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63 About this deal
If you buy a card, which is the most common action, a new one gets added to the display. And this is both angsty and annoying at once. There’s a certain satisfaction in snatching a valuable card someone else has clearly been saving up for, and it adds to the strategies involved in pacing your hikers along the trail. But the fast turnover of cards and the random replacement tend to torpedo attempts at long-term strategy. PARKS is much more of a tactical affair. Placing tiles on your board works differently to most polyomino puzzles in that they cannot touch each other. You will also need to avoid trees and maximise bonuses on your board. You may buy one of the face-up Gear cards on the board by paying Sunshine tokens equal to its cost [in the upper right of the card]. Trails is a two to four player resource management and collection game from the makers of Parks. Similar in theme, this more compact, travel friendly game offers interesting choices, stunning artwork and gentle, well-themed play. Get Up & Go There are also gear cards, season cards, secret goal cards, canteen cards, cards for solo play and some cardboard components that are very high quality and a metal first player marker.
When the sun reaches the final space, that player takes one bonus photo for free. Each player then gets one more turn to carry out final moves, before points are tallied and a winner declared! Let’s Go ‘Round Again
Key Facts
Overall, the card art is amazing and I think this is the main draw of this game. Despite some being very similar to the base game as I mentioned, it is still an expansion I would buy simply just to get these cards. I love going through them, just gazing at the beautiful images, imagining what it would be like to be there. At the time of writing, we’re still in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Trips away and idyllic plans got put on pause. We’ve had to cancel holidays, and travelling to far-flung places is a case of fuhgeddaboudit. It’s fortunate then that Parks allows you to visit national parks around the US, from the comfort of your own home. If you’re not familiar with this game already, fear not. I’ll be explaining how to play Parks from set-up to conclusion. One of the greatest things about America is its open country: the purple mountains’ majesty, the amber waves of grain, the fruited plains, and so forth. Nothing exemplifies that more than the National Parks, federally protected lands that span the gamut of terrains, climates, and wildlife. To stand in one of these parks is to be humbled, to truly understand how vast and ancient the Earth is compared to humanity. PARKS, from Keymaster Games, is the latest attempt to capture that indescribable feeling in a board game. Does it succeed? Read on to find out what we think of PARKS!
Memories captures a depth of strategy in player abilities which can be activated by finding matches of PARKS resource icons when you reveal tiles. There are a variety of ways to enjoy the game. Play a head to head game, or on teams. Expand the grid size for a bigger challenge, or simplify the game to a memory game without player abilities for younger gamers. The most noteworthy thing about the new parks is their very different artwork. I must confess that I don’t love the new style, as I find it jarringly different to the original, but my partner was a fan so I can only say that this is a personal preference of mine. Beyond that, the only real difference with these parks is that their cost includes wildlife tokens, making the tokens a more important part of game and dovetailing nicely with their increased prevalence due to the bison mechanic. Also stated on the Season card is an effect that comes into play for this first season alone. It could be something such as gaining extra resources in particular circumstances. Or, some Park cards could come with token discounts if claimed this Season. But more about that later! Relight My Fire; That Park Card Is My Only Desire If you have Parks and Nightfall, then I would expect you may want Parks Memories to complete your set. Now I must warn you, there are three versions of Parks Memories based on the three main areas the parks are set in. Mountains, Coast to Coast and Plains Walker. They are all essentially the same game but offer different Park art, however, the abilities available in the game do change a little. If this sounds appealing then I would recommend this highly. If you enjoyed the base game for this same reason, then add this expansion immediately. But if you are looking for the game to completely change, then think again. There will still be moments in the game where you cannot do much, especially near the end of the rounds when there are no scoring options left by either visiting a park or taking a picture. This expansion won’t necessarily fix that.Remember that Season card you flipped over? Sat in its bottom-right corner is a weather forecast. This is a pattern combination of Sunshine and Water. Ignoring the first Trail Tile (and the Trailhead and Trail End), place one token per tile, left to right. Match and repeat the weather pattern according to the Season card. You should now have single tokens across five of the six Trail Tiles. (Or six of seven, if playing with higher player counts, as stated earlier.) As such, I am left wondering why this game was made? Was it just to cash in on the success of the base game? Or did they have a genuine passion to make it? I am left thinking about how best to describe this game and who to recommend it to. You do get a choice of secret goal cards to work towards at the end of the game, like buying at least seven sun’s worth of gear, but these are so hard to achieve and give such paltry rewards that they rarely figure. Rather, strategy in this game is more about making sure you’ve got opportunities to get what you need. Mostly, these come from canteen cards. You start with one of the former and can gain more on certain spaces: they’re cards that cost one water to activate and get you either extra resources or the chance to exchange resources for other kinds. However, I love how tight the game play is. Worrying what your opponents might snaffle is an exciting lottery that keeps you invested when your opponents are carrying out their moves too. This can easily be the difference of meeting an end-game objective or not. Tenpenny Parks is a super tight board game. Lots of options that are limited by other player’s choices and the relatively constrictive gameplay. There are so many things you would like to do, but so few workers to do them with. Some may find this restrictive gameplay too much, especially at three or four players.
Another big plus for me is the gentle competitive style of the game – whilst you may collect a badge before someone else who was planning and saving resources to collect that badge, it doesn’t feel malicious and those resources are likely to be useful elsewhere. Whilst it may string a little, it’s clear that all players are working on collecting badges and so doesn’t have the ‘take that’ element. Beautiful Nature Parks Memories plays on this, and brings the same art to you again, but this time on 48 sturdy Park tiles that offer the chance to play a few simple memory-based games. But is it any good? Park Life
What it’s like
Your goal in PARKS is to steer a tag-team pair of hikers through as many of the biggest and most spectacular national parks as you can across four “seasons.” You do this by purchasing park cards from a face-up selection using the game’s four resources: the relatively common sun and water and the rarer forests and mountains. You can also get wildlife tokens which work as wild cards and can be spent in place of any resource. Tenpenny Parks is a worker placement game. You will be placing four workers per round, over five rounds. These workers will either be placed to buy an attraction, a concession, or additional land. Alternatively they can be used to get some dollars from the bank or fell some trees to make room on your board.
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