Let’s See What’s Out There – Faraway Review

Today’s review has its roots in a couple of recent posts by me, though I’ve been wanting to review it for a while now.

Faraway is a card game designed by Johannes Goupy and Corentin Lebrat with artwork by Maxime Morin. It was published by Catch Up Games in 2023.

How does it fit into recent posts?

A week or so ago I wrote about lunchtime games and Faraway is perfect for that!

At around 20 minutes, you could get 2-3 plays of the game in a good lunch hour.

Even four if your boss wasn’t watching that closely (or if you are the boss so it doesn’t matter).

Then there was Friday’s post about theme.

Faraway is a game with a theme, but the theme isn’t really that important. It’s the mechanics that make this game shine.

What do I mean?

Ostensibly, Faraway takes place in an ever-changing land where you are exploring the exotic locations, maybe finding a sanctuary or just a new area with interesting things to look at.

Unlike Let’s Go to Japan, you’re not planning this trip!

It’s the Unknown, baby. Who knows what you will find?

But when you boil it all down, you’re playing cards and trying to match symbols for points.

The game consists of 8 rounds of card drafting and then scoring, which is why it so easily fits a lunch period.

But there are a couple of twists that make Faraway truly intriguing.

You’ll start with a hand of three location cards and each player will place one face down, revealing it when everybody is finished.

This is your first location.

In order based from lowest number to highest number of the cards placed, players will draft a new card for their hand (so they’ll always have three to choose from).

That all seems bog standard, right?

(Where the hell did that term come from, anyway?)

Yes, it does.

However, the twists come fast and furious as you are playing.

Each card represents a distance that you have walked.

You don’t score the cards until you are on your return journey, though, retracing your steps and chronicling what you have found.

Not only that, but you score the cards in the opposite direction.

So the last card played is your first card scored.

Thus, the first two cards from the end (bottom right) above don’t score.

The third card scores two points for each of that symbol (they are named in the manual) on itself and the previously-scored cards.

Not the ones that haven’t been scored yet!

So it would be four points (two points for each of the symbols on the other two cards).

The fourth card to score (the one on the bottom left) scores two points for each Night card that’s already been scored (including itself, of course). I just put those cards out for illustration purposes. It would only score two points for itself because the first three cards are day cards (the circle around the number in the top left indicates whether it’s a day or night card).

However, you will notice the symbol right above the scoring location on that card.

That indicates that you need to have at least one of that symbol in the previously-scored cards. Or you won’t get any points! Doesn’t matter if you would get 20 points from it. If you don’t qualify to score it, you get nothing.

That’s the trick, and what you really have to pay attention to when you’re playing cards.

Playing a card that requires a bunch of symbols as your last card will generally get you no points. You won’t qualify to score it.

Unless you have some good Sanctuaries.

Sanctuaries are the other thing to keep in mind, because they can provide more scoring, or they can provide symbols that will help you score the cards on your journey.

The bottom left Sanctuary will provide that symbol for any of your area cards. If you have enough of them, maybe you could play that card that requires symbols as your last card.

How do you get these Sanctuaries, you may ask?

Well, the Buddha says that sanctuary can be found in ourselves.

(Ok, I have no idea if he ever said that).

But in the actual game, you qualify to draw a Sanctuary if the area card you play to your tableau has a higher number than the one you played last turn.

If it does, then you can draw a Sanctuary card.

Not only that, for each map symbol you have on your area cards and Sanctuaries, you can draw an additional Sanctuary and then choose one to take.

So above, the second and third rounds would qualify for a Sanctuary draw, and in both rounds, I could draw two and keep one.

The fourth round, however, would not allow me to do that.

Getting map symbols can be very lucrative because Sanctuaries are so handy.

The push and pull that I love about this game is how the cards are numbered and set up. The higher-value cards typically have requirements to qualify to score.

So you have to play them early or else they won’t score.

But then inevitably to get those symbols, you have to play lower-numbered cards.

This means you won’t get a Sanctuary that turn.

When do you pivot?

Also something to consider is that the card drafting is done in order from lowest to highest number played.

So if you’re playing that scoring card with a high number, you’re probably going to have fewer cards to choose from because you’ll choose last (or close to it).

Nothing may work for you.

Which is one of the drawbacks to the game, if you’re of that sort (I’m not, but I know some are).

It’s a card game, there is going to be a lot of luck and randomness involved. Especially in your last card or two where your decision may be “Which of these cards will get me the most points and why are all of them only one point?”

It is card drafting, so you do have some mitigation if you know what you need, but it may be that none of the available choices will actually help you.

Sanctuaries are completely luck of the draw, but the more map symbols you have, the more choice you will have and you are more likely to draw something useful.

Or you could draw four Sanctuaries that won’t do you much good.

That’s only a bad thing if you dislike randomness, though. As well, with it being a 20-minute game at most, I can take a lot of bad card luck and still enjoy the game.

I don’t think I’d like that in a 3-hour game, though.

The scoring is what really makes Faraway unique but it can also be a barrier to learning the game, at least at first.

It’s hard to wrap your head around the “place last, score first” mechanic.

It almost requires a learning game where the new player knows that they won’t do very well, but they just need to see it in action.

That’s another way that Faraway compares with Let’s Go to Japan, a game where the scoring mechanic is hard to explain without a full tableau out there to demonstrate.

Faraway is a simple game (once you know the scoring) that can fit into a very small time frame. It’s very enjoyable and the scoring mechanism and Sanctuaries give you a lot more choice than in some other random card games.

You are at the mercy of what the cards give you, but it’s up to you how to use them for the best.

It’s not deep at all, but it is satisfying.

It’s a joy to play and it’s been a big hit with my lunch group.

If we’re short on time, this is a game that I’m always willing to pull out for some quick gaming before it’s time to go back to work.

Or when we’re waiting for the rest of our game group to arrive on a Sunday (which means I should probably bring it home sometimes, eh?).

Sometimes that’s all you can ask for in a game.

(This review was written after 4 plays)