►►► My second nominee for "best game of 2026!"
Transcript
Hey everybody. Today on Roto Runu, we are taking a look at Wildscape. But before I get going, please turn your subtitles on to the Klingon channel so that when I make rules goofs, you'll know what they are. And if you've done that, well then welcome to Africa everybody. Or more specifically, a small remote region of Africa that has been completely blighted by generations of overexloitation. And what has happened is uh the human population of this area has moved on because they cannot pull anything out. And that's when a uh scrappy group of environmentalists have moved in to try to bring this region back to life. And that's who we are in this game. And that's what we're going to try and do. And I'm going to show you how it works today in a solo run through. Which means it's going to be me and my little landscape here, my little wildscape up against an automated player that represents poachers who are not here to revitalize the land, but just to kill as many animals as possible. And hopefully I will be able to stay one step ahead of them. Don't worry folks, you're going to get a good sense of what this feels like to play a multiplayer game because uh functionally the poachers are just capable of denying me opportunities like a normal human player would. So anyway, we've got the game set up. Uh we have drawn three flora cards, three primate cards, three predator cards that are out here on display. I've got a handful of
six cards drawn randomly. two flora, two predator, two primate. This is going to give me some overall direction for how I want to play the game. Speaking of direction, every time you play, there are going to be random bird cards drawn taken from a whole big old collection of them. These are all two-sided, so there's a lot of variety. And the way this is supposed to work, if I were playing a multiplayer game, a three-player game, well, I would have two birds to my left, and I compete with the player to my left to comp to do well on these. and I'd have two more to my right and I'd compete with the player over there to see how well those do. But in a solo or two player game, well, the all four are the ones that are out here and I'm just competing um on all four of them against my opponent, whether it was a human player who's doing the same stuff as me or a poacher who's just grabbing things as fast as they can.
There's also a bunch of predator bonus tiles that were drawn randomly. Um there's like two more. There's like what? This is six. I think there's 18 in total. So, you're going to get a variety of these every time you play. And um yeah, the board itself, which is a big monala, has random terrain tiles spread around it and energy tokens placed around. And they are offset. There's one and then two and then one and then two and then one, two, and that's all done randomly as well. So, we've got the game set up, ready to go. I am the first player and I will hold on to this throughout the entire game. This just to make sure everybody knows when the game ends, you know, at when the game end is triggered, uh, you finish out the round. U, but anyway, we're set up. I am the first player. And what am I going to do? Well, a player's turn breaks down into a pretty simple set of steps. I'm gonna choose one of these wedges on this board to activate and which after I've chosen one, I will take the habitat tile that's available there to, you know, regrow my um area or I can play one of the primate cards in hand. I can do this or this every turn. And then in addition to that, whatever section I chose is going to give me some combination of all of these actions. So I might uh expand
rivers or I might establish herbivores or I might gain bio energy. It depends on which uh area I chose. In addition to whatever the area says I can do and in addition to either grabbing a terrain tile or playing a primate, these are some actions I can do whenever I want. as much as I want. I can deploy um herbivore tiles into terrain as I expand it. I can play predators if I've got the right herbivores for them to hunt. I can gain specialists who will help me in my mission. And if I have specialists, I can activate their abilities. So, um, at the end of my turn, the Rondell, all it's really a Moncala, is going to get Monalid and we refill it and refill cards and we see if we have some Midgame scoring. And we keep doing that till the game is over. So, like I said, for starters, I've got to pick any of these one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine different locations and mark it with this. I'm going to assume it's an impala. Maybe it's a kudu. I'm not sure. But anyway, uh if I were to come over here, well, what would happen is I would see that in this area, I get two energy to spend on these two actions.
Two energy would let me establish an herbivore. Three energy would let me get a size three river. Uh if if I was want to chase after that. Whereas, if I came over here, well, I'd only have one energy to spend. And that would not be enough because to come over here, I need to spend three energy to expand um my wildcape by grabbing one of these and adding it to where I can already develop. Or I could spend two, three, four, etc. to grab terrain tiles clockwise from where I am. All right. So right now at the beginning of the game, this wedge, this wedge, this wedge, and this wedge are not as good because they've only got one energy for me to spend. So really at the beginning of the game, I want to go here, here, here, here, or here because I've got two energy. Plus, as part of setup, I got two bio energy. Uh these I can spend in addition to whatever um uh energy I picked up from the wedge. So with that in mind, if I want to do that, that that that or that.
Well, I want to do those things, but um I need to figure out what's going to be my overall drive. Let's talk about the objectives we have over here. Uh in this game, the mountain we means that um three times over the course of the game, we are going to compete to see who has the most individual mountain ranges. Whoever has the most mountain ranges gets uh you know in the first and second time this is resolved they get more bio energy so they can get more stuff done. The third and final time at the end of the game this all of these are resolved is that player either me or my opponent will get two points. So all things being equal I want to develop more mountain ranges. I have one mountain range. So if I can get more I can get more energy later on. And now when I'm playing against a human player, when we resolve this, we just look around and see who has the most unique mountain r or individual mountain ranges. In the solo game, it says down here that the first time we resolve it, my opponent will have two. Second time, they'll have four. At the end of the game, my opponent will have six mountain ranges.
So, they're going to be very aggressive and tough to beat. But I could make a go for beating them at least the first time because you get mountain ranges by expanding your territory. And I can see that's the top one that's available. That would not be a bad one to grab. So, for example, if I wanted to grab that because, hey, I've got one mountain range. If I add this, I could add two more mountain ranges. A lot of times these things, well, they might have had one of these where, oh, I could only add a second mountain range. But because this is the one that's face up, I could add two mountain ranges, which means I'll have three total mountain ranges, which means I'm gonna beat my opponent the first time the uh mountain wetter or you know, we scored. So that's a possible thing. What else? We've got the uh graycrowned crane. So this one is you win this if you've got the longest contiguous occupied space.
So, all right, which means, you know, I mean, instead of empty territory, like I've already got two. If I get another thing here, and then I expand off in this direction and make a long unbroken line of occupied territory, I could win this. My opponent, when this gets scored, it has a default five, which is basically what they show in here. One, two, four, five. So, I'd have to have at least five to tie them, or even better, have six to beat them. All righty. Let's see here. The ostrich says that when this is scored, whoever's got the biggest, um, grasslands, uh, herbivore or snake gets it. And this symbol means there's a tiebreaker. For these other three, ties are friendly.
Multiple players can win these, but for this one, there is a tiebreaker involved so that only one player will win the uh, the favor of the ostrich. And so we want to all things being equal focusing on big grassland herbivores to be able to score this. And by the way, these are going to be throughout the entire game. Other birds will not show up. Uh, right. And then the this bustard, right? Have the most established species. So these are the four things I am racing to do to beat my opponent. I've got those public objectives. I have two private objectives as well. I've got a Wallia Ibeck and an African giant stick insect which just gives me the willies um these things. All righty. So, um now these I am not competing with anybody. It's just at the end of the game if these are still in my hand if I have not discarded these cards for some reason to pay for something else. Then I can get two, four or seven points for having well this says one mountain range. This is a picture for mountain range. uh and it's uh the size, you know, it's a mountain range, however, however big it is. If I've got a mountain range of size two, that's two points. Size four, that's seven points. So, that kind of works at odds. This wants me to have a lot of individual mountain ranges. This wants me to have one really big mountain range. Oh, but one big mountain range combined with this, I could go for, hey, have one big mountain range in a
straight line. I could be chasing after this plus this objective at the same time. So, those kind of combo well together, but they work at odds with that having a bunch of individual mountain ranges. Let's see. And now this one um is have um forests that have populated with herbivores andor snakes. At least one herbivore or snake. If I have two forests, that's two. If I have five individual separate forests, that's seven points for me at the end of the game. So, I've got these two objectives, plus those four objectives. Plus, I can see here are three more objectives that are not available to me. But if I were to go over, where is it? Over here. And activate this wedge. This says, "Hey, grab another flora card." And I could give myself another objective. And look at this one. This one is have two or three different sized mountain ranges.
This is a picture of a mountain range. This is different size. How many different sized mountain ranges do I have? Two or three? That's three or seven. So, that would be a good thing to grab because I'm already starting to think about developing mountain ranges. Um, this one get one really big one. This one, uh, one really big one that's in a straight line. This one have a bunch of individual ones. This one have a bunch of individual ones. So, this combos with that. This combos with that. What's this other one? Leatherback sea turtle. the number of rivers I've got that have all three sizes in them. If I do it once, that's six points. If I do it twice, that's 10 points. Oh, and then this one, the East African lowland honeybee, the number of grasslands that have herbivores in them. That's a good combo with this one that says, "Hey, have the biggest grassland herbivore uh possible." So, this is just get a big one. This is get a lot of them. So, these kind of work well together. So, if I were to activate this and get these two energy plus the two energy I've got that I could spend on this menu, I could go on ahead and grab one of these so I've got more objectives to chase over the course of the game. So, that might be what I do to start. Or I could say the heck with it. I only have so much time. Instead of chasing more objectives, maybe I should just focus on the ones I've already got. And if that were the case, what would I do? Well, again, I got to ask myself, do I want to come to this zone or this zone or this
zone? Because these three zones let me grab more terrain, which would get me more mountain ranges. So, that's interesting. Yeah, I think so. I think I'm going to get another mountain range. There's a lot of mountain range stuff going on. I've got two or I've got one. There's one over here. There's another one that could benefit. Let's get some mountain ranges. So that means I want to come here, here, or here. And this one has two energy. This one has one energy. Okay, that's it. I'd only get one energy to do an action if I came to this place or this place. I'm coming over here. This is my first action in the game. And remember, when I come here, there's a bunch of stuff I get to do. I get to pay the energy I've got available, the two I picked up, plus the two I've already got to off of this menu of stuff. And I also choose, do I want to grab this forest and grassland, and this is lush forest, by the way, plus grassland, and add it to my terrain, or um do I instead want to play one of the two primate cards that are in my hand? Remember, it's take that the local habitat tile or play primate card. And now these actions plus whatever combinations of these I've got plus these, I can do as much as I want.
I can do all of this stuff in any order. So, there's a lot of flexibility in gameplay. Um, right. So, looking at the two Oh my gosh, look at this. I look at my primates. If I play the western red colabus, what's their power? They get me another big expansive piece of terrain. That means I could uh double up. So, if I play this instead of grabbing this tile and then I of the four energy I got, I spend three of it to get this, I could expand my territory two times right out of the gate. Let's do this. Let's do this to this, shall we? And remember, I can do this in any order I want. I would like to get this terrain. Um, but I've already come here to grab that. I'll wait to see. First of all, I'm going to do this action first. I'm going to spend three energy. Um, right.
Okay. Yeah, I'm going to spend three energy. One, two, three. Um, energy to grab that terrain. And these we just put up here as a reminder that we played them. And this just goes back supply, which by the way, the game comes with some nice inserts. Here's the thing. All the the solar energy was in there. Here's all the bio energy. Uh, we'll tell you what these little dice are for later. and primate and predator tokens. Uh this is also an excellent insert right here that keeps all of these herbivore tiles straight. Very grateful for that. Uh this be take forever to set up all those stacks otherwise. All right, so I've spent three because I'm going to grab this and I reveal what the next one is. Oh, and it's another uh I was kind of hoping for two that were together so I could make a stab, right? Because Oh, but actually this is going to be kind of hard. Okay.
So, if I went like this, I've now got two mountain ranges. One size one, one size two. Remember, there's this objective that says have multiple mountain ranges of different sizes, right? Um, that's two mountain ranges. So, I've tied my opponent. But if I go like this, I've got three mountain ranges and I've beaten my opponent on this objective. But if I go like this and then ultimately I say I take this instead of playing the primate and I put it here. I've now got a a a stretch of four occupied spaces. One more and I'm tying them for this objective. And also this represents pollution. You want to cover these up by the end of the game because they're negative one point a piece. So I've also gained a point by putting that there. But anyway, so I've taken this I've revealed the next one.
I've got to figure out where this goes. And then I've got to decide, am I going to play this primate to get that or am I going to say, "Oh, I don't want that one, and I will get this, and I could put it over here to extend this and get rid of some." Or I could put it over here, let's say, and turn these two separate grasslands into one big. Or actually, I'd probably go like this. Yeah, look at that. Look at that. Or no, no, no. How would I go? I go like this. And then if I get another grassland here, I've got one, two, three, four grass land. But this is now set up in a good position. I could go like that. So I've now got a size three. Oh no, actually it's a size three plus one. This is lush. This is a size four forest. A size two grassland. If I could put another tile like this over here, then this would become a one, two, three, four because it's lush. I'm trying to make big contiguous areas, too. So this is a great tile to grab.
But this is a good card to play. And so these two things are combined. Am I going to play this and give up on that tile or am I going to wait until later? Cuz do I want to grab that? If I grab this right now and say I go like this, just arbitrarily. I mean, I'm not even thinking about. I'm just saying, oh, if I I go like that now, I've got one, two, three, four, five mountain ranges. I have won the first and the second time this is going to score. I will get uh that is giving me four more energy for the first time I win and the second time I win. And more importantly, because I'm not tying him, I'm keeping him from getting those. But I am not um moving forward on where is it? This objective of try to get one mountain range that's gigantic. I'm making a bunch of small ones. But you know what? Here's the deal. Maybe I'm never going to try to score this. There are definitely times throughout the game where to pay for something, you have to discard cards. This might be a card I decide to discard. It's a potential sevenpointer, but it works exactly at odds with this, which is two points plus four energy if I can keep winning. So, that's really interesting. If I were going to do that, I'd probably want to, I don't know, go something like this maybe and get all my pollution so that I could try to cover all this pollution up efficiently as possible because that's negative4 points. So, I've got to decide right now, what am I doing? What am I trying to focus on? Am I using my
primate to get the second one to put these together to lock this in because my opponent first they're going to have uh and then probably win it three times because as long as I get a couple more. If I do this one more time with another one of these separated ones. And by the way, don't forget if I just put one thing here, that's a contiguous row of five, which is helping me win there. Okay, I'm doing it. That's what settled it for me. I am not grabbing this tile as much as I'd like to. I grabbed my first one and I got to put it someplace. And then instead of taking this tile, I am going to play this primate to get my second one. And I and I'm going to It's going to be something like this. It's going to be some kind Oh, wait. Could I go like I mean I want to make a the potential of a straight line. If this went over here like this. Look at that.
Now fill in these two spaces. I've got 1 2 3 4 5 six seven. I've got a straight line of seven. That wins me the first one. Ties me for the second one. And if I keep on No, I'm not getting all my pollution. But that's a pretty good way to do it. Let's say this is what I'm going to do. Can I Oh my gosh, look at that now. One, two, three spaces. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I could potentially win this all three times. So this is how I'm going to do it. I am making a very odd shaped bit of terrain because I am trying to win this objective and I am trying to win this objective. So, first one is the one I got um by spending three of my four energy and now the second one is I have to play a primate. Now, when I played this primate, and by the way, I'm keeping this out here because who knows?
Objectives might come along to say, "How many primates have you played?" or whatever. So, I'm playing this. This primate wants to move in either to a forest or a grassland. So, to play it, I need to take a primate token and put it in a forest or grassland. [snorts] Um, let's go on ahead and put it over here in that grassland. Right. I'm going to put them right there. And now this represents the western red uh colibus which allowed me to play this because I'm trying to go for this long line of stuff. And now oh no no no no no no. All right here's the deal. By me putting this here I am saying that this primate in addition to being able to give me this bonus is worth sadly only two victory points. Because wherever you put a primate, they are worth points equal to the number of edges of their zone. If I'm saying this is a grassland primate, it has 1, two edges. That's not good. If I say this is a forest primate and put it over here, this forest hex, the individual hex therein has one, two, three, four. So right there, it's a four. So let's say this is a forest primate moved right there. It is worth four points for being on four edges.
means it's got four directions it could go out and explore in its preferred forest habitat. So, I've scored four points for that primate. I've set myself up with this really oddshaped terrain to go for two different objectives at one time. And um so that means I missed out on grabbing this. I still have one more energy to spend. And on this menu, I need three energy to grab another bit of terrain, which by the way, here's the next one. All right, so there's one of those joined ones I was talking about. I need two energy to get a size two river, which is worth two points plus potentially other stuff, right? Actually, yeah, like this objective, if I get this objective, I want to make um all sizes of rivers. I don't have that objective. I don't think I have any riverbased objectives. All right, so and this one for one energy, I can get another bio. So, um, like if I still had one of these energy, I could say, "Oh, I'm not using it for anything else. I'm just turning it into more green that I can store for later. But as it is, uh, of the of the four I had, my two plus the two I took, I spent three to get some terrain. And then I'm not going to spend this other on anything else. And my first turn is done." Actually, it doesn't have to be done, though, because remember what have I done? Well, I've chosen a space and I chose to play a primate rather than take the habitat card. And then I start doing stuff on the menu. I chose this one. I placed a land tile. And so I'm I don't have enough energy to do anything else uh
from my options, but I could still be doing these things. I have two predators in hand. I could play them for free if there is an herbivore in my terrain that meets the needs of my um uh hunters, my predators. I can place herbivores for free. I can play specialists for free. Um, and I can uh activate specialist uh effects, which I haven't gotten any of those yet. To get a specialist, I Well, I need to make a big investment. I need to get I need to get six desert, grassland, forest, um, I'm sorry, savannah, uh, forest, you know, grasslands, or river tiles or hex's. If I get those, then I can grab some specialist cards that'll give me special powers as well. That's one of the reasons to have taken this because if I had taken this, hey, now I've got one, two, three, four. I only need two more before I could get a forest specialist, which would give me some kind of special power. But I didn't take that. I went a completely different direction and made this crazy cattywampus wildcape that I'm trying to uh rehabilitate. But what else can I do? Well, let's I I talked about how I can play predators. Let's look at my predators. I haven't even looked at them yet. Oh my. I have two predators that are all about desert. I have got the African wild cat who wants to um hunt a size five or bigger herbivore
that is between two mount. Oh my gosh. So that's perfect. If I put a desert, you know, say here, and then I put an herbivore here that is size five or bigger, this herbivore would be between two mountains, which means this African wild cat could then start hunting that herbivore. And so, I could play this. So, I didn't realize this. In addition to a mountainbased strategy, I've got two predators that say, I want to chase after deserts. This says um you know Orange is desert a f a size five desert herbivore. I need to get that in play. And this one says well this uh what is it? This black backed jackal they want to hunt in the desert and the forest. What this symbol means is I need to have a chain of forest and deserts. Two desert two individual forests two individual deserts that all create a contiguous chain. And amongst those four terrains, I have to have two forest creatures and two desert creatures. So this is interesting. A desert creature that this African wild cat wants to hunt could also be one of the two desert creatures I need for this jackal. So these kind of work well together. So I need to start developing desert, which is interesting.
So this tile is a bit less interesting. I care about these desert tiles plus these desert oases over here. So, actually, maybe I care less about getting Well, no, but I do need to develop forest as well. And this could help me velvet forest. But anyway, I didn't matter. I'm not taking that tile. I played this. I can't play either of these, but the last thing I could be doing right now is play herbivores. Herbivores, which are what all these tiles are over here, these are a free action you can do whenever you want. Although, um, they need to have terrain. Right now, um, the smallest herbivores are size three. This column here, you can see the little three hex's is what how much space the scrub hair needs. So, the best I've got now is a size two forest. If I had taken this and I had put this here like I talked about, I'd have a size four, one, two, three, four.
A size four forest. And what does that mean? I could get a size three or a size four forest dweller and put it in this forest and then if I had a predator that wanted to eat that I could get the predator played. So we are trying to develop contiguous areas bigger and bigger so we can get bigger and bigger herbivores out onto our board. But I do not have a big enough contiguous area. I've got a size two, a size one, a size one, a size one, a size one. And I didn't take that tile that would help. But I did get the primate. So that's it. My turn is over. I've got a bunch of free things I can do. I'm not doing any of those right now. Um, right. And now, so the last thing that happens at the end of my turn, distribute the energy. And what that means is, I remember I kept saying this is a monala. What did I mean? Well, for folks who don't know, a monala is, I believe it originated in Africa. It's a traditional African form of board game that is one of the cleverest game mechanisms in the history of humanity as far as I'm concerned.
Because what happens is you you you initiate an action by grabbing from a depot. I grabbed from this depot a pile in Africa. I believe it's normally seeds or pebbles they use and then you distribute them elsewhere. In this game, I'm going to distribute them clockwise. So I pick these up and now I put them here and here. And now in doing that, this becomes the best action on the board to do because if somebody came here, they would get to do three energy worth of stuff off of this little menu. And then these would get spread around making this or this the best places to go. So I have activated my Monala. My turn is over. Also, if I had taken any cards, the remaining cards would slide. New ones would come out. Um, at certain points we'd be um resolving the mid-game scoring of the birds, but that's going to be a little bit. So, my turn is over.
It is now the poacher's turn. Their turns are very simple. What they do is they say, "Hey, we're just going to activate the best space they can." Um, it's this one because there's three. If there were multiples, they just say, "What was the last thing they do?" They go clockwise until they find something that's tied for best spot. So, anyway, the poachers are going to come there. And this is what this is the energy they've got to spend. And now I've got my little menu of actions. They've just got this menu. Uh they don't care about spending. They just do whatever it says right here. One thing actually I should say they always do two things. They are going to grab an herbivore plus do whatever this says and that's it for them. So, the herbivore size they would grab, whether it's a three or a five or an eight or whatever, is based on how much energy. The type they grab is based on this color. It says they want to grab a size three because they had three energy, a size three desert herbivore, which is the um jackalus. So, they would want to grab a jackalus.
However, looking at this, it says, "Hey, instead of just getting whatever how much energy was there, a size, whatever, it says add to that the difficulty level of the game we're playing." Now, I'm playing the the solo game can play levels 1 2 3 4 5 6 or seven. I'm playing level four difficulty midway through. That's why they have level fours um right out of the gate. They've got four points worth of rivers. And so instead of grabbing a three energy desert, they're going to do three plus on difficulty level four, they're going to grab a level seven. Um, which is this. They just got uh a a GMS. And so they now have the big They have two desert. This is upside down. This is supposed to be like this. Uh, that was not placed correctly there. All right. Are all the other ones fine? Yep. All right. So they have just locked that in. That's basically seven points for them. They just scored. That was their whole turn.
All they do is they pick the biggest one and then they do whatever it says here. And now they're going to redistribute. Bip bop. Boop. Making these the two best actions. Right. So I've got to ask myself, what am I going to do? Well, remember I'm still thinking about these objectives. I'd like to get these set up a situation to get these cards played. I would like well okay what let's let's evaluate what's here. If I come over here I could either play a primate or I could get this nice big thing which by the way would go very nicely here. And now I've got a size one two three grasslands which means I could get a size three glass grassland animal. And remember I'm trying to have the biggest grassland animal but my size three is not as big as their size four right. Um but uh you know I I that is still a way to go. Or I could come over here and grab this one.
It's another opportunity, although it's not lush terrain. So again, I could go like this to try to set up a bigger and I've made now I've made my forest bigger. Or remember, I've got this objective of having lots of individuals. I could put this over here, let's say, and now I've got two separate forests. I've got an animal in one. If I get an animal in another, then I've got two forests. Oh, wait, no, no, no. But primates don't count. This says specifically it's got to be herbivores or snakes. So, I still need to get an herbivore, a snake in that and that. And then I've got two forests, which would be worth two points, but it could go all the way up to seven points if I've got five individual forests if I take that tile. But I'd probably want to put over here so I can get a Well, I mean, there's the thing. Or I could play another. What's this one going to do? If I play the other primate I got, then I can just forget about primates unless I draft some more. This says, "Hey, get a size one river uh and place it, which is worth a point. Plus, maybe you've got objectives like there's this objective about having different sized rivers and uh this one is take the uh top tile from the draw pile. So, instead of getting a targeted one, this monkey says, "Oh, I'll get a random one. I don't know what I'm going to get, but hopefully it's something good. Plus, I'll get a river."
And I could deploy those. I could deploy them wherever I want. I don't have to expand from existing stuff. I could say, "Hey, whichever one I get, I'm going to put over here. Get rid of that." I could take a river and do I've got a phone call, folks. Who could be calling me? Hold on. Hello. Okay, it turns out that was a call from my wife who was just off camera saying, "Hand me the phone. Hand me the phone." Because she heard it ringing from downstairs. And um she also wanted me to point out that I misspoke. Folks, always turn on the click on subtitles, by the way, because Paulo catches me when I make mistakes. But I think I said before that it's the amount of terrain you have to get specialists. No, it's the amount of animals you've got to get specialists. I would have I would have corrected my record. I was just thinking about terrain at the time I was talking about that it's animals. All right.
Anyway, sorry. Anyway, so what was I back to? Oh, I was thinking that um coming from the tile pile, right? How was I Oh, yeah. Playing this would get me a random tile instead of a fixed tile plus some water. So, I could fill in spaces and try to go for this. Um Oh, man. If I get a size one water, the place I would put it, well, it'd probably be right here because when you place rivers, they have to come from the source of water, which you can see is all these mountains. So, I could put it right there. And now I've got a length five. And ultimately, although I didn't cover up any, but still, you know, oh, and by the way, these are two sides. So, it could be grasslands or forests. So, that is tempting to just get my other primate done. Forget about it. I won't be getting that tile, but I'll be getting this tile. That's if I come here. If I come here, but remember there's other stuff as well. If I come here, what can I buy? I could buy size three because I'd have one, two, three, four. I could buy a size three river and fill a lot of space in. Um or I could spend two to say to um take a an herbivore that I had previously introduced and I could flip them. You can see this little picture of flip them to make them more valuable because they become established. They go from being worth four points to five points. You know what they go to because there's a dot. So four becomes a five. Whereas if I had previously placed a black rhino, I'd introduced it, it's a seven. But then I can flip it so it becomes a 10 because there's a little three dots let you know it gets even better. And those are points points points. But anyway, so I could come over here. I could get a
big or I could get some but I don't have enough space to put herbivores out. This one is the one I'm interested in because for two energy I could get another fauna card. I could have three objectives I'm chasing after. And remember I was saying I kind of want this. This I'm locked in. This is how many different mountain ranges do you got that are unique sizes. Now right now I've got one two three four five. They're all size one. But I could try to make them bigger. I could try to make a size two or size three and get seven points. But to do that means I'd have to grab like I'd have to grab this and put it here. And now oh I've got a size one and a size three. That's three points. And if I get another one of those and make Yeah, I But I'm introducing more pollution, which is negative points, but I'm giving myself a lot of room to grow. Oh my goodness.
Do I want to grab another objective? Oh, or this one. This one isn't bad, too. Try to get um a lot of individual grasslands that have animals in them. While this one is get a really big grassland. My predators didn't want grassland, though. They want desert. Is there a desert one here? No, there's this other one. I could get this one. I was just talking about the rivers. So, if I come over here, I could grab another objective. And now I'm trying to get even more stuff done. H at which point I will regret. Why didn't I put this over here? If I was thinking I was going to grab this, I should have put this over here because then I've already got two different size mountain ranges. Oh well. All right. This is a tough choice, isn't it? Wait, did I go like that? I'm gonna put this like this just so it's not going off the bottom of the screen. Let's just say I put it like that. All right. So, I now I've already got more space than I'm going to fill.
Grabbing more terrain to be able to do well on this objective. Well, I mean, I could ultimately get seven points, but this requires me grabbing four points worth of pollution I've got to take care of. So, I mean, um, so it's really only five points snagging that, whereas this could be six or 10 points if I go for a heavy river thing. And I could do a lot of river sources because I've got one, two, three, four different sources of individual rivers I could do to have a lot of space for the leatherback sea turtle. So that's interesting. If I come over here, because like I said, I want to go to this one or this one and get three energy or three energy. That's totes goats what I want to do. And then I got to decide, am I going to do the primate? Am I going to take the tile? And am I going to expand stuff? Oh my goodness.
Well, those are both right. Another way to help you make choices too is remember this is a monala and whatever I choose I am setting up my opponent to do stuff as well. If I take this and go bip bop boop this will then have four and they're going to do a level four energy action on that. I don't want to give them four energy worth of stuff. Whereas if I take this and it goes bip bop boop then um I'm only creating another level three energy for them. So that's another reason. And you know I think for that reason alone I'm going to come over here. So I'm coming over here. I'm giving myself three plus the one I still got four energy I could spend on this little menu. And now again, I've got to decide, am I going to bring out the gray cheek uh uh magabay or am I going to get that terrain? This is going to get me terrain anyway.
And this one needs a forest or a grasslands. Oh, I can't play the gray cheek mana bay. And let me tell you why. These primates are very territorial. Remember, when I put this down, I'm going to have to grab a primate tile and I'm going to have to put that Oh, I'm sorry. It's a predator. A primate tile and put this out on the board to represent them because I've already got a primate in this hex. I cannot put a primate here, here, here, here, here, or here. Once I eventually if I if I were to have land down there, you cannot have primates in a hex directly adjacent. So, this primate needs forest or grassland. This is the only place I could put them. And I can't put them here. If I had originally put this primate over here, it'd be far enough away that I could then put this primate over in this forest. And they're far enough away from each other. And with the benefit of hindsight, why didn't I do that? Because remember this primate, I put them over here because I was just thinking, oh, I want one, two, three, four points. I could put them over here. Let's say I wasn't a total dingus. Um, when I put out the western red colus, I put them over here because, hey, that's a four. And no, because it's a it's a three-pointer.
one, two, three points. But the important thing is I could now put out the gray cheicked mangabay and I could put them if they want to force as well. I can put them here. 1 2 3 four. So that's a four-pointer. And they are separated so they're not going to overlap each other. So let's say I'm doing that. Once again, I'm not taking a tile from the board. I am playing primates. Um, but this primate gives me some stuff. It gets me a size one. And you better believe I'm going to put this over here because I have to put it here, here, here, or here. And I'm trying to make that long line, but I've got to decide, do I want forest or grassland? It's going to be a remember. Oh, I want individual forests, right? I want individual forest with creatures in them. I also want a chain of forest and deserts. So, it makes sense for me to put another forest over here that maybe I will expand up here to cover up this pollution to not lose those points. And now I've got one two forests. And if as long as I get herbivores or snakes in both of them, I'm scoring that. Plus, if I can if I can chain these four together with some desert and then um you know, try to get this desert, you know, maybe have a forest go over here and then have it I I could potentially get my chain of two forests and two deserts. Here's two forests. Here's a desert. If I get another desert, oh, I like it. That makes sense for all my objectives. So, let's say I do that. So, I played my second primate. And now I go to the tile pile. And let's see what I've got.
Whoop. I get a little bit of everything. Okay. So, I could go like this. And now I've gotten a point and I've made a bigger forest and I've made pretty much a dead-end desert and a grass line. The grass line could expand a little bit or the desert could expand a little bit, but I'm just talking about how I need to expand. If I go like this, then this desert could expand over to that desert. Or, you know, it could go the other. No, it couldn't go the other way. Right. I'm thinking if I want to connect this desert to this desert with a a connecting I'm sorry, this forest to this forest with a connecting desert. How can I do that though? Because I've just cut that desert off. Oh, I could go like this. There you go. That's what I do. So, this desert now needs to come around over to this desert. So that would be a desert touching this. And then this forest needs to come over this way via a desert to touch that. And then I'll have my chain of two forests and two deserts that to make this predator happy because then I I've got to get animals into each of them. So that's what I've done. All right. So I didn't grab that tile. My And now I don't have to worry about primates anymore unless I get another one. How do I get another one? It's come over here and spend two energy to get another primate by coming off of this wedge. All righty. So, I've got still got my two predators and and my two in-game goals I'm still going for and I've got some cards I have played.
Okay. And I'm working on several different objectives at the same time with every placement I do. So, what have I done? I've come over here. Instead of grabbing the tile, I played another primate. And now I've got this menu. I can convert these into green energy that I could save for a bigger turn later on. Or I could give myself I could spend all these and give myself two more objective cards. But do I want more objective cards? I'm scared of that. I'm very scared of that. Although here's the deal. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Right. No. This [sighs and gasps] if I get this I've got a lot of sources for rivers, but this says, "Oh, it has to be a river with a one, a two, and a three." So, this river, I've just cut it off. I could ultimately put a two here, but then I need to have a whole another bit of terrain, which means more pollution. So, I'd have enough room for the size three river. Now, instead, I could go like this, right? And then I could go like this, let's say. And then later on, I if I get a size three river, I could go like that, let's say. And then, oh, boom. That's a six point thing. Actually, it's it's 12 points because it's one, two, three, four, five, six points plus six more points if I get that objective. And I could still try to do another one and get 10 points.
So, I could go for that. But what did I just do? I cut off my ability to create the series of forest and deserts. But this forest, I could still I've got this. I could still do that. And I could do forest over here or I could do a forest over here and a desert over here and then another desert. So, I could make the chain over that way if I want to grab this objective. And that objective would not conflict with the other objectives I'm trying to do. But that means I'd have to at some point come here to get a size three and here to get a size two. Although, I could get this primate and this primate would let me play a size three. And so it effectively only cost me two energy to get the primeade and play it instead of spending three energy. Oh my goodness. You have so many options in this game. Is that what I'm going to do?
I mean, I do like making this forest even bigger with that and then having another forest down here because I want to have a lot of individual forests because of this objective. So that and I could still make my chain or maybe I just never score this. I don't have to score everything. I in in a in a um in a whatchamacallit uh in a solo game, I only have 12 rounds to do it. And that's not that that could be comparable to a multiplayer game. A multiplayer game, the number of turns you get is a little bit more variable, whereas it's a fixed. You get exactly 12 turns in solo. You might get, you know, upwards of 15 turns um in a uh in a multiplayer game, or you might get even less. you might get, you know, 10 or 11 turns uh because if you got opponents who are trying to make the game end quicker. Oh, shoot. I forgot something. By the way, folks, there's one more thing I forgot to do in a solo game. When your opponent when when the poachers do something, remember they came over here. I forgot. They take the tile that was in that zone and that's the marker. That's the time track. So, a new one had come out from the tile pile, which I just love saying. Um, but anyway, once they have taken four turns, we're going to have the Midgame scoring.
This is the timer of the game. That's why we have exactly 12 turns in a solo game. And it's entirely possible that you might have 12 turns in a multiplayer game. But the the turn order could go longer or shorter. It's basically the more primates you play, the fewer tiles you're taking, and therefore you slow the game down. But there are other actions like this. It says, "Hey, I could take this tile and then I could spend stuff to take additional tiles and that speeds the game up." So it's a variable number of turns in a multiplayer. In a solo, it's a fixed number of turns. Anyway though, so I forgot that they had taken that and put that out there, right? Which is nice. This is a big lush grassland, which is cool for Oh, but I don't have any objectives about grassland, so I don't care about that. Anyway, I'm still thinking about how to spend this four energy over here. Um, do I want this objective and do I want to go for this water-based thing or do I want this? No, I don't. Okay, I'm giving up on this. I am not trying to make individuals sized mountain ranges because that means I need to take more pollution. But I do like that one. I do like that one. So I'm going to do it. I am of my four. I'm going to spend two to grab this. And now I have a third objective. And these just sit in your hand. You reveal them at the end of the game and see how many if any points you got. So and now I've still got two more energy. I could take another objective, but I'm not. I'm going to take this last one and bank it because I can do that on this spot. So now I'm carrying two energy into my next turn. So all and I
have not played these yet. That's a wishful thinking. That's for the future. So what else can I do? Well, I've still got my list. I could play predators. I haven't done that. I could play herbivores. I could place a size three herbivore in this forest now. And remember, I want to get herbivores andor snakes in every forest. And that's the thing. So I could do this. This would be free. It's three points. Later on, I could um uh you know, estab instead of introducing it could be established and they'd be worth four points, right? And it's still helping me with that objective and it's four points and it's also this objective because every one of my forests, right, I need to have two forest creatures and two desert creatures or herbivores specifically, herbivores or snakes. So, I could do that, but it's a free action. I don't have to do it now. I can wait. I don't think I need to do that until the moment because this forest might get bigger still. The bigger it gets, the more I can do. But remember, as soon as I get six points worth of forest animals, I can get a forest specialist, which will be another special power I've got. I'm going to wait though. I'm going to wait to see if this gets bigger. So, that was it. I'm not doing any of my free actions. I'm not taking that. I've played my second primate. I've spent all four of my energy. And now the, you know, the reason we put this here is so that you can remember, hey, this is where it expands from. Hip bop boop. And my turn is over. Oh, and by the way, we refill. This slides down. A new one comes out. Because here's the deal. The ones that have quote been out the longest, the ones that are furthest away from the draw pile, when we get to this scoring phase, these are going to be removed from the game. So, if I want to
grab them, I got to grab them sooner than later. Okay. Uh, it is now the poacher's turn. The poacher says, "Hey, I want to do the best thing I can. It's a tie. There's two and there are three. I'll just go clockwise to get to the first one I can reach." They're coming over here. They are moving forward time. I have given them three energy, which means they want to get a size three forest creature. However, it says, oh no, add the difficulty level. So, like they did before, they're going to get a size seven forest. They just scored seven points and they're just moving these on. And now, and then a new one comes out and it's my turn. And folks, I now I could do a four energy action. And remember, I want to get that big water. I'm already got that plan for the big water, right? Let's come over here and get four energy. Pure energy. I've really got six because I banked some from last time. So, I can take this or I can play a primate. I got no more primates. I'm done playing primates. So, I'm actually going to start building stuff up. I'm going to put this right here. And so, now I've got a size three grass land, which means I could get the scrub hair if I want. and then I'd be halfway towards getting a a gr or I'm sorry a savannah a savannah um specialist. So I've taken that and instead of playing a primate uh and now I've got this menu. I'm going to spend three of mine to get this and I'm going to place it just like I said. I can either start from another source of water or continue. I'll go like that.
And now I've just made my forest size one, two, three, four. I could put a size four creature in there. I've got four points and later on when I get the size two, I'm going to cover up that and this objective will suddenly go from zero to six points. Nice. So, I've done that and I've still got three energy. I could get another one of these. Or if as a free action, I say, "Hey, I'm going to put a size four herbivore in my size four forest. I could then spend two one two to establish it." So, it goes from being worth four points to five points, which means I only need one more point to get a forest specialist, right? Or I've got three and I could get more water. And you know what? I'm going to get more water. I'm going to get another river because I'm going to try and because if I can do this twice, that's 10 points. I'm gonna spend everything I've got and get another ginormous river which is implicitly worth three points. And now this uh set of rivers has to be separate because this is hey how many rivers individual rivers do you have that have all three sides in it. If I do it twice that's 10 points. So I need to put this far away from this.
Although this is it. This is as far as it's going to go. I'm going to put a doubler over here to get rid of that pollution. So I could go like that. And then the but remember I'm also thinking long term about how I want the Oh, I could make No. Yes. No. Oh, I can't quite make this forest bigger. Can I if I go like that? Hey, the rivers are separate. This is separate. But that forest is not helping there because [groaning] All right. All right. All right. All right. Anyway, I'm buying this. I'm putting it somewhere because I'm trying to get a second super river for the to make the turtles happy. Do I just bring it over here with the intent of putting a single and a double and then get rid of that and then I'll have my super long line of stuff which means I will win this every single time because I'll have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine. No, he'll I'll tie at the end of the game. So each of us will only get one point. I won't beat him. But I mean I'll have my second river. But this is going to cut into the space that I'm trying to expand to get my forest, desert, forest, desert chain.
But I've got all of this space up here that I can make a forest, desert, forest, desert chain. Right? So I could do this forest into this desert and that desert could expand over here. And then I could do another forest that kind of comes around to that desert. I can still do it. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. There we go. And do I want to go like that or do I want to go like this? Remember, I now have one, two, three separate forests. If I get animals in each of them, that means I have scored four more points for having animals in each of my three individual forests. They're not get they're not very big forests, but so I'm not getting a lot of animal points, but I'm getting objective points. Okay, let's go with that. Right. Okay. And this forest well, no, this forest is never going to expand because I'm going to put water there and there unless I make more terrain to grow into, which maybe I want to. Maybe I want to make another one so that I can win at the end of the game and get those two bonus points because I could have something that's 10 long, right? How long could this one be? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. If I fill all of these spaces, I'll win at the end. And I'm putting stuff here.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to win all of these without having to do any I'm going to win all of this. Cool. Cool. Cool. So, that's it. I've come here. I made two giant water. And I'll probably never do it again because I don't need to do it a third time for that objective. But now I need water here and here. I need water there. And yeah. Okay. So, that was it. What else am I going to do? Remember, I've got this size four forest. I could bring in a crested porcupine now, but I could do that anytime I want. So, I'm going to wait because it's not like if I could bring in a level six right now. If this were a size six, I would do it immediately. So, I would be able to get a specialist, right? Oh, shoot. But I forgot. Folks, again, I am cheating. I'm cheating the solo player. Again, turn on those cling on subtitles because remember how I said, hey, it's when you get the when you get six total animal uh value, you get the specialist. That happens for my opponent, too. Right out of the gate, they went from four to 11.
So, they have made it more expensive for me to get a desert. And as soon as they did this, they made it more expensive for now, they don't bother actually getting the specialist. They don't care. They're just making it more expensive for me. If I want a forest specialist now, I need eight. And any other player, if I were playing multiplayer, would need eight total forest animals or not individual animals, but eight value of forest. So like one giraffe would do it because a giraffe is a value eight and it could get established to become a value 12. So shoot. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. Anyway, so that was it for me. I've spent everything. I'm not putting stuff down because I could still do that whenever I want, which means I can't play these. These are in-game scoring. I am done. And now, bipop bip bop. It is my opponent's turn. Oh, and I refill.
And by the way, in a multiplayer game, it's the refilling of these because the way the multiplayer is set up is you're supposed to have um you know, a stack of eight and then a midame scoring and then another stack of eight and a midame scoring and then another at the beginning of game another stack of eight and then a final stack with the endgame. And what happens is what you from here you keep refilling until this goes away and then that's when you do the midame scoring. And then you keep refilling until this goes away and you do the second midame scoring. But remember in a multiplayer in a solo game, it's different because we just put these over here and it's every four turns that the bad guy takes. But in a multiplayer game, the speed of the game is based it slows down the more primates because that means we're not refilling. It speeds up the more of this action you do, which lets you take multiple tiles so it fills up faster. Anyway, that's really the only difference um functionally between the solo and the multiplayer game because I'm still competing against on all of these things against an opponent who's very very good. Uh it's just that it I have a fixed number of turns instead of a variable number of turns. Okay, so I am done. It's my opponent's turn. There is a three-way tie. They just want to go clockwise until they hit one. So, this is what they're doing. And again, they're missing all of their other stuff. And it's interesting, my choices I'm making is saying what they're going to do. This is true for a multiplayer game, too. I have to pay attention to, right, what opportunities am I going to
create for my player? I don't want them to do this action. Therefore, maybe I don't want to do this action that makes it attractive for them because I want to do that action next. You know, that kind of thing. But anyway, they're trying to do a three and then they're doing this four, five, six. Okay. So, they want seven total water value. That's what they're going to do. So, uh I just got to get them right. So, uh, there's four. Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. They don't add this here. This is just four. They're playing difficulty four. So, they now have eight total value of water, which is, you know, eight points for them. And it would matter if one of these objectives cared about rivers. So, this would be a way they'd be competing and making more and more rivers. But, we're not competing on rivers. They don't have my objective. They don't have any objectives. They just try to grab stuff. So, anyway, so that's what they did. They came there and again they took the tile because the time is moving forward and then they refill. Bip bop bip and oh look at this. This is now a size four. So do I want to do that?
Well, I'd get four energy and I have nothing else. So that's spend it on establishing and I haven't put anybody out there getting oases. I do have ambitions for um desert animals and you cannot put animals in the desert without an oasis. So, let's come over here. All right. And I get all this energy. And um I don't have any primates to place. So, I get this tile. And I will spend this energy on this menu. So, where's this tile going to go? [sighs] Right. All of this is water. I could put it down here and make this uh start to make a bigger forest down here. So, I can eventually get some herbivores down here for that. Or I could be working on I Hey, look. I've made another forest for myself because I want a lot of forest to put snakes and animals. So now I've got one, two, three, four, and ultimately I want to have five forests that are populated. And I've just made this desert bigger so this desert can come around. Oh, and look at that. I've got uh forest desert. If no, right? So I've got a desert. If I connect all of this desert together, if I get a desert here and here, so then I've got forest, desert, a forest, and um then I would just need one more desert that would have to connect to a chain though.
That's not quite right. If I go like this, if I go like this, then I've made a dinky little size one desert, right? But it could still be part of the chain, right? Because here's a desert. Oh, no. It have to be like that because here's the chain. Desert forest. desert, right? Oh, and then this forest would have to come over here. No, that's just one forest connecting three deserts. I need two deserts and two forest connected in a chain. How am I going to do this? What is the best way to do this, right? So that means so if I do if I go like this and I would like to do this because here's the deal, folks. I'm putting this someplace, but I'm also going to spend some energy and get I'm going to expand either this desert or this desert by getting an oasis tile. That's what I can do here. I can spend three of these. And here's a stat. Oh, yeah. And then the fourth one, the fourth one, I am just going to turn it because it's available here into another energy that I can carry over.
But this three, I'm going to get myself one of these deserts. So, hold on a second. Maybe I wait for this a little bit. Remember, I can do this stuff in any order I want. I've got this, but this could be the last thing I do. I could say, "Hey, let's start sp Oh, wait. No, I'm not doing this. I'm not over here. I'm not on this one. I'm on this one. Um, my extra energy, I'm going to waste an energy." Oh my gosh. Let's rewind a sec. I wanted to come here because I get four energy, but if I spend three energy on that, I throw one energy away, but I also keep it for my opponent. But here's the deal. If I do this, then this is going to be a four and they're going to get four energy there instead.
Earthf earth drat. So it's kind of a curse. The four energy I'm now instead I could take the four energy and establish two, but I haven't put any animals. I could put a size three here and I could put a size four here and then I could establish both of them. So that's a way to get a few more points and then I wouldn't be wasting this energy. But as it is, I can't turn my excess in energy because I'm not on this space. I temporarily thought I was over here because that's the other place where I could get oases. Oh no. So here's the deal. If I do something else, then I know my opponent is going to do this. And what are they going to do? They're going to established they're going to go from seven points to 10 points. So they're going to get six points if they do this action. But then they're just going to spread this out.
And then this becomes a four-pointer. I could get four points over here. I could establish and get some more predators. Are there any predators I want to get? So, what does this lion want? This lion can be deployed if that you have two herbivores anywhere in your n in your um wildscape that are value 10 or above. This is a desert one. But here's the deal. This desert one's about to appear on my opponent's turn. They're going to place their force thing and then this one's going to go. It's too late. I cannot get Ruple Spock, which is a says get a big desert animal. I can't do it. This one's gone. But this one, get a big a size seven or greater grassland animal. I haven't been doing grassland at all. I don't think I care about getting so landing here on my next turn. So, I could spend four energy.
Well, I'm not going to Well, remember new predators will have come out on my next turn. So, maybe a predator will have come out that would make me want to do this size four action.
[groaning]
But you know what? Here's the interesting thing. If this is what they do, they're going to get themselves a big uh grasslands animal and they're going to make one of these go away and another one's going to go away since I don't This one I can't get and I don't like any of these. I wouldn't mind them flushing out some more predator cards that I don't like so that maybe I could see a predator card I do like. So, yeah, this is painful, but I think it makes sense. I'm coming here. I'm spending three of my four to get an oasis. And this fourth one is literally just going to be wasted. I can't do anything with it. So, I can get an oasis that is 100% desert or one that, oh, I don't know, combines with a forest. This is probably the one I want to get because I could go like this and now I've got a size five.
So, I could get a size five animal in here, which would be a wartthog, which could then get upgraded to be a size seven, and then I'd almost be big enough to get a forest specialist. But now, here's the thing. This forest is as big as it could get. It cannot expand anymore unless I make more terrain down here to expand southward. And I don't want to do that because that means more pollution coming in. But this desert could start to expand or I could do right. Oh, because remember I'm also thinking about this one. This desert could then go like this. Oh, look at that. This is the way. This is the way. This is the way. Because look what I've done here. I'm taking that by paying for it. I'm taking this. I'm putting them like this. I've got a thing. That's the second. There's a forest. That's our third part. And I put another forest here. I'll have my chain of two deserts and two forests for the blackbacked jackal predator. That's it. So, now I just need to get up some forest here. Uh that'll connect to that desert. Yeah.
And then I've got grass land to expand. We'll see what I'm going to do. These are very tiny ones, but it'll do for what I need to do to get that jackal. Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Yaoaza daoza. So, I think that's it. That's it. Um, I've done that. I've spent all my energy, but I think finally, folks, because the I mean, I could expand further, but I'm not planning on expanding anymore. I just want to clean up the pollution I've got. I just want to make do with what I've got. So, I'm not expanding further. So, if this forest is never going to get any bigger, it might as well be. It's 1, two, three, four, five. That is big enough for a wartthog who needs five total space and is worth five points. There we go. And so now I've got this animal is one of my one of my hopefully five forests have animal or have herbivores or snakes.
This symbol means herbivore or snake. I haven't talked about snakes yet, but we'll get to that in a bit, I'm sure. All right. So, and now I need to get an animal here or, you know, a snake over here, a snake over here, a snake over here, and that will be four of the five I need. So, that's four points, but ultimately seven points if I can get one more individual forest. Okay, so I'm going to diverge into snakes sooner than later, right? And oh, and by the way, I'm going to want this desert to get bigger because ultimately Oh, right. Uh, my African wild cat wants to have a desert herbivore that is five or bigger that is touching two mountain ranges because then this African wild cat can become its predator. So this is right now this is one, two, three, four.
One more size desert and I could get amla here. But here's the problem. This desert, I've totally forgotten, is a million miles away from all of my um my copious number of mountains because I totally forgot about this. If I were to put a desert, if I put this over here, let's say, and then that's a one, two, three, and then I and then I expand deserts off in this direction, then I could have a size five desert predator over here. It would I mean whenever you move an herbivore into desert there must be an oasis otherwise you know I could move this in there's enough water to move herbivores into any other uh terrain except for deserts you have to have an oasis there's one oasis in this desert that means I can move if I get just this is one two three four if I just get one more desert here and there's a desert there's there's plenty of them if I were to get one more and put it here like that then that's big enough for me to get the spring box put it here it's a size five it's between two mountains and that means boom I could score the African wild cat.
But if I go with this way, which again I'm not saying I'm doing, but if I go with this, can I still do my other predator? Well, what have I got then? Then I've got this desert that touches this forest and this forest would have to right. So, that means I'd have to have this desert come over here to be a new forest over there. I could still do it. I could still do it. All right, then. Changing plans. We're going like this. But guess what that does? Now, I can't do my second section of water because I needed a size three and a size two, which means once again, I'd have to bring more terrain in to get more space for water to be able to do my second leatherback arg.
because I I mean because I I forgot about my African wildat. Now you should say, well, do I want to do this African wild cat? Here's why I'd want to do this. There's two reasons this is worth points. The more amount of points is worth is is based on how big. Remember, if I'm saying this is going to if I make this big enough that I can move the spring box, which is a size five, although it could be established so it goes up to a size seven. Well, if it's a size five, this African wild cat, we've got a little reminder here. Uh you're it's based on the animal. If this wild cat is uh preding a size five or a value five, that wild cat is worth two, but it that wild cat could be worth three if I establish the springbot. And uh which I could still do even after it's being hunted by the wild cat, you know, because I'm just creating a circle of life. So, this could be worth two or three points. But more importantly than the points you get from putting out uh predators, these are randomly drawn predator tiles. Whenever you put a predator out, you get any one of these.
And this is three energy or two energy in a snake or discard a card that you're never going to use to get two different cards. Turn one card into two card or get an oasis. These are very powerful. The quicker you can get these out, the quicker. And you know, if these are gone, they're gone. So, it's a race to be the first to get your predators in place so you can get the best rewards plus some points as well. So, am I going to completely am I going to throw away? Well, I'm not throwing it away. If I get some more terrain, I could and this is worth three points. It is worth three points. I'll have to think about that, but I am going to pivot. I'm going to make I'm going to make it harder for myself. That's what I did. I took this cuz it's a forest that can um circle back around.
It'll this forest will have to circle back around to this desert. So, this desert will have to kind of grow up in this direction and then touch this forest. And then I've got my de my forest desert forest desert. And then uh my wild cat will be deployed. I'll get some bonuses, etc., etc. Because this wild cat, well, this wild cat will want to eat this. the black jackal will want to eat the wartthog um because two predators can't eat the same animal. So, but a g a a given animal type can contribute to more than one predator. So, I will have two medium-sized animals. One of them will be the primary food source of this, one will be the primary food source of that. I'll get two of these bonuses and I'll I'll decide whether I'm going to try to go to go from six points to 10 points for getting my second perfect river. Right. And now I wish I'd put this over here, but it's too late. I should have thought things through. All right. So, that was my turn. So, I've finally, long story short, deployed this. All right. And now I have nothing more. I have nothing more I can do here.
I can't put my predators done. I am done. And why are there two things missing?
[sighs]
because I just didn't fill this back up. I totally forgot to fill that up. All right, so we are refilling and this is where remember I I didn't remember what animal what I did. So we go boom boom boom boom and my buddy says, "Oh my gosh. Oh, this is a four and a four." So they go to the nearer one. This is what they're going to do. They take this and at the end of their turn, we are finally going to have our first scoring, which is after everybody got four turns. That is very likely to be what happens in a multiplayer game, too. It depends on whether players slowed things down by playing more primates or sped things up by grabbing more extra terrain tiles. But the reality is chances are some people are playing primates, some people are. So, it'll all come out. On average, you can assume in a multiplayer game you're going to score these after four turns on average. But it's variable.
Whereas in the solo game, it is fixed. So anyway, uh he comes over here and he says, "Oh, I've got four." And what do I want to do? I want to grab that. They just say goodbye. It's gone. They don't care about it. Uh they just took it and they want to get, remember, we're playing difficulty four. So that's four plus four. They are taking an elephante. Boom. They just got an elephant, which means they've just made it harder for me to get Savannah specialists. And then this spreads around, right? And where were they? Right. So it goes bipop bip bop and another thing fills in. And look at this folks. I could get five energy. But before we do that, it is time for our first scoring. Our first midame scoring because we have taken four total turns. All righty. And this the other side of this says how we do it. First of all, all right, they took a thing on their turn. So all right, everything slid down. A new one came out. And so now first of all, the oldest object or cards go away. Bye-bye lion. Bye-bye Kakma baboon. Bye-bye rock hierrax.
They're gone. And so new ones come out. And remember, I was hoping to get a priority that maybe works a bit better for me. Oh, this one is make a chain of desert and grassland. I don't think I could pull that off. But this one is have two established um savannah herbivores and then this cheetah could eat one of them, which I don't know if I've got time for that either. You can only do so much. Anyway, so first of all, new stuff came out and now we score all of them. And then at the end of scoring, if anybody has um more than eight of the green energy, which is what we're about to collect, they have to discard down to eight, which can be painful. So, we put this here as a reminder as we go through the steps. So, let's review the mountain.
Oh, wheat bear. Where do they want to move in? They want to move into whoever has the most individual mountain ranges. My opponent is considered to have two. I've got one, two, three, four, five. So, I won this free and clear. I've got two energy. Yeah, that's going to be useful. The ostrich, where do you want to move in? I didn't win this one. They want to go to where the biggest um Savannah creature is. I don't have any. My opponent has an ader. My opponent won this and they get two. They never use these as energy. These are just get converted to points at the end of the game for them. So, they I just gave them two points. This one, the Right. So, they've got a the longest thing is five. My longest thing is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So I won this one and then Oh, come here. You the cory bustard. Who has the most? Ah, I totally forgot about that. Who has the most established? If I had had time, I could have established this. I'd have one established and I'd win it. They haven't established anything yet because they have not come here or here. So, if I had had the time to establish it, I would win it because I would have one established. They haven't established anything, which is established means it's been introduced.
It's got the dots. It's established. Those dots get replaced with a heart. So, it's a tie. And in a tie, everybody gets it. So, they got two points and I got two energy. So, I ultimately got six and they got four, right? Oh, but wait, I forgot. In a tie, you only get one. So, um, I collected five, they collected three. Okay. And I remember I I should have gotten this out and I I had the opportunity to come here or here or here and get this flipped. So, I could have won that. But, Salev, I'm still feeling pretty good because now it's my turn. And guess what, folks? I don't even know what I'm going to do here. I'm going to come here and have five plus five. I have 10 energy to spend on this little menu right here. And what is this menu? Get more primates. Spend two to get a primate. And you've seen how powerful how primates can really jumpst start stuff. Plus, primates are worth points, too. This primate's worth four points.
That primates were or three points. And that's worth four. I've got seven points. I could get some more primates. Or in addition to being able to grab this because I don't have any primates. I could spend two to grab this tile going counterclockwise. Three to grab this, four to grab this, five to grab this. I have 10. So, I could spend two plus three plus four. I could get four tiles and place them out there and instantly do a bunch of stuff. And I kind of want to because I need to connect all my and this is my chance. Well, here's the deal. Although, remember I can do this stuff in any order I want. Remember, I have to decide, am I taking this tile or am I taking a primate? Before I decide that, I could say, "Hey, I'm going to spend Oh, by the way, this is gone. I'm going to spend two energy to grab a primate and then I could play that primate instead of grabbing that tile.
So, I got to ask myself, do I want any of these primates? And I'm thinking maybe I do because this uh baboon and this monkey, let's look at them. This means trash a card. And here's the deal, folks. Remember how I was just bemoning the fact um that I can't do it all? And this one, this was the one where I wanted to have just one really big mountain range. And I didn't do that. I've got a bunch of I could trash this card, get say goodbye to it to either give myself more terrain in another oasis or get my draw a tile randomly from the tile pile and grab any tile I want from anywhere on the Monala.
So, those are both excellent primates to grab. And now I I'd still have to play them someplace, but like playing um right are either of them forced playing that one over here. One, two, three. That would be a three-pointer. Is there any place where I could Oh. Oh no. If I grab this primate, where I'd want to put them? I'd want to put them right here because that would be a sixpoint. 1 2 3 4 5 six. But remember, primates have to have empty space between them. So I couldn't put it here. I could put it over here. It' be a three-pointer. Over here it would be a three-pointer. I don't have any place. It could be a four-pointer. Oh, no. This one could come over here and it could be a four-pointer. That's interesting. But now I've got to decide, folks. I've got a lot of decisions to make. Here I am. I've got a lot of energy. I could spend that energy to grab primates and then play them, or I could spend that energy to grab a whole bunch, or I don't have to spend any of this. I could hold on to this and just spend this five energy and save this up for other actions later. But here's the thing. I no matter what I choose, I know what I'm doing is at the end of the round or here go bipop bip bop bip. So I know my opponent is going to come over here and get another ginormous um desert animal. So I know that's what they're going to do because that's what I'm setting them up for. But then that means this will be over here. I could get myself another objective because this will be a tripler.
Oh. So I need to think about this turn and the next turn. And what am I gonna do, folks? I am not quite sure, but I think I'm gonna stop right there because that should give you a pretty good idea of the overall flow of Wildscape. And now, if you'd like to hear some final thoughts. Oh, folks, let me tell you, finally, it's taken half a year, but I have now played my second likely nominee for top 10 games of 2026. Uh, back in February, I played Dungeon Crawler Carl Unstoppable, and that blew me and Jenna away. and I knew for certain it was going to make my top 10. And now I've got a second entry. Actually, that's not true. I probably have three cuz Diablos is absolutely phenomenal. But the jury is still out on whether Diablas is actually going to come out for 2026, whereas this is definitely coming out for 2026 and Dungeon Crawler Carl Unstoppable is as well. So, I've got two maybe three top tener candidates. But this one I am super excited about because it has validated a suspicion I've long held about designer Sebastian Blesdale who's been at it now for like gosh must be like 20 years. He has been putting out game designs but he's only had a few major successes. You know back in in the uh what's it called? The as uh he had On the Underground I think that's what it was called On the Underground which was a decent game. you know, it made a bit of a splash. Everybody said, "Oh, this is an alternative to Ticket to Ride. We
like this. Oh, this is interesting." But, I mean, I don't think has gone on to become a classic, even though it did get a nice revamped uh 2.0 a few years ago that was actually very nice in On the Underground Paris in London. But, I mean, still, uh, his real standout work was when he teamed up with Richard Breeze to make Keyflower. And now, Keyflower for the longest time was in my top 10 highest ranked games of all time. And if I had not radically changed how I rank games personally, you can see my top 100 of all time video series to know about that. If I had not changed how I rank games, it would probably still be in my top 10 greatest game designs ever. But Blesdale was not alone on that. He worked with Richard Breeze, who was also an incredibly accomplished designer. And now Sebastian has had several other designs over the years. And I've played a few of them and they've the ones I've played have definitely been good, but um you know, not barn burning. That changes today because Wildscape is a barn burner in the best possible way. This thing uh instantly went on to my wife's, okay, you're never getting rid of this game. I want to play this seven ways till Sunday because of what Sebastian remembers that most of the industry has forgotten. Just how incredibly powerful the design of Monal is. Yes, folks. Moncala games.
Yes. Why do we not have a dozen Moncala games coming out every year vying for best Monala? I mean, Monala is one of the oldest game design mechanisms in all of our species history. I mean, unfortunately, roll and move is the true first mechanism we ever have. Although, to be fair, it's it's interesting. Roll and move today is not as good as roll and move was um you know, millennia ago. But anyway, um you know, Monala is, you know, there's a lot of debate in academic circles. It's in the running for like, you know, the second or third oldest we've got. I would argue it's the first it's the best one we've got the best or the oldest best mechanism we ever have because Monalas are simply brilliant. You know this simple idea of picking up your seeds to do whatever action you want to do and then seeding all the other depots creating opportunities for your opponents and having to bear that in mind. Um you know what am I giving to you if I do that action? If I don't do that action and leave it for you how important is that?
I mean, Moncalas are always brilliant and I don't understand why every year I don't have one or two Monalas. I mean, you know, I mean, there's certainly been enough amazing Moncala games. I mean, it was, you know, over a decade ago that Stefan Feld kind of reintroduced the modern board gaming geekdom geekphere to it with Trajan, which is still an all-time great. But if you didn't love Trajan, who didn't love Five Tribes, you know, or Istanbul? I mean, the Monalas are freaking brilliant and there's so many things you can do with them, but there have been so few. I mean, and that's not fair. I mean, there have definitely been ones that have been coming out and they've I mean, without a doubt, I don't think I've ever played a bad Mon. I've even played a co-op Moncala game from Shem Phillips of of all people. Um, but, you know, Monal should be put on the rooftop as one of the all-time greats, and we should be seeing them all the time from the best designers out there. And the fact that Sebastian has now made has he made the best Monala game I have played? I don't know. Trajan is tough to beat. Gold West is amazing, too. But he has made one of the greatest Monala games ever. And it's because it's a multi-use Monala. um that you know wherever action you do when you pick up those seeds or or pebbles or whatever you want to think of you know I mean that's why monalas are such an old ancient because you don't need special equipment you don't need boards you don't need dice you just need to you know dig a few holes and in the ground and then just have some pebbles and then
just move stuff around and drop them off and any number of exciting things can happen. Um, so what he's done here is each one of the places we can activate has a menu of different options that we can choose from. So when I am choosing to go for this space because oh my gosh, there's five things there. I've got to do that one. But is this menu of things that I can spend my they're called energy in this game that I can spend my energy on. Are those the actions I want to do? Not necessarily. Um, and more importantly, when I spread them around and I make that, am I helping you more than me by giving you an action you want to do uh even more powerfully, you got to bear that in mind. And it's just wonderfully done. Um, I've seen a lot of interesting tricks with Monalas. Uh, and this is one of the best multi-use Monalas of, you know, of this sort are really sharp. And but, you know, it's not just the Monala. There's so much goodness here. Of course, I am bound to love the uh the modern theme of revitalizing blighted landscape. You know, environmentalist, conservationist coming in after humanity, we've used up this land, we're moving on. Oh, that's a chance for the land to heal. If uh people come in and make the right moves, I mean, and that's a truly heroic effort that's happening around the world. And so, a game championing that, yes, please. More of that. less games just about killing each other or stealing from each other and more games about us saving the freaking planet. Always a good thing. Um, but when you uh combine
it with one of the greatest mechanisms humanity has ever seen and is sorely underutilized in our modern uh board game hobby and then you combine it with lots of other great stuff. This is a brilliant tile laying game. Um, the uh the fact that there are three radically different types of cards. You start with two of each. Uh two which are objectives, two which are one-time um you know instant bonuses that you can uh if you if you can build towards it and uh two are a different type of instant bonus that lets you race to complete because the bonuses there are a public pool as opposed to a private pool combined with uh you've got four different public objectives you're chasing after. Two, you're competing with that player. two, you're competing with that player if you're playing three or more players. Plus, you've got your own private objectives you're chasing after. Plus, you've got Midgame um you know, seeding in of extra special powers because you're racing to be the first to get the most animals in a certain type of landscape. So, you can get specialist cards which give you one-time abilities or ongoing abilities or in-game abilities. Tons of extra stuff there, too. There is so much. This game is so deep and so rich and you as a player have to juggle so much and then the piesta resistance you have to do so much in so little time on average. I mean there there is a variable number of turns in this game but on average you could assume you're going to get anywhere from 10 to 15 turns, right? It
depends on if players are making moves that speed the game up because they're pulling more tiles out of the selection. So, we speed the game up faster. Or instead, if players are drafting a lot of primeates and playing those cards, that will slow the game down. But on average, it's probably going to be, you know, less than 15 turns. Oh, but what glorious 15 turns you're going to have with, you know, whatever you pick off the Monala, you know, picking from a menu of stuff, grabbing a new tile, or alternately playing those primates, slowing the game down or speeding the game up. Um, plus a huge laundry list of free act. You know, most games give you like one or two free things you can do as a bonus on your turn. This game gives you four very powerful things you can do in addition to everything else. So, every turn is a cool, fun, interesting, deep puzzle to solve, even if there aren't very many. And then, oh, I've got to say, Sebastian, it's like you read my freaking mind because Sebastian wasn't done there. He did very cool alternate variants because he realizes not everybody is the same when it comes to playing games like this. Some people like even shorter games which is why he came with an express mode. So you can um basically cut the game down by like 25%.
So everything is a much more intense race. You have less time to finish all your cards. So you know you're not going to finish those. So, when you're playing express mode, powers that you can get that let you sacrifice cards to do other things become an even bigger deal. The race for predators becomes an even bigger deal. And specialists, too, because you don't have as much time, but you still want to get as much done as possible. That's my preferred way to play. My wife, she prefers to get the full length game. But if you want even more, you can say, "Hey, instead of when you finally get enough animals to say get a grassland specialist," and you just draw two and pick one. That's the standard rule. You could instead say, "Hey, how about I draw 10 and from those pick five so I've got an even bigger hand of cards right from the get-go so I can do more strategizing." Or there's an even more advanced one for all the terraforming Mars um fanatics out there that say, "Oh, we have to draft for our special power cards to, you know, slow the start game down." But then you have an even deeper, richer, more strategically deep game. So, Sebastian has got players on almost every level covered except for No Gateway. No Gateway gamers need apply here. This is a deep, rich game. It is a nice crunchy midweight. Um, around the same, maybe a little bit less crunchy than Arc Nova. A little bit less, but not much. So, it for me and Jen hits the sweet spot in terms of satisfying gameplay with a wide variety, a huge variety of twosided
objective cards that you set up every time to play. Um, and then just a Monala that is just a thing of beauty. It is poetry in motion. And man, I impressed. I just don't see a universe where this does not make this does not make my top 10 games of the year it came out in whatever year it is because it is absolutely phenomenal. And Sebastian, I doth my cap to you. Um, you know, you are a designer to be reckoned with and I hope to see more of this because when you work I mean most of the stuff Sebastian does is more low lighter weight gateway or gateway next step style games and again they are fine but man Sebastian when you um let loose and come up with nice mid to heavyweight gameplay well you've now made two of the best all-time Euros as far as I'm concerned. Is this game going to make it into my top 100 games of all time? It might. It might with um certainly with my old way of ranking games and maybe even with my new way of ranking games because both Jen and I were super impressed. Folks, um you know, I might have one of the first videos out there.
I'm not quite sure. Uh but don't take my word for it. Watch the run through. decide for yourself if it if you felt that I was presented with fun, interesting problems to solve and a wide variety of very satisfying tools to solve them with because that's what Wildscape gives you. And Wildscape reminds the world how amazing Monalas are. And I don't where they, you know, first, you know, came about in Africa or the Middle East or wherever, uh, the world first invented them, whoever came up with this idea has got to be one of the greatest designers of all time. And Sebastian is standing on the shoulders of those giants and made one of the best Montala games ever and probably all but guaranteed one of the 10 best games of 2026 for my taste. Anyway, and that folks was Wildscape. Uh, thanks very much for watching. Have a very nice day. Talk to you later. So long. Bye-bye.