Habitats | Tile Placement In All It's Glory! | ( Board Game Overview and Review #77)

hello everybody my name is Ilia my name is Tyler to gather your makeup coffee a couple that loves to play board games and we love different habitats I love animals animals are amazing I love animals what's your favorite animal otter Auto otter what's my favorite animal I have no idea your daughter's too much now today we're going to be doing a review of habitats what how about toots the habitat is designed by Corney van morsel and it's published by board game tables now in habitats you'll take a role of a wildlife Ranger effectively building habitats for your animals so your preserves are Mighty and healthy exactly essentially how this game will work is you'll take turns moving your Jeep in the main board and collect a tile you'll then bring that tile into your own little preserve placing it strategically so you can score the most points and making sure you create those beautiful habitats will you be the one to score the most points will your animals be the happiest I don't know I want the little capybara well let's Dive Right into our review starting with our comparables so my comparable is Nova Luna funny enough this is actually the game that inspired novaluna because Nova Luna is co-designed I think this is a lift a face maybe I definitely think this is newer but it's also an older game okay so I'm not sure entirely what has been done since the old version but I've been really dying to play this game since I learned that it is what inspired novaluna because we love Nova Luna in this household yes but it has no balloon is essentially a very toned down version of this game where you'll Place tiles and based on the goals on the ties of the different types of before it is touching you'll place a little markers you'll want to be the first to place all your markers to win where here there's a more there's goals there's different types of tiles but the essence and the Heart of the game is really much similar so if you really enjoyed Noah Luna like ourselves habitats is definitely that level up that you meet have been waiting for yes it's definitely different enough as well that it will um you can play them at the same time and you'd never know at the same time at the same time tables two tables or the same get messy with it anyways my comparable is in the veins of the animals so I want to talk about Cascadia Cascadia as some some of you out there know is just this tile placing game where you're trying to make um different patterns based on the scoring opportunities that you're given and you do that through drafting different tiles that have different habitats on them and also different animals on them the part that I think that habitat shares with Cascadia is really in that habitat Zone where again like if you are making long chains of habitats or specific groupings of habitats you're more likely to score additional points and I think that's true here given some of the goals that you can actually pick up and some of the goals on the animals themselves that you need to accomplish and that's my comparable Cascadia Cascadia now why should you check out habitats well I think what this game does really well is it's a clever um tile placement game where you are definitely wanting to grab tiles that benefit you the most as you progress through the game you'll learn what tiles you need to grab you'll learn what tiles you need to avoid and you'll work towards scoring the most points by collecting and strategically placing these tiles as you go along which I think as a person who really aims for like those goals it is very satisfying when you do do complete them yeah if you enjoy tile placement this is going to be your bread and butter yes it's like an elevator bread and barter it's almost like a margarine an elevator of butter elevator of butter yummy well one reason I think you should check this game out is generally the theme and the whole story behind it the fact that you're driving your Jeep and collecting things as you go to really build your perfect preserve I think is really clever it's a really clever way of like selecting tiles but also it just builds such a thematic little preserve and Sanctuary that you're building it makes it makes you feel really wholesome and the animal art in this game is outstanding it's different enough that it really draws you in because some of the drawings you look you're like hmm that's a wonky looking lion here but it's it draws you in the best way possible it's such a unique and wonderful art style that every time I want to know what does that one look like someone plays an animal takes I'm like I want to know what that is and I really enjoy it for that reason yeah exactly the last point I'd probably bring out kind of mentioned into my other point but the rounds of goals like the and round end goals are variable so you'll be able to play different types of games based on whatever those goals may be and you do definitely want to be focusing on those goals as well as obviously creating that preserve that you need I think actually just to Circle back to talk about those tiles a little bit more I do really appreciate how the theme of like the even just like the picture tiles that's like a spot where you have space to take pictures of all the animals around you the tents have Gates around them and the towers have like specific line of sights that allow you to see certain things and I think it's very clever um in these small little details add to make the game a bit more cohesive yeah it's definitely there's a lot of layers to it but not all of them are really thoughtful it doesn't seem like anything's like oh we forgot to do this let's throw that in to fit fix that like and see everything just Builds on each other and it feels really smooth in the way that it's played all right now with why you should check it out of the way let's dive into why you might not want to check this one out I found it and I found this with Noma Luna as well the concept of explaining adjacency of like the goals of the tiles the groups the groups of the jobs is a little bit difficult like saying that this tile needs to touch these things like your brain just immediately goes it has to touch but all sounds like more than four but how's that possible so and then you have to understand that it can be a group and if it's another tile on the other hand it doesn't count so trying to explain that like I feel like every game we've taught this game that's been like the first three turns that everybody takes that's the question it's just like what like trying to grasp that concept I don't know how it can be done more clearly like it makes sense once you play it enough times but that initial concept I feel like is a barrier to entry I think it's just like getting a hold of it that's really what it is is um the other part of that is like the tile itself the one that the goal that you're trying to achieve doesn't count for it um whereas like there are a lot of games out there that do it differently so maybe it's just like because there's so many different ways that have it has been done it uh complicates this one a little bit but um yeah it is hard to wrap your head around for sure what else do you think the uh one thing I would say is uh the limited Jeep movements so like on the board when you're drafting your tiles you can go forward left or right but obviously There Are Rules around if there's a vehicle in front of you behind you to the left or the right you just skip over it however if you're on the edge especially if you're on the corner the corner and you've just entered that you likely only have one choice I do there's no other there is one rule where if like you have because you still have one turn because it's behind you oh yeah it's only one there's no other way so then you're limiting your selections now obviously this sounds like something that's like easily to easy you've done this to yourself yeah so you put yourself in this situation but sometimes the tiles that are there are actually high quality and you do want to consider grabbing them so um it is part of obviously the strategy of the game planning out your movements but it does provide some frustrations I think it's another point that it's something that people will not be used to because so many tile placement games I was like you have four tiles choose one of the four you have two or you have three like this is a very different way of selecting the tiles so I think people will just need to wrap their minds around that and it can be a little bit difficult I think in general for that piece I would say that this game has a a lot of risk when you are doing those types of things because you have to plan ahead and you can almost draw your route you can almost drive your route that you would like to make but sometimes it doesn't really work out for you in the end and last but not least like a lot of other top placement games every chain you have to take a tile so even if there's not one favorable you'll have to take when I make things work but that's part of the adaptation part of strategy and if that is something that you just don't want to do and don't really want to enter and you want to have more agency and more freedom then this game may not be for you exactly yeah good point but overall what do you think I think this is a lot of fun it is like Elia said a uh if you're into tile placement games this is like your bread and butter um I think that the goals the round end goals make this game even better because it's not just something I'm aiming for at the end of the game I can also look forward to trying scoring points in between rounds which I really appreciate because you can kind of get a sense of where you're going I'm going to say something potentially controversial so I love novaluna right and ever since it came out I was so excited with sagani and framework and like those like Step Up games from it I think this is the game that should have been this well and obviously it is yeah it inspired and it's part of that family but having if if I played Nova Luna and I played this framework in sagani I think wouldn't have even been in the competition because I think Nova Luna is just that hard of it and I like what framework and sagani do to like make it a little bit different but this is really taking a lot of the things I love in Nova Luna and creating its own game around it yep I think um this game is a little bit more complicated than novaluna um so if you do like that game or any of those games in that family habitats good step up definitely something you will want to check out it's a good skill of adaptation getting used to what's around you learning a little bit about new animals that you've never heard of oh yeah you get to Google all of these animals if you haven't heard of it one of them I thought was a beaver and it wasn't it was cute I forget its name and you picked it up I'll show it right here well thank you so much for watching for our question of the day today if you could have an animal from what you would think a normal habitat live in a completely other habitat so like I don't know uh penguin living on a beach or something along the sides maybe there are penguins that live on beaches I'm not sure but the idea is is what animal would that be and why caveat you don't have to worry about how it would impact any of the environment it survives very healthy it survives it works and it functions well with the ecosystem hmm an otter in every single environment possible of course maybe not sea otters but river otters are good river otters I would choose zebras in the mountains because I think it goes it'd be a little bit off-putting because they're black and white so like they blend in from the snow but then they wouldn't she'd be like oh is that a bunch of branches no it's a zebra they would actually blend in really well like in the mountains while it's snowing well thank you so much for watching our video If you enjoyed what you talking today give us a thumb up let us know in the comments down below hit that subscribe button and feel free to check out our patreon or Discord have a good rest of your day bye foreign [Music]