom half of the path token; one might allow you to add two cards to your meadow instead, while another lets you draw three cards from any deck and keep one adding the discarded two to the bottom of the deck. The “downside” to these powerful actions is that you are essentially forfeiting the opportunity to acquire new cards to your meadow and seeing how you only have five path tokens at your disposal per round not adding a new card can have a huge impact on your final tally. This balance between a long-term plan versus thinking on your feet and adjusting accordingly is one that I personally relish in a board game and Meadow features it in spades, making for a board game that balances perfectly between being accessible versus crunchy.
The solo variant introduces a dummy player named Rover who you will be competing against to become the most prolific nature observer as you trek through the wilderness. In terms of upkeep and rules overhead, Rover is definitely on the lighter end of the complexity spectrum making for a solo board game that allows you to focus on your own strategy. Unlike yourself, Rover does not have a meadow of their own, nor do they abide by the restrictions of having to pair icons with previously acquired card. Instead, their sole focus is to acquire large quantities of cards with the goal of maximising their final score at the end of the game much like how Tull Au Toma behaves in Red Rising. In order to determine the actions of Rover the game uses a dedicated solo game token, shaped in the form of a miniature version of the main board. Along the outside perimeter three coloured markers are placed at random, these correspond to the available player colours and will be used to determine which slot on the main board that Rover will attempt to add a path token. The result is a solo opponent that is incredibly simple to manage, you simply flip the topmost of Rover’s path tokens face-up and place it in the matching notch on the main board as indicated by the solo game token. Alternatively, if Rover’s chosen path token shows the question mark symbol it is instead added to the campfire board essentially blocking you from performing the bottom half portion of your own path tokens. Once the dummy player has acquired a card from the main board a new one is immediately added in its place in the exact same manner as when playing Meadow multiplayer.
My main area of criticism regarding Meadow as a solo game experience concerns the aforementioned campfire board. In addition to allowing players to activate the bottom half actions of their path tokens, the campfire board also presents an opportunity to earn additional victory points. During setup, the board is seeded at random with goal tokens the symbol of which corresponds to the one’s present on the cards. These goal tokens form pairs which players can claim on their turn provided that their tableau of meadow cards have both the required symbols visible. Fulfilling these goals will earn you an increasing amount of victory points at the end of the game for a maximum of nine points provided you are able to add all three of your bonus tokens to the campfire board. In the solo variant of Meadow Rover, the dummy player, never makes use of the bonus tokens. Which is a shame considering it removes an important aspect of the game namely the act of jockeying against your competition for those coveted additional points. And because Rover never challenges the solo player in terms of claiming goal tokens you are almost guaranteed to earn an additional nine points at the end of the game as an afterthought rather than the result of a carefully considered tactical or strategical decision. Fortunately, there is a fan-made solo variant for Meadow available on Board Game Geek which adds the ability for Rover to compete for the bonus goal tokens on the campfire board. I have not had the opportunity to try this variant myself but based on reading the rules document it certainly looks promising.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Setting aside my minor gripes with the campfire aspect of the game design, as far as I am concerned Meadow is an absolute delight. It is a staggeringly beautiful game to both behold and play, with a solo variant that requires minimal effort in terms of upkeep and rules overhead on behalf of the dummy player. The result is a board game that manages to strike a near-perfect balance between being accessible whilst simultaneously providing plenty of strategical and tactical considerations from start to finish thanks to the path tokens and the ecosystem of adding cards on top of another in your meadow. If adding birds to habitats has run its course and you are looking for a nature themed alternative then I wholeheartedly recommend taking a closer look at Meadow, for me this is one of the biggest surprises of 2021 thus far!
Fredrik Schulzhttps://tableforone.me
