Friday Night Shots – Polyomino Games

It’s Friday again!

Weekends are awesome, aren’t they?

But I’m pleased that you spend your Friday night (or Saturday morning, maybe?) hanging out with me, having a drink or two (we do have water or pop!) and just commiserating about board games.

We’ll just leave the Loverboy on the jukebox, though I will turn it down so we can actually hear.

It’s not like there are any other crowd noises in here.

Tonight, let’s talk about polyomino games a bit.

These games are ones that I don’t hate with a white-hot passion (I’m looking at you, real-time games), but ones that I tend to avoid because my brain just doesn’t see spatial patterns very well.

In other words, I suck at them.

But believe it or not, there are actually a couple of them I like!

So let’s talk about the positives, because it’s Friday night.

What prompted this post?

Two things, both related.

My friends over at the Discard Pile (really, you need to start listening, as the podcast is great!) are doing their Top 50 games, and one of them included Planet Unknown on their list.

Secondly, and related, the game has shown up (in Alpha, maybe, or possibly Beta) on Boardgame Arena, and I’ve played it multiple times now!

With that, let’s go positive!

The “gimmick” with Planet Unknown is the unique tile-drafting system as you are trying to populate your planet with various resource tiles.

As with most of these games, you are trying to fill your board and you have to fit the polyomino tiles into spaces that will accept them. If there’s no room and you don’t have a legal play, the game will end this round!

What’s unique about the drafting is the lazy susan method of deciding which tiles are available.

The Commander shifts to the next player each turn and that player will turn the lazy susan (I love that term) so that the tile they want is in front of them.

Each other player has to choose one of the two tiles that are in front of them. They don’t get any choice (other than between the two tiles).

What do I like about this game considering that fitting differently-shaped tiles onto a board usually turns me off?

Part of it is what I mention above about the tile drafting.

But I also really like that placing tiles moves you up the appropriate tracks, giving you some incentive to choose certain tiles.

In addition, of course, there is the rover movement where you are trying to pick up meteors that your tiles have placed, because the columns and rows don’t score if there are meteorites on them.

This gives you something else to think about rather than just fitting the tiles.

I’m still not good at it. But I’m better at it than I am at most!

Maybe that’s because of the bigger board that doesn’t have any impediments to tile placement in the middle of the board.

Finally, there’s the simultaneous turns.

Other than when multiple people qualify for a civilization card, all turns happen at the same time!

That makes the game go a lot faster, which is good when you’re playing a polyomino game.

Another polyomino game I actually like is Patchwork.

This 2-player game also has an interesting tile-drafting mechanic in that all of the tiles are randomly placed in this huge circle (which unfortunately does make this game a bit of a table hog even though it really shouldn’t be, and no, I don’t have a picture of the huge circle).

It has a really cool button mechanic too where you have to pay buttons and move along the track for a tile that you take. You can only choose among the next three tiles from where the marker is, so your choice is limited (in a different way from Planet Unknown, but you do have three choices instead of two).

You move the marker in front of the tile you take and your opponent (it’s a 2-player game) then can choose from the next three tiles from that marker.

You place the tile on your quilt (it’s a smaller surface, so I suck more at it) and you move your time marker along the track based on the hourglass shown on the tile.

If you pass the button marker, then you will take button income (all of the buttons on your quilt).

It also has a mechanism that I love, in that this track dictates turn order.

You advance on the track and if you are still behind your opponent, you go again!

If you can’t afford any of the three tiles, or if you don’t want any of them, you can just advance to the space in front of your opponent and earn buttons equal to the spaces you jumped.

I’m not actually too bad at this game, though that’s all relative. In other words, I suck, but not quite as much as most other polyomino games.

The third polyomino game that I kind of liked is The Isle of Cats.

And I really can’t explain why, because it does contain most of what I don’t like about polyomino games.

There are tons of different tile shapes that you are trying to fit into your boat.

The board isn’t a square and it’s not big, so you’re really inhibited in where you can place tiles.

True, you don’t have to work around things like posts and stuff, but it’s still kind of weird for my brain.

You lose points for open spaces (I think in this case it’s only if a rat is showing? But I’m not sure).

I know Patchwork does that too, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me there either.

Maybe it’s because the cats are cute?

Or maybe it’s the goal system where you can draft Lessons that you can play and which will give you points.

Or maybe it’s how you can draft differently-shaped filler tiles which can help you fill your boat.

I don’t know, but all I know is that I kind of like it.

I don’t hate it, at least, which considering many other polyomino games, that’s saying something.

There you have it.

Three games from a genre that I don’t like.

Which I actually like!

Do you have anything like this? A genre you don’t like but there are a couple of games you actually do like from it?

Or what do you think of polyomino games in general?

This post brought to you by peppermint schnapps (wow, that brings back Chicago bowling league memories), the number 119, and the letter p (for polyomino!)