Ever wanted to step out of the real world, through the gate at the bottom of the garden and make your way into the Faerie world? Build a magical garden to entice your faerie neighbors to befriend you in Forbidden Games’s Faeries & Magical Creatures game.
What’s in the box?
Forbidden Games’s Faeries & Magical Creatures is a deck-building board game. Annie Stegg Gerard has brought Glenn Drover’s faerie world to life in every element of the game. Her oil paintings have turned playing cards into palm-sized works of art, detailing faeries and magical creatures that make you want to display the cards as much as play the game. There are four garden player boards, wooden kinship tokens; eight wooden meeples (did you know that is the term for player tokens?), 48 two-sided garden tiles (one side is floral and the other side marks the paths) and a cinch bag to hold them; five faerie home tiles (I want to live in the mushroom house!), the Faerie token; 16 starting cards (four each of four designs); and 60 Faerie cards.
TOP TIP: Read the instructions booklet all the way through. It has little story snippets throughout that explain the world the game is played in, plus the game is a bit complicated, so each player should either read it through themselves or have one of the players read the instructions aloud while the game is being set up. And keep it handy until you’re fully immersed in the world and can play without needing to look things up.
TOP TIP: Take pictures when you open the box so you know how to get everything back in correctly. No amount of Tetris skills will get my game box to close again now and I wish I’d take the pictures I’m suggesting.
How to play Forbidden Games’s Faeries & Magical Creatures
There are a lot of pieces to manage for Faeries & Magical Creatures. Set the game board in the middle of the table and give each player a Garden Player Board, which they’ll have in front of them for the game. After each player chooses their color, they get the Kinship tokens, Action/Scoring Pawns, and Starting Cards in their color. The Starting Cards are placed face down as their Draw Pile. Each player sets one of their pawns on the top left square of the Garden board, which makes it their Scoring pawn.
Next shuffle the deck of Faerie cards and set the deck beside the game board. The number of players plus 1 is the number of Faerie cards that get drawn and set face up so that everyone can see them. These cards are the Card Offer. If you haven’t already put the Garden tiles in the included cinch bag, do that now, then draw out tiles that equal the number of players and set them near the board as the Tile Offer. Put the Faerie Home Tiles near the board, as well. Finally, take the Acting Player Faerie (in its included stand) and put it in front of the player who is going first.
The Acting Player (the player whose turn it is at any given moment – this distinction is important because all players take the same actions as the Acting Player in each round) chooses an action from the circles at the top of the game board, placing their Action Pawn (the one that’s not on the Garden board) on the circle. They then take that action. They can also play a card from their hand, if they choose (it’s not required, but the action is). Once a card has been played, it gets placed on the PLAYER’s discard pile. During a player’s turn, they can also opt to discard a card from their hand without playing it. After the Acting Player has taken their action and played or not played a card from their hand, each player must that same action in turn clockwise around the table, but only if they can. The other players do not play a card from their hand during the Acting Player’s turn. After all of the players that can have taken the action, the Acting Player token is moved counter-clockwise for the next player to become the Acting Player.
In the game, the Faerie world is divided into five types of fairies, so choose your favorite among them. There are five actions that a player can take: Gain Trust; Build Garden; Befriend a Faerie; Helping Hand; and Call Faeries. When you Gain Trust, you can add one of your Kinship tokens to any of the Five Faerie Folk areas. You want to be the player with the most Kinship tokens in any Faerie Folk Area, because you’ll score points for that achievement. The first player to have 10 Kinship tokens in a Faerie Folk Area gets to claim that Faerie Home tile for their Garden board. Place the tile wisely, because you get points for Plant tiles that are touching your Faerie Homes.
Build Garden lets you add a Garden tile (from the Tile Offer) to your Garden board and you get to choose whether to use the plant side or the path side. If it’s your first Path tile, you must place it on the edge of the board. Any Path tiles placed after that must touch another Path tile. Your garden path must connect each step of the way. Plant Tiles can be placed anywhere, but be careful not to block off your path. You also only get points for Plant tiles if they’re touching a Path tile. After all players have completed the Build Garden action, replenish the Tile Offer so that the number of tiles in the offer equals the number of players.
TOP TIP: When placing garden tiles, watch out for the special icons on the board that give you benefits when you cover them. The Kinship icon lets you place a Kinship Token; the Draw Card icon lets you Draw a card from your Draw Pile (regardless of how many cards you already hold); and the VP icon gives you 2 Victory Points at the end of the game.
Befriend a Faerie lets you draw a card from the Card Offer and place it in your Discard pile. After each player has drawn their card, the remaining cards in the Card Offer and put at the bottom of the Card Deck and then the Card Offer is refilled with new cards from the top of the Card Deck (one for each player plus one).
Helping Hand means that you must play a card from your hand and take the action or benefit on the card. That card is then put on your Discard pile. The Acting Player gets to play two cards.
Call Faeries lets you put a card from your hand onto your Discard pile and then draw as many cards as necessary to give you a hand of five cards. If you take the last card from your draw pile, shuffle your discard pile and move it over to become your draw pile. If that happens before you’ve drawn all of your cards, continuing drawing until you have five cards in your hand.
Continue playing until: 1) all of the Faerie Homes are in gardens; 2) there aren’t enough Garden Tiles to refill the Tile Offer: 3) any of the players have used up all of their Kinship tokens; OR 4) there aren’t enough Cards to refill the Card Offer. Once one of these has happened, continue the current turn and then end the game.
How to Win Forbidden Games’s Faeries & Magical Creatures
Scoring Faeries & Magical Creatures happens throughout the game. Players track their Victory Points by moving their Scoring Token through the garden according to the numbers along the sides of the board. You can score your points in any order.
Count the Kinship tokens in each of the Faerie Folk areas on the game board. The player with the most Kinship tokens in each area scores one point for each Kinship token (regardless of color). The same player can have the most Kinship tokens in multiple Faerie Folk areas. The player with the second highest number of Kinship tokens in each area scored one point for each of their Kinship tokens.
On your Garden boards, each square of a Plant Tile earns a score if any of the Plant tiles edges touch a Path tile’s edge. Each square of a Plant Tile that touches a Faerie Home Tile earns 2 points (regardless of how many of the Plant Tile’s squares touch the Fairy Home Tile. It just takes one edge touching to earn the double points. These points aren’t doubled if the same Plant Tile touches two Faerie Home Tiles.
The player with the most Victory Points wins the game. If scores are tied, the tiebreaker with the most Faerie Home Tiles wins. If two players have the same number of Victory Points and the same number of Faerie Home Tiles, they are joint winners.
Forbidden Games’s Faeries & Magical Creatures is a challenging game. If you play the standard version, it’ll take about an hour to play, but you can shorten the game by dealing four Faerie Cards to each player from the Card Deck before the game begins. Each player takes one card, adds it to their deck, then passes the remaining three cards to the left. From each handover, the players take one card, adding it to their deck, until all four cards from each player have been added to a Draw Pile. If only two people are playing, you can modify the game by removing tiles and cards. The game picture above is of a 2-player game. As I mentioned, it’s a little complicated so the game is recommended for players 10 and up. It’s only complicated in the beginning, though. As you get more familiar with Forbidden Games’s Faeries & Magical Creatures, you will love the game!
https://www.amazon.com/Faeries-Magical-Creatures-Strategy-Game
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