π₯πΌπΌπ by Leder Games and designed by Cole Wehrle, doesn't need a lot of words, I guess, as by now, everybody in the boardgaming community knows, how great this game is.
Since a couple of months, we have a monthly get together at our local boardgame bar Das Brett, to dive deeper into the game, cause this deserves to get played regularly.
Not only are we trying out the many different factions, we also explore the different mini expansions and maps of the game.
The last time we played the game, we tried the lakeside map, which changes the geography and connections in a big way, as there's a huge lake in the middle of the map. You either can try to go around it, which takes some time to get from A to B, or you can use the boat, that's an integral part of this map variant.
Using the boat not only gets you faster to where you wanna go, also, whenever you use it, you're allowed to draw a card, which makes this option very rewarding.
Generally this map is a lot of fun and adds to the tactical decision space the game already offers, and I can only recommend it, to give the game a little bit of variety in between.
But not every faction profits from this map variant in the same way. It's mostly for factions, that don't have it that easy to move around on the map. For example, we had The Underground Dutchy and the Maquis de Cat in play and both factions have a big radius of movement already. Also the Corvid Conspiracy, that was also in play, don't have to move a lot, as they can recruit into almost every space on the map.
Therefore the boat wasn't used that often and I think that map variant would have made more sense, with other factions on play, that have it harder to get around.
Still definitely wanna explore this map and it's tactical possibilities more, so for sure gonna play it again.
