Customer Reviews

Terra Nova

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Here's a simple game to learn. You have a board with different terrain types printed on it, arranged in lines of hex spaces. Each player gets a set of people markers. On your turn you take any three game actions you like. The first must be a movement of one meeple (person marker). You may move any number of open connected spaces, in a straight line. No jumping over other markers, and no sharing spaces. After the first movement, other actions that can be taken in any order are:
1. Another movement of the same marker you moved, or any other that you have on the board
2. Place a wooden stone marker adjacent to the last meeple you moved

The object is to enclose an area of the board with stone markers, and to have more meeples in the enclosed area when it is completed. If the area surrounded consists of 3 or less terrain types, then it is scored. Points are awarded to the player with the most meeples in that area, and then all meeples there are removed from the game. Play continues until all areas on the board are divided into enclosed areas, until only one player can make a move, or until one player runs out of meeples on the board. The winner is the player with the most points at that time.

This is a brain burner of a game, to be sure. There is virtually no luck involved, as results are based solely on what you do with your game actions. It is pure strategy, and if you do not enjoy abstract strategy games, you will not like this. Like Chess, if you play someone who analyzes every possibility, the game will bog down a bit. There are no cards and no dice. It is just you and your meeples and stones, and you have to gain points while avoiding trapping yourself or being trapped by other players and losing your meeples. Trapping yourself can also be a favorable strategy if you have a sizeable lead, and you want to end the game. I like it. But you have to be mentally sharp when you play. That eliminates a lot of possible time for me. My mental skills are more like a blunt object than a sharp one. I'll play, earn a few points, watch as others do things I never would have thought of, and then reach for a game with some old fashioned luck. Then you had better watch out.

I bought this game thinking that it was one that I'd had when I was little and I wanted to share it with my niece. Unfortunately, I was wrong! This wasn't the game from my youth. Now the good news. It turns out that it was still a decent game. It is easy enough to learn for even very young children to be able to play, but still has enough strategic challenge to make it interesting for the adults. This probably wouldn't have been a game I would have purchased had I not checked it out as carefully as I usually do, but it turns out to have been worth the price I paid.