Timber Town - Overview & Thoughts

Welcome everybody to a new video. Today I'm going to talk to you guys about Timbertown, which I am very excited about. It's going to be a bit of a different video than usual. Obviously, I do a lot of solo playthrough videos, which is my comfort zone, and I've been wanting to do more of a like overview or thoughts type video for a while now, but I just haven't really had a chance to.

And I always feel like I don't play games enough, like the same game enough to really do a true and true like good review for something. Uh, so I am very excited to do a more like style like overview style video and telling you a little bit of my like first impressions and thoughts for Timbertown. Now, before we dive into it all, um, I want to thank Alcat Games for sending me a copy of the game and a special thank you to Hannah from Henplays Games on Instagram.

I'll link her below. She's absolutely amazing and I just love chatting with her and she helped me out with securing a copy. So, thank you so much, Hannah. Um, Alica Games, I don't know if you know, but I am already quite a big fan of their uh publishing company. I love Happy Home. I love Tinder Blogs.

I love Fate Flip, which I should really do a video on Fate Flip. I mean, that is so good. I need to play it again. I've finished it and I need to I really want to play it one more time and I might do another like overview thoughts video. Who knows? But today we're here to talk about Timbertown. Not their other games, but if you haven't heard of Alicate Games before, really check them out.

I think they are especially good at like that perfect family vibe. They make really good like family type games that are just good for all ages and that are quite easy to like whip out and learn. I think they have a really good selections of games there. So check out games. Um but yeah, we're here to talk about Timbertown.

I keep being distracted and talking about other things. Okay, Timbertown is a beautifully designed game by Ryan Busher. I hope I'm saying that right. and with wonderful artwork by Isabelle Overturf. Obviously, if you know me, you know that artwork for me is a really important part of the board game hobby.

I think it's not there's definitely games out there that don't really have my favorite type of art style and I still love the game, but it does draw you in and it does make you more invested or interested in a game if the artwork also speaks to you. and with Timbertown. I just love the design of this.

I mean, look at it. It's so cute. And I love all the little tokens it has, which I will show you guys in like more close-ups. So, I don't I don't have to show you anything right now. I'll I'll do close-ups of everything. All right. Now, let's dive into how it plays. Timber is a two-player game uh where you play as competing beaver architects trying to build the most beautiful city.

Now, I know what you're thinking, Iris. You never really play two-player games. And that's true. And I always say this that I don't really play a lot of two-player games, and I don't really buy them because I either play solo or with three plus players usually, but I do have a couple of two-player games that are exceptions.

And when I play two-player games, it's usually with my mom and she loves like puzzly tile placement games like me. So, for example, we have patchwork. Uh she loves to play like Azul, Sagrada, type of games like that. Those obviously aren't two-player exclusive games, but to kind of give you the feel of what she would like.

So, when I heard about this and Hannah reached out to me, I just knew my mom would also love this. So, I was really excited to get a chance to play it uh with her especially. So, I've played this game with my mom. Um she really enjoyed it. It's obviously really a great really like puzzly type game which is like right up her alley.

So, that's why I did decide to jump on this chance to check out this game and talk to you guys about it. So, in Timbertown, you are playing as beavers, as I've said, and you're trying to build your most beautiful city. Now, in the middle of the playing area, you have a river and the river is flowing while you're playing the game.

So, while the river flows, more buildings will get added from these stacks and buildings will fall off uh at the end of the river. So timing is everything because the placement rules of this game are what make it tricky and make it more strategic. So timing is everything because when you are trying to place a building, it has to go in the column of your town where the building is in the river.

So if I want to place this building for example, it has to go in this column and the pathways on every tile need to be connected. So I cannot place this for you can turn the tiles however you want, but I cannot place this building like so. that would be an illegal placement because the pathways need to be connected.

Um they can run off the edge of the map. So this is okay for placement. So while you're playing, you're trying to really maximize your scoring obviously, but you also need to keep in mind the placement of the tiles and making sure you place them legally in your town. Now, as for points, uh we have these beautifully designed cards that show you different ways to score points.

So, for example, we have the yellow cottage um where you need a pair of yellows together and it will score you five points for each tile. Now, the temples, for example, you score four points just for every temple you have. It doesn't matter where it is, but if you have the most temples, you get a bonus of six points.

Now, we have parks as well, and parks want to be in the corner. So, you get five points for each park that is in a corner, and so on and so forth. There is a um there's like five types of buildings basically and they have different cards in the box for each of these types of cards which is great. So the replayability there for me really adds because if this was were the only cards in the game it would after a while be a little bit boring and you would just know the best tactic.

But because there's different cards of all of these, you can really mix and match and just draw random cards, see which are there, and the game will be different every time you play, which I think that was a really great addition to the game. So, there's two types of cards that are uh the same. Uh they don't change.

They are the uh red construction tile card and the brown beaver card. Um, now the brown beaver card allows you to or when you place a beaver tile, which is like this one in your town, you get to place a beaver on top. And your beaver needs at the end of the game, it needs to be able to walk from one side of town all the way to the other.

And then you'll score five points for that beaver. Red construction tile. it uh will allow you to place or gain a like tool that you can use. So the tool is marked on the tile. So when you place this tile in your town, you will gain the uh tool that is depicted on the tile and you will place it like beside your play area to use in later games, which the tools that you gain cuz the tile the red tiles themselves are worth two points each.

So, that's not really your best strategy to gain points, but the tools really allow you to uh add another level of strategy to the game. They help you like break kind of break the rules of tile placement in your city. So, you really get to um maximize your points if you use those tools to your best ability, of course.

And they're very pretty. I love the tokens. They're so cute. Um, and the person that like builds their town completely, the first one that fills their whole town gets a bonus of five points. And as I've said, the river flows while you play. So while you're playing the game, um, and you shift turns, this will get discarded.

The river will flow. This will shift and new tiles will get added to the board and this will get discarded. So that is how the tiles will move, the tiles will shift. You really want to think about which building you want to go where in your town because as I've said, you can only place a building directly from the river in the same column.

So, you really have to think about that. In the beginning, I definitely caught myself trying to place tiles in different columns in my city because I was like, "Oh, I want it to be there." And I was like, "Oh, I can't. It needs to be in that column that it came from." So, that's definitely tricky. Once you're used to it, it's easier.

But, in the beginning, I definitely struggled a little bit. So, it's a mechanic you have to get used to. Um, but then once you see like once you're really into the game and you're like locked in with the mechanic with the river flowing, it's so fun to really think about what to place where and when, how you can reserve tiles with your raft so the other player can't take that tile.

So, it's really a strategic way of thinking like, okay, when do I want to take a tile? When do I want to reserve a tile? When do I want to use my tools to maximize placement of these buildings so I can get max scoring. It's really, really fun. I think it's a wonderful family game. I think it's a great game.

It says 10 plus. Um, I think it's a great game to introduce to children to really get more into those strategy type games. Um, and really games that are need like they need you to be thinking ahead more. It's not just about the turn you're playing. It's about your next turn and your next turn. And I really love that combo of cozy comfort, but still you can't be snoozing.

You cannot be snoozing while you play this game. You need to be locked in on top of it, strategizing, thinking about which tiles you want to get because the other player is going to snatch them right under your nose if you're not careful. So, I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I definitely want to play this more.

I really want to play with a friend of mine because I think she'll really enjoy this as well. And as I've said, you know, I'm just a sucker for cute artwork. What can I say? The buildings on the tiles as well. The tiles are so pretty. Little windmill is one of my favorites. I mean, it's so so cute. Absolutely a wonderful a wonderful game.

So, thanks again to Alic Games. I really hope to work with them again and also just to keep playing like all the games they have. There's still a lot that I need to try like the they have like the aisle of trains or something like a train game that I was really interested in in Spiel but I didn't get a chance to play it there but I definitely need to keep my uh eye out for anything that they do basically.

So I hope this was not too chaotic. I try to keep it a little bit ordered. Um, but I'm not sure if I was able to do that because this is the first time I filmed a video like this and it might be a little bit chaotic and a little bit messy. So, I apologize, but I was really excited to try film a video like this for the first time.

And I hope it was still a watchable video and not too much of a mess. Um, and I'll try to explore this type of video in the future cuz I think it'll be fun to do more videos kind of like this. So, let me know if you enjoyed watching this style of video cuz it's obviously something I haven't really done before.

and let me know what you think of Timbertown. I mean, I love the design. Let me know what you think. Would you play red or blue if you had to choose? So, the red has a little crown icon on it, like a little princess crown, and the blue one is like more like a marine ship shield type thing. What would you choose?

I'm obviously team red, but let me know. All right, thanks so much for watching and I'll see you guys in a new video soon. Bye.