Atiwa

Product Information

If it isn’t obvious by now, I value a well-integrated theme more than clever mechanisms in my Euro games. In many Euros, theme can be an afterthought, added on during development to explain all the gears and levers the game is made up of. Not here. The designer wants you to know how important this theme is to him. So much so that the game includes a booklet about the Atiwa region including its history, geography, and people. I highly recommend players read this before playing. It also talks about the book that Mr. Rosenburg is writing about the Atiwa region and people, published in German only. Duolingo here I come! Players have a lot of choices but never enough workers. Final Thoughts:

I’ve not seen an absolute runaway winner yet in quite a few games, which speaks volumes about the level of balance in the game. It’s easy to get complacent about such things, but after Hallertau when some players complained that it was just a case of ‘solving’ the puzzle to move the community centre in the game, it’s great to see another game which feels open-ended. Final thoughts The graphic design and iconography is very well done. As we have played our first few games, the other gamers in my group (who did not read the rules on their own) were able to correctly interpret the icons on the player aids and the cards; this was very nice to see. And speaking of the player aids – though there are 3 cards worth – they pretty much explain everything that you need to know to play – and this really streamlines the experience.

About Dale Yu

Atiwa สร้างที่อยู่อาศัยสำหรับครอบครัวใหม่และแบ่งปันความรู้ที่เพิ่งได้รับเกี่ยวกับผลกระทบด้านลบของการทำเหมืองและความสำคัญที่ค้างคาวกินผลไม้มีต่อสิ่งแวดล้อม คุณต้องหาที่ดินใหม่ จัดการสัตว์และทรัพยากรของคุณ และทำให้ชุมชนของคุณเจริญรุ่งเรือง ผู้เล่นที่สร้างสมดุลระหว่างความต้องการของชุมชนและสิ่งแวดล้อมได้ดีที่สุดจะเป็นผู้ชนะ The first thing that strikes you about Atiwa is the image of the fruit bat on its cover. He hangs there suspended upside down from the upper fame, an orange nestled within the folds of his wing. It’s an odd image if you don’t know what it is you’re looking at, as was the case with me the first time that I saw it. Any resources gained from your Supply board will always be placed into your tableau, but there are some very specific placement rules. For starters, Family tokens must always be placed into empty huts, untrained side up. So, if you don’t have any empty huts, you cannot gain anymore Family tokens. That’s the easy one. The Atiwa Range is a region of southeastern Ghana in Africa consisting of steep-sided hills with rather flat summits. A large portion of the range comprises an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many endangered species. However, logging and hunting for bushmeat, as well as mining for gold and bauxite, are putting the reserve under a lot of pressure.

Dans Atiwa, vous développez une petite communauté au Ghana, tout en gérant les populations de chauves-souris. Passionnant, pertinent ! At first glance, you might think the board rivals something like A Feast For Odin in terms of action spaces to place your workers. In reality, the choices are much more simple. Many of the actions involve moving something from your supply board (goats, wildlife, trees, families, fruit) to your village spaces, usually by trading something else in return. The game’s economy is really easy to grasp. Above and below the main board are new tiles to add to your tableau, representing wild areas (things like grasslands, lakes, caves), or living areas such as villages and towns. Expanding your tableau with these tiles is essential as the game goes on. At the end of a game at my local games club. Atiwa has a relatively small footprint. Extraire du minerai, de l’or, déforester et polluer ? Ou vivre en harmonie avec la nature et tout faire pour accueillir les chauves-souris pour profiter de leur guano et ainsi reforester ?The thematic touch of the untrained workers creating pollution for your community is a great addition. It always pains me to pollute my tableau, especially if I have to destroy a resource, or worse, a bat. It makes you think about what you are doing and pushes the theme of working with nature and the fruit bats for the greater good. Going Alone The Atiwa Range is a region in southeastern Ghana, Africa, made up of steep-sided hills with relatively flat tops. Much of the range includes an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many endangered species. However, logging and bushmeat hunting, as well as gold and bauxite mining, are putting great pressure on the reserve. It’s not often a board game makes me want to learn German, read a book about its theme, and wish more games had bat meeples, but Atiwa, Uwe Rosenburg’s newest big box game, does just that. Atiwa is a worker placement game for 1-4 players that will take 60-90 minutes per play. Gameplay Overview: The shifting tiles add variability by covering up placement spots, but also revealing new ones. Terrain and location cards are important as these are the only places where you can play your tokens. Cards are always placed upright, so that the title is in the upper left corner. Note that some cards will have a leaf symbol in this space; these nature icons will become important for other actions. Some spaces have preprinted icons on them; this tells you what goes there. Empty spaces can be filled with anything so long as there is at least one other thing of the same type already on the card. In general, when you place a token, you take the leftmost available one from your supply board. If you spend or return tokens, place them on the rightmost available space. Overall, I think Atiwa is a fantastic game. It is high up in my ranks of Uwe games. I think the theme is appealing, the management of your supply board interesting and the solo mode is great.

Players then receive trees, fruit and fruit bats based on the number of resources removed from their supply board. Wild Animals, Trees, and Fruit: Take a look at your Supply board and gain the rightmost uncovered reward from each row, starting with the top row and moving down. Wild Animals get you trees. Trees get you fruit. Fruit gets you bats.

is a huge forest reserve with 17,400 ha of evergreen forest, which is rare even for Ghana. There are also mineral resources here, such as gold, diamonds, white alumina and bauxite. But that is not what this game is about. In Atiwa you develop a small community near the Atiwa range. You will create housing for new families, share your knowledge of the negative effects of mining and the importance of fruit bats in the environment. You will need to acquire new land, manage animals and resources and develop your community.

Good to know: A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats (AKA flying foxes) can contribute to the reforestation of 800 ha of forest within a year! There are a couple of criticisms here as well. After several plays, it feels like the possibility of discovering new strategies is low. I fear that after a few more plays that this one may be relegated to being “solved” and become a bit samey. The solo mode scenarios should help with this at least. I also don’t love the graphic design choice of the main board and the terrain cards. It’s a long-running joke that Euro games can be all beige, but in Atiwa, various shades of brown and green really do the heavy lifting in the art department. I wish they had opted for some more vibrant art befitting the beauty of the Atiwa rainforest. That being said, I have enjoyed my time with Atiwa, but worry that the theme will overshadow the gameplay after a few plays. I can’t help but think that maybe Uwe Rosenburg meant it to be that way. In the game, you'll develop a small community near the Atiwa Mountain Range, creating homes for new families and sharing your new knowledge about the negative effects of mining and the importance of fruit bats to the environment. You must acquire new land, manage your animals and resources, and grow your community. The player who finds the best balance between the needs of their community and the environment wins. Theme(s) When the game ends, players will add their points and then subtract any negatives they may have received from not feeding their families to obtain their final total. The player with the highest total wins. These points come from a variety of places: one point for each leftover gold; each tableau card is worth points; the rightmost uncovered spot of each Supply board row is worth the number of points printed on it; trained Families are worth a point each, and every Fruit bat in excess of ten is worth a point. Ties are broken by whoever has the least pollution. This player will earn 27 points (1+3+2+15+6) from their Player board.Plus, there’s a thing going on around “training” the families who live in your village. (Though “training” seems like a bit of an odd choice of word to me, and I do wonder if it’s just a slightly awkward German->English translation … I kind of like to think of this action as “educating” your villagers instead of "training"). By default, a newly-arrived family in your village will cause pollution, and see bats as a threat to their livelihood. There’s an end-of-round action where your families all earn income … any “untrained” families do this by mining gold and bauxite — a process which causes pollution chits to creep down your tile tableau, putting spaces out of action for the rest of the game … and “untrained” families also don’t like having bats roosting in their home, which deprives you of a handy bat-keeping space. “Trained” families, on the other hand, earn their income in an ecologically-sound, non-polluting way, will happily provide a home for bats, and will also score you bonus points at the end of the game. So you really want to train your villagers, if you can. Feeding: To feed your Families, first determine the food demand. Subtract the number of the rightmost uncovered Goat from the number of the rightmost uncovered Family to determine the total. Then pay some combination of tokens and/or gold until this total is met. Wild Animals, Fruit, Goats, and Gold can be spent for different amounts. And untrained Families will even consume Fruit bats. You’ll lose two points for each unfed Family. However, in all the games that I have played, I have yet to see this happen. The food value of each item is shown on the Overview card. Another aspect that I enjoy is Atiwa is your supply board. You have your own personal supply board that you remove and add resources to as your progress through the game. Balancing this and managing your resources is very compelling. The more resources you remove the better rewards, but as you spend resources they re-populate your supply board. I love this mechanism and it is so simple.