/pic6951595.png)
The Realms of the Willows has been at peace since the Great War. That is until now... The evil wizard Alzod has returned to claim the Realms by casting a spell of Shadow Dragons upon all the lands. Alzod has trapped all of the Realm Leaders and the beauty of the Willows has been forgotten. Only the Fairies of the Willows have the power to see beyond his Dark Magic. Together the Fairies must find and use the magical power of Realm Artifacts to free the Leaders and defeat the wizard.
Forgotten Willows is an action selection game for 2-4 players ages 12+ to save the Realms of the Willows. As well as a battle among the Fairies to be the best. On your turn you may perform 2 of 4 actions. At the end of the game, you will receive points for Freed Leaders, Collected Dark Magic, and Defeated Shadow Dragons. The Fairy with highest total is the winner.
—description from the designer
- Mechanically sound
- Interesting things going on
- A lot of fun in a little box
- Rulebook font choice makes it hard to read
- Color palette is limited and potentially oversaturated
- Saving fairy leaders to take on dragons and save the realms.
- Ticket to Ride
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Players choose two actions from a list of four on their turn.
- Area Movement — Players move their meeples around a realm board.
- Card Drafting — Players can draft face-up or face-down artifact cards.
- Engine Building — Collecting leaders is described as 'building on my engine' which is used to acquire dragons.
- Hand Management — Players manage artifact cards in their hand to perform actions.
- Set Collection — The game is fundamentally a set collection game, involving collecting artifacts and leaders.
- Set collection bonuses — There are bonuses for set collection at the end of the game.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this game sort of the epitome of an early new designer breaking into making games
- it's a cool game it's got a lot of interesting things going on
- it's a set collection game the actual gameplay is very straightforward
- it works it's mechanically sound
- it's all a little dark and i meant thematically it's dark
- hopefully this gets fixed it just makes reading it hard for no reason
- it's a lot of fun in a little box