SPIEL '18 Preview: Fertility, or The Grapes of Thoth

Both designer Cyrille Leroy and publisher Catch Up Games debuted in 2015 with the tile-laying game Sapiens. I previewed that title in this space in September 2015, and while I correctly remembered Leroy using domino-style tiles to challenge players in their efforts to build a tribal civilization, I misremembered that space in which players competed, thinking that everyone was competing on a shared playing area instead of having their own boards. How quickly memory fades...

Unlike that earlier game, the 2018 Leroy/Catch Up title Fertility does indeed feature a shared playing area, with players once again placing domino-style tiles to do things and score points. The games lasts nine rounds, and on a player's turn they must place one of their three tiles on the board next to something that's been played previously, matching at least one symbol on their tile with an adjacent symbol in play. The more you match, the more resources you receive — but everything you receive other than wheat must be spent the turn you get it.

Nearing the end of play, with monuments starting to spring up

Every player has their own metropolis that they develop over the course of the game, with each player starting with a few basic shops, then acquiring districts — sometimes for free, sometimes for the cost of any 1-2 resources — that bear more shops. By "spending" resources in these shops, you can earn points, increase the value of the resources you've used, collect more wheat, and record the presence of gods.

You want to specialize as you build, but you're restricted by the tiles available for drafting, the districts available for purchasing, and the opponents who will keep you from placing tiles where they'd be the most use to you.

My metropolis at game's end

In addition to scoring for districts, gods, and wheat — which sounds like the name of an obscure Fleetwood Mac cover band — players can place their monuments on the game board by enclosing a single square between tiles, wheat, water, and the edge of the playing area. Whoever places the most and secondmost monuments on the board scores a bonus. Instead of competing to be a big shot, though, you can grab a resource of your choice from an enclosed area, but I hardly think that one resource is going to make up for the seven or fifteen points a monument might bring, so stick with the monument plan, I think.

I've played Fertility only twice so far on a review copy from Catch Up Games, both times with two players. The game provides a quick challenge, with all the thinky moments that one might imagine: Which tile do you place and where? Which districts should you buy and where should you spend resources? Which tile do you grab next? It's a fine example of the genre, marred only by cardboard components that feel thin and that have cutouts too narrow to pull apart from the sprue in a satisfying manner, leaving you to pick slivers of cardboard from the monument parts in an extremely unmonumental way.