Fireside Games Grackles - Board Games for Families - Board Games for Adults

Would love to give you more of a product review but I refuse to open it. Just one of my many stupid collectors items

This is easily my favorite game. It's great for all ages. I am really hoping for an expansion or two. Since I love it so much, I ended up buying multiple copies for others and a backup for myself, just in case something ever happens to my copy. It's incredibly easy to learn. It's not a time suck and it can be played by anyone. I'm very impressed.

This is an easy to learn game where you are laying plastic chips in lines on a changing game board with the goal of using more of your chips than your opponents. While it is simple, the possibility of your opponents rotating tiles or placing new ones does add some complexity to the game. The artwork on the box is nice and the grackles appear on the plastic chips, but that is pretty much the extent of the theme other than the idea of creating lines of chips like lines of grackles sitting on telephone lines. But, I like that the designers gave a background to the concept of creating rows on the board by making them rows of grackles. The game board is created using tiles, each of which has a 2x2 pattern of circles, one each of the four colors used in the game. The game starts with the same two tiles and from there, the board is expanded as more tiles are placed. On each turn, the players can do one of four things: - Draw and place a tile on the board - Build a line - connect an empty space of your color with another empty space of your color on the board - Extend a line - extend an existing line to an empty space on a new tile that has been placed. Note that you can never cross a line, even if it is your own color - Rotate an empty tile The winner of the game is the one with the least number of chips at the end of the game. The game is for 2 to 4 players, but it seems to play best with 2 players because there is more back and forth between the players. While the game is easy and fun to play, it is not without problems. Each player has 5 rotate tile tokens and these are often left to the end of the game which means that the same tiles keep getting rotated until everyone runs out of rotate tile tokens. And it is usually clear before the game ends who will win. Overall, this is a nice, light game.

Simple to learn, heaps of strategy. Excellent game for two players head to head as well as three of four players. Looking forward to new expansions that may allow more than four players per game.

This is a straightforward, easy to learn, light strategy game. It really has nothing to do with birds but is a way to take an abstract strategy game and give it some color and a little personality. Gameplay: Each player can take one of 4 actions on their turn. Play a card, rotate a card, build a line, or extend a line. This continues until no more moves are left at which point played tokens are counted and the player with the most tokens on the board wins. Time to learn. It generally will only take you a game to get the basics mastered. That said, we misread the instructions on the first play through regarding rules around creating lines. The instructions here could also be much improved in our opinion. Fun factor: Truthfully, my family found the game to be just OK. It seemed to us, that there was a definite advantage to the order of play. That is, the player who went first seemed to be constantly at a disadvantage which takes away from the fun. Build quality. Top notch. The cards are well punched and thick and the box is quite sturdy. Production value is quite good in my humble opinion. Summary. The game is well put together in a quality package and definitely has some personality to it. It's just that we found it just so-so from a fun perspective and therefore will be gravitating to other games in the pile on family game night. Not a bad game, we just find other games like Dixit and Ticket to Ride more fun.