Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
WaldMeister is an abstract game from Gerhards Spiel und Design, the German game designers who made beautiful wooden games. My introduction to Gerhards Spiel was Urbino, a game so simple and sublime that I was immediately willing to try anything the publisher produced.
My review copy of Urbino came direct from Germany, which meant getting copies involved overseas shipping. Now, Gerhards Spiel has arranged for US distribution with The Wooden Wagon, a store in Massachusetts that specializes in wooden toys. (My thanks to Chuck for sending me a review copy of WaldMeister.)
Note: Gerhards Spiel games can also be found at The Brooklyn Strategist, a small board game café in Brooklyn whose inventory manager, our own Andrew Lynch, orders directly from the publisher.
Color or Height?
Place the wooden board with a diamond-shaped collection of hexagonal holes on the table between both players.
Give each player a matching set of 27 hexagonal pieces. These come in three different variations of green (light yellowish, Kelly, and dark) and in three different sizes (short, medium, tall). Players then decide if they’re playing for Color or Height.
If you’re playing for Color, it will help if you separate your pieces by color.
Likewise, if you’re playing by Height, you’ll want to divide them by height.
On a turn, players will start by moving a piece on the board. They’ll pick up an existing piece of their choice from the board and move it to another location in a line-of-sight straight line from its starting position on the board. (Pieces cannot ‘jump’ over other pieces.) Then, they’ll place one of their pieces in the space that held the piece they just moved.
While the two players are playing with the same pieces on the board, their objectives are very different. The player going after Color is looking to create a long, connected series of pieces of each of the three colors—regardless of height.
When the last piece is played and scoring takes place, the largest group of connected pieces of each color will be counted. Their sum is the Color player’s score.
Similarly, the Height player wants to create three connected series of pieces for each of the three Heights—regardless of their colors.
Many a Good Tree Grew on Shallow Ground
Sounds simple, right?
Well, actually, it is. Move a piece, put your piece where the moved piece started. Nothing complicated there.
Of course, like any good abstract, the beauty of WaldMeister comes out in the strategic decisions that come with each turn. As the game progresses, you’ll need to weigh which piece to move where, and which of your pieces you’ll replace it with. You’ll also work to enclose some of your pieces, protecting them from removal and relocation—if a piece is ever blocked off, that piece cannot be moved.
Since both players have an identical set of 27 pieces, the pieces you score with will undoubtedly overlap your opponent’s scoring pieces—that long, dark green piece that’s part of your connected string of long pieces will also be part of their string of dark green pieces. This will require some begrudging compromise between players, but stay aware of options that will cut off these points for your opponent while protecting your own.
I love watching the board grow, like a new life springing up from the forest floor. The board starts out with lots of possibilities. And while it never fully closes off (there will be 10 empty spaces on the board after both players exhaust their pieces), your options will reduce in scope. It’s a fun puzzle to work out.
And that touch of Root? For me, Root is a game where each player is playing on the same board, but playing an entirely different game. In WaldMeister, you’re each doing much the same thing, only on a much smaller scale.
WaldMeister presents as a simple game, but the roots run deep.
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