Rise to New Heights Evenly in Treelings, and Use a Goose to Escape the Forest Memorinth

Rise to New Heights Evenly in Treelings, and Use a Goose to Escape the Forest Memorinth
Board Game Publisher: Edition Spielwiese
German published Edition Spielwiese has unveiled the two titles it plans to release in the first half of 2020 — both co-published with Pegasus Spiele with rules in English and German — and has often been the case for its non-Rosenberg titles, Spielwiese is working with new, younger designers. Sophia Wagner, designer of Noria and The Boldest, won the Spiel des Jahres scholarship in 2015 for best new designer of the year, and 2018's Farben was the first release from Apolline Jove.

Treelings is the first design from Paul Schulz, who won the Spiel des Jahres scholarship in 2017. Here's an overview of this 2-5 player design that plays in 15-30 minutes:
Quote:
In the world of Treelings, construction is well and truly underway in preparation for the annual firefly festival! Beautiful, glowing swarms of fireflies may be released only from the highest towering platforms in the city during the upcoming summer solstice. Six different guilds reside in the city, and they will do everything possible to build their own tree as high as possible in each district. As chief of your district, each round you decide which guild you want to support in your part of the city as you want to lure the spectators to your show on festival day and to send as many brightly-glowing fireflies to freedom as possible.

In game terms, the guilds are represented by a deck of 108 cards, with each of the six guilds appearing 18 times. To set up, deal three cards face up to each player, grouping those cards in columns by color. Lay out five cards face up to form the market. Place the game-ending firefly festival card twenty cards up from the bottom of the deck.

Board Game: Treelings

On a turn, a player takes all the cards of one color from the market or one card of each color that appears only once in the market; they then add these cards to their collection. If you already have cards of that color, you place the new cards upward in a column so that everyone can see how many cards you have; if you don't have this color, place cards of the new color to the left or right of your current columns. Then refill the market. When the firefly festival card is revealed, end the game after each player has taken the same number of cards.

To score, look at each column of cards in your collection and compare the number of cards in it to the number of cards in the columns to the left and right. (For the columns on the outer edge of your collection, you compare their height to the height of your neighbor's closest column and the adjoining column in your collection.) For each column, if it's at least as tall as each column adjacent to it, you score points equal to the number of cards in that column. Whoever scores the most points wins!
The other title coming from Edition Spielwiese is Memorinth, the name being a portmanteau of "memory" and "labyrinth" as explained below. This 2-4 player design is from Richard Haarhoff, who won the Spiel des Jahres scholarship in 2018:
Quote:
It's a beautiful spring day — the perfect weather for a walk in the forest! You put on your jacket, lace up your boots and set out. Lost in your thoughts, you turn once here and then again there, sometimes going left and sometimes turning right... Suddenly you hear something rustling behind you in the bushes. You take a few cautious steps towards the noise and discover...a goose?! And it's talking to a goblin? Then all of a sudden, your friends are standing next to you in the forest...

Which is the shortest way back? You're in luck as the fairy tale characters decide to show you, but your friends are constantly changing the path in Memorinth in their own attempts to get home the quickest. However, with a bit of luck and memory, you'll be the first to get out of the labyrinth!

To set up, place the clearing tile on the table, then place all of the player pieces on this card, then lay out the other tile to form a 5x5 grid with the clearing tile at the center; alternate the light and dark sides of the tiles, with the clearing tile starting on the light side. Place two of the eight fairy tale characters on each side of the grid.

From gallery of Boardgamescafe

On a turn, a player flips over an unoccupied tile that matches the light/dark status of the clearing tile. If the revealed side of the tile has one of the eight fairy tail characters on it, you must move your player piece one space toward the side of the grid where this character is located — but only if a path connects the tile you current occupy and the tile to which you must move. If no path exists, you don't move. Starting with the second round, the clearing tile will flip from light to dark and back again, challenging you to remember which characters are where so that you can move in the direction that helps you best.

Memorinth also has a "master mode" in which you place four of the fairy tail characters around a special double-sided action tile. On one side of this tile, when you reveal one of the characters next to it, you'll remove a tile from the grid, then add it back on the opposite side of the grid, sliding everything in that row or column. On the other side of the action tile, when you reveal one of the characters next to it, you'll swap two tiles, swap two fairy tail characters, look at the bottom of a tile, or receive a lucky clover token, which you'll need in order to walk on a path with goblins.
Since the start of Edition Spielwiese in 2016, Stronghold Games has been releasing its titles in North America and elsewhere in English-only editions. Starting in 2020, Pegasus Spiele will take over exclusive distribution of its titles in the U.S. and Canada, with 2019's Evidence from Edition Spielwiese also being distributed via this channel.

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