Review
Pandoria
Pandoria is a brisk, tidy tile-placement game with a sound little economy between building for later and scoring now. It does not reinvent anything, but it also has no interest in wasting your evening.
- Published
- 2018
- Designer
- Jeffrey D. Allers, Bernd Eisenstein
- Publisher
- Irongames
- Players
- 2–4
- Playing time
- 120 min
Pandoria has the pleasant confidence of a design that does not need to become the sole subject of the evening. It is neat, amiable, and short enough that I never feel compelled to open a spreadsheet in its honour.
At its centre, you place tiles on the map, aiming to close off regions and turn them into resources. Placement is not merely decorative: a completed region is fuel for the next stage, so the interesting decision is when to finish one and when to preserve your options.
Placement is not merely decorative: a completed region is fuel for the next stage, so the interesting decision is when to finish one and when to preserve your options.
TheTrainSpotter
Those resources build buildings, which provide victory points and abilities. That is where the game finds its balance: spend now to improve later turns, or harvest points immediately, knowing that the game is tight enough to make leisurely development a dubious luxury.
This is not the tile-placement game that will alter your understanding of the genre. It moves quickly, keeps its economy pleasantly taut, and does not ask to be overthought. Quietly good, then — and for a game that sits comfortably in an after-work evening, that is quite sufficient.
Quietly good, then — and for a game that sits comfortably in an after-work evening, that is quite sufficient.
TheTrainSpotter
Source: BoardGameGeek
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