Atiwa

Product Information

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. Zeitgeist, entre fabrication locale, éco-conception et thématiques écologiques, avec Atiwa, et d’autres, on sent que la catastrophe climatique, et environnementale, saisit de plus en plus le marché du jeu de société. There is nice balance in your engine building. You will generate a tree engine – whether it is from bats pooping out seeds to generate new trees, or maybe having a lot of wild animals in your area which also lead to trees in the income phase – but in the end, you need trees to buy more land cards, especially village cards. Village cards provide spaces to house families, and as I said – this is one of the main ways to score points. Of course, as soon as you add more families to your area, you increase your food demand and you also increase the chance of pollution taking its toll on your cards…

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: Receive income based on the number of families the player has acquired. Each trained family collects one gold, each untrained family receives between zero and two gold, drawn from a bag, but also causes you to place a pollution marker in your tableau. Guano, for those not in the gua- know, is the accumulated fecal excrement of birds or bats. High in nitrogen, potassium, and phosphate content, it’s prized the world over as a fertilizer. It was also once highly coveted for its use in the production of gunpowder. However, with the introduction of modern day smokeless powders, gunpowder’s use (and, by default, guano’s usage therein) has sharply declined. Good to know: A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats can contribute to the reforestation of 800 ha of forest within a year!Atiwa เป็นพื้นที่ทางตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ของกานาในแอฟริกา ประกอบด้วยเนินเขาสูงชันที่มียอดเขาค่อนข้างแบน พื้นที่ส่วนใหญ่ของเทือกเขาประกอบด้วยป่าสงวนที่เขียวชอุ่ม เป็นที่อยู่ของสัตว์ใกล้สูญพันธุ์หลายชนิด อย่างไรก็ตาม การตัดไม้และการล่าสัตว์ป่า รวมถึงการขุดทองและ bauxite (แร่อลูมิเนียม) กำลังทำให้การอนุรักษ์ได้รับแรงกดดันอย่างมาก Kibi ที่อยู่ใกล้เคียง นายกเทศมนตรีกำลังให้ที่พักพิงแก่ค้างคาวผลไม้จำนวนมากในสวนของเขา ชายผู้นี้ตระหนักดีถึงคุณค่าอันยิ่งใหญ่ของสัตว์ต่างๆ ในพื้นที่ป่าที่กำลังลดน้อยถอยลง ค้างคาวกินผลไม้จะนอนหลับในตอนกลางวันและบินออกไปหาอาหารเมื่อพระอาทิตย์ตกดิน มองหาไม้ผลที่เหมาะสมซึ่งอยู่ห่างออกไปถึงหกสิบไมล์ พวกมันขับถ่ายเมล็ดผลไม้ที่บริโภคแล้วกระจายไปทั่วพื้นที่ขนาดใหญ่ระหว่างทางที่บินกลับบ้าน ค้างคาวผลไม้ฝูงเดียวจำนวน 150,000 ตัวสามารถปลูกป่าในพื้นที่ได้ถึงสองพันเอเคอร์ (5 พันไร่)ต่อปี 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 perfect balance between flying foxes (another common name for fruit bats) and the growth of the farm is the key to success and thus victory in this classic worker placement game! I honestly can’t think of even a single negative thing to say about Atiwa. The game play is top notch and the components are excellent. They even gave me plenty of plastic bags inside the box, so I can’t even grouse about that. It’s just an all around fantastic game. In fact, I think that out of all of the new games I’ve experienced over this past year, it’s probably my favorite one.

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. 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. After a player has performed an action they can, optionally, perform the fruit bat action, but only if they have 1) at least three fruit bats, 2) at least one fruit in their tableau, 3) at least one tree left on their supply board and 4) at least room for one tree. The player can take the three fruit bats from their tableau and move them to their night card, spending one fruit and taking one tree. 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! On the surface Atiwa looks like a big complex euro. It has “Advanced Level” written on the box. There are a decent amount of components, however, I personally find it more mid-weight in complexity. Sure, there are a decent amount of rules and a seven step income phase but after a few games it flows very well and is relatively easy to teach and play. What To Do, When?Atiwa won’t be a game for everybody; Lookout has slotted this into their "Advanced" range for a reason. It’s a bit mathy. It’s mostly heads-down, min-maxing gameplay where you’re concentrating on your own little world… and it might be analysis-paralysis hell for some players. Player interaction is present, but is relatively gentle; major disruption of your plans by an opponent can happen, but it’s a rarity rather than the norm (maybe a couple of times a game?). However, if you DO like this sort of game, the puzzle presented by those personal supply boards can be an absolute delight to chew over, and all of the game mechanisms live and breathe the setting. Atiwa doesn’t feel like a case of somebody taking a pre-designed game, and then eco-washing it with nice art and a trendy environmentalist theming. Everything fits. Everything makes mechanical sense. It’s an interesting setting for a board game, and you very much feel like the designer is telling the story that he set out to tell. And the noise that the new kid is making is a high-pitched squeaking noise. Look at the lovely little bats! Just like that mayor, in this game, you will develop a small community near the Atiwa Range, creating housing for new families and sharing your newly gained knowledge on the negative effects of mining and the importance that the fruit bats have for the environment. Acquire new land, manage your animals and resources, and make your community prosper. The player who best balances the needs of their community and the environment wins. 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.