Tend First Impressions | A Rosenberg-like Flip and Write?

Hello everyone and welcome back to the board gaming doctor. My name is Phil and I will be your board game doctor today. In this video, I'm going to go over my first impressions of Tend. This is a game published by Ivy Studios that I believe was kickstarted and delivered this year. And this game is a flipping right game, but it's not as simple as it seems.

And it is a farming themed game where we are as a part of a corporation called Zenith. We are tending this new alien planet for its plants, its animals, and gaining resources in order to convert them into money and points essentially. So I had the opportunity to play this in person. Actually, one of my board gaming friends in real life had a copy and uh it interested me and I had seen this game being talked about before from others, but I hadn't had the chance to really dive into what this game was.

Maybe because I heard it was a flip and right and I wasn't as interested. But despite me having played that in person, I did want to demonstrate what this game is all about in uh in tabletop simulator uh format just for demonstration purposes. So, as a quick overview in this game, we are flipping and writing and our writing on our board.

Starting with our board, it's uh pretty straightforward. It's got a lot of the same DNA as a lot of flip and rights do. Uh it looks very similar to a game like Hrien's Wall where you have a dual uh set of uh sheets that you're marking off. But some of the unique things about this game are that you and and something that maybe is not unique but spoke to me was you have uh some actions that you do in this game that let you farm.

Essentially, it follows a lot of the same rules as Rosenberg farming games, which was another hook for me to try this game. But you draw based on the 10 action, you are drawing out your fields by, you know, tilling them, planting crops on them, and letting them uh fruit, you know, come to fruition essentially to gain those resources for coins.

You can also fence in animals and grow them over the space of, you know, the rounds that you're playing through and they offer, you know, uh, multiple opportunities for points there, similar to how you're breeding pairs in a Gricola, for example. But this game has some interesting features as well. I'm I'm not going to get into every single rule, but um, I do want to point out a few things.

There is a polyomino type of experience that you have here where you can convert not only convert those resources that you gain in the game into money, but you can also place them based off of their conversion to these symbols and these tetraomino um configurations onto this cargo manifest. And this is how you gain a lot of the points in the game.

In addition to that, every player gets a randomized sheet where you can chomp and mine for goods. It is completely randomized. And in person, these are kind of scratchoff cards that are indeed uh randomized. Uh my my friend had, I think, two boxes full of 100 cards each that were each uh randomized.

And so I thought that was a really cool physical component of this game where if you take these set actions, you can scratch off a square and follow what it says on it for resources and opportunities to to go further even and chop more wood or mine for more ore and other goods like that. So that was really fun.

You've got a dice rolling mechanism here too where you go fishing. You roll the dice and based off of the results, you locate an item on the grid and you know you're hoping and that the luck is on your side to gain certain um benefits here, but you can also upgrade this action to allow yourself to get more opportunities and a a better chance at getting those resources.

And finally, I think my favorite part of this game is how you select actions in this game. So, every round you select two of these actions that are randomized for you in the form of these task cards. They start pretty simple uh just as the basic actions, but then as you progress through the game, you get the opportunity to choose more of these actions.

And so, you have more variety and flexibility in what you can do. But then you also if you meet these certain criteria, you do gain other resources or extra actions as well. And a lot of this game has the opportunity to gain extra actions. Uh you have opportunities to cascade resources into other resources.

And so there's a lot of that kind of cascading sensation that you get from flipping rights. And so that that's essentially the game in a nutshell. So, for a quick game comparison, I think Hadrian's Wall is probably one that fits this the best. You It's very similar in the in terms of weight and complexity and the fact that you have like two sheets as well.

I've I've played a few other Rand rights in my uh history of games. You know, I think about what I do have on my shelf right now, which is Rolling Realms. That's like the competition and the bar for what I look for in a Roll and Write game. something that is easy to teach but hard to or not hard but still kind of meaty in the decisions that you make.

And I I love the theme of that game as well. Uh I love the theme of Tend and so that has that going for it. But yeah, for for complexity, I'm thinking this is somewhat adjacent to Hrien's Wall. maybe maybe a little bit less uh since I I feel like I understand this game a little bit more after one play than I did Adrian's Wall, but it's uh it's you know it's a midweight type of experience uh for uh what this Roland Wright is trying to achieve.

And then looking at the ratings on Board Game Geek, it does have a 7.8 right now. And some of the comments on this game are interesting. A lot of people really enjoy how uh fresh, not fresh, but like how cozy this theme is, right? You're tending a farm essentially, and they enjoy this game for a lot of the aspects that I've mentioned before.

Some of the other mechanisms that I failed to mention in my initial overview include the neighboring uh aspect. And so you start the game with two of these resources to the left and right of your board. And if you gain that resource during your game progress, instead of converting it to coins or to put it onto your cargo, you can give that resource to another player on the table.

And if you do so, you get to gain the resource that is listed here in the neighbor reward. Some of these resources are pretty important and good for your progress on on this in this game. And then you can the next round gain a new benefit to hopefully try to achieve and if it's worth doing give that resource to another player and then that player will be able to use that resource to their benefit whether it's for coins or to cross off a certain area on this board as well.

So people really enjoyed that interactivity. It's kind of a that positive interaction that you get. A lot of people enjoyed the scratch off cards. Some people didn't. And so some of the criticisms that this game has received based on these comments, aside from the the comments that are like, oh, you know, this is not complex enough or this isn't to my tastes.

Uh some people had some issues in some people didn't enjoy the fact that there's no real way to track the resources that you're gaining. This game sometimes becomes a bit of a memorization uh task where you are cascading through all of these conversions from coins to goods to other goods to symbols.

Uh you get extra actions too. And sometimes I I I felt this too when I played that there were so many uh icons that I was collecting per turn, so many goods that sometimes I forgot what goods I had or I had to like go back and and kind of reccon a few things because I realized I had this other action or move to perform.

And so in other flipping rights, you do have the opportunity to like outline the resource that you gain to kind of place it in hold and know exactly what you have to work with. and this game uh you know I don't really see a way that is offered here to to do that with you know so it's it was kind of hard to manage and and was hard to manage for a lot of people uh according to the comments a lot of it is luck driven as well uh obviously there's going to be luck in a game that features dice and scratch off cards but some of that could and did affect some people in the early game according to the comments where if you for example were focusing on chopping down the woods or mining the mines and you kind of did not stumble into the right resources or if you went fishing and you didn't get a lot of these resources early on that could have hindered your game.

Uh, and therefore if someone else got lucky luckier than you and you know perhaps they would have an edge on points earlier in the game and that would progress later on as well. And so a lot of people had some issues with that uh because of the the I guess the wideness of how much you're going from like one sheet to the other and then back and forth rather than you know it's not as deep of an experience for some people as you know as it was.

And yeah, once again, it's a matter of taste sometimes, but but I I feel like people did not feel like it was terribly complex, a complex puzzle to solve because of both the luck and the lack of the ability to kind of track the resources that you're gaining. So, I'm sure you could do that. There may be sheets that people have made or other ways that you can keep track.

Since this is a roll and right, you have in in the physical version, you have like pens and and everything that you could physically keep track of, you know, what you gain. And so that is a solution to to some, but but I guess it's not provided in inherently with this game, uh, as far as I'm aware. So, going into my first impressions, I give this game a 7.8 at 8 out of 10, which is exactly what this game averaged out to be.

So, I think this scored pretty highly across the board. Um, I gave pretty much fours out of fives for everything except for the skill level for this game. I think I think this game is pretty straightforward to learn. I think if you do have familiarity with rolling rights, that helps. if you have familiarity with like Rosenberg games for example that helped out too with the farming aspect of the game.

Not terribly difficult to understand though I think and everything else was pretty straightforward. I think I do agree with the fact that there is maybe some overt complexity with the conversion and cascading of of items and resources that you're gaining without great ways to keep track of them during the game.

You have to use them essentially immediately without really knowing or or keeping track of that. And so it's I yeah, I I get why there perhaps isn't a way to keep track of them intermittently, but it would have helped, I think, to at least know what you're working with turn by turn in order to allocate them correctly.

Uh it it did play pretty long. Um we started playing after the teach about 6:30 or so, I would say. We got done by 9. So, a two-player game took us, you know, a good two two and a half hours to play. So, it's not the uh you know, it's not the quickest game, but uh you know, this would probably take a lot more time if you do play up to six or even more players.

In fact, I did hear that if you do play with like four or five or more players, you have to set a fiveminut timer to keep the game going, right? And so that's that's pretty interesting. Um the macro strategy is interesting. I I it was interesting that I focused on my score sheet, my cargo manifest, which actually uh is randomized from player to player.

And so you gain more points by putting certain symbols in a certain column, right? That's essentially what it means. I thought focusing on that strategy would help me the most, but honestly, it gave me very little points in the end of the game. And so I think it's this game might favor having a more focused strategy towards farming.

I did that, but I also tried to do a lot of mining in my particular game. And I lost to my friend who focused more on fishing and did a little bit of everything else. I think he did some more chopping as well in the woods. So, I so I I guess I can't substantiate that claim, but it seems to me that tending or farming in this game gives you the most consistent results.

It might be harder to do though uh over time. It takes a lot longer to to do that and so you know you do the other actions as necessary to you know to gain the resources that you need to give other players or to use on your board etc. So I I think that's pretty interesting. Uh the turnbyturn decisions are really cool.

Like I mentioned with the shuffling of the task cards there is that element of luck that could ruin your plans as well. And then, you know, looking ahead to the criteria that you get to gain certain benefits. Sometimes you're lucky enough to get them. I liked the opportunities where I was like, you know, if if I do this action, I can then gain the benefit from this card.

And so, maybe that is worth pursuing. And so, I liked the enticing opportunities that those different task cards, those advanced task cards offered. So, that was pretty cool. Um, I like the theme of it, of course. Uh, I thought it was well integrated with the the way that the mechanisms flowed. Uh, the variability was, you know, off the charts, but there is a lot of luck as well.

And so that like with the scratchoff cards, uh, that kind of variability could make or break your experience. And it kind of reminded me of a feast for Odin with the dice rolls that you get with hunting and fishing, etc. uh raiding pillaging and so that those dice rolls could make or break your break your game depending on if you're really relying on those rules to progress your game or not.

And so I found that pretty interesting and I felt like I mean there was one point in my personal game where I kept mining to hopefully get iron, but I kept getting copper over and over again. and and so that unfortunately made it so I couldn't progress and get, you know, a few extra points by the end of the game.

So, I did not try this game solo. And yeah, overall, while it may seem kind of complex in terms of the cascading opportunities of actions, it's, you know, it's pretty middling in weight. And so I don't think it it would take too long or have too many repetitions to get really good at this game. But there, you know, for an example, my score was like 150 something and the highest score that is mentioned in the rule book is like 270 something following a certain scenario.

And so there is a lot of room to grow, but uh I don't think it would take terribly long if you were to sit down and really analyze this game to kind of get there. Plus, you have the element of luck that may hinder you from getting there. But overall, I really enjoyed um a 7.8, I think, is good. You know, usually willing to play according to Board Game Geek, and I would play this again in a heartbeat.

I think I I had a lot of fun with it. Uh would I I think I would rather play this game with folks who are more accustomed to board games. It's not going to be the one like Rolling Realms that's a little bit more ubiquitous to teach other people. And so it's it's really hard when I sit back and think about which role and right, you know, I would prefer to play, whether it be Tend or Rolling Realms.

And I think that would come down to the audience that I'm playing with. But I really enjoy Tend and would play it again and would recommend that you check it out. So that is Tend. Uh, thank you for listening or watching and hope you have a great day. Hope you schedule an appointment with me real soon and I'll catch you on the next one.

Take care.