Mistwind

Mistwind gives me the feeling of an independent production that, without crowdfunding, we probably would never have seen. And unfortunately, it seems to belong to that category of games that are prohibitively expensive for a retail reprint, like the good old Days of Wonder titles.

Here, we take on the roles of merchants with airships, moving goods from city to city. At its core, it combines hard worker placement, network building, and pick-up-and-deliver: I have to arrange my moves and deliveries within a framework that gives me no room for wasted actions.

The game is very tight, and it asks you to work at it—to really burn your brain—in order to hit its scoring objectives. The interaction is not as innocent as the airships and trade routes first make it look; the choices, and the space left available, carry weight, so the other players are always part of the problem I am trying to solve.

In the end, Mistwind plays nicely precisely because it is not as relaxed as it pretends to be. And it has a rare virtue these days: for me, it is best with five players.