Patterns : A Mandala Game Review - Chairman of the Board

hey everybody today I'm taking a look at patterns a mandala game for two now this is a two player only abstract strategy game designed by Trevor Benjamin and Brett J Gilbert it takes around 20 minutes to play on average and is published by Lookout games now before I get started on my review of patterns I want to give a shout out to the show sponsor kea.ai goto online retailer and if you use the link in the show notes or the QR code then you can get 5% off your first order okay so once it's set up patterns is going to look uh like this where all of these different color tokens have been randomized and placed on the corresponding spots here um they are put face up like this but as you play them you're going to be flipping them face down or face up whatever you want to call it um and you're going to be basically claiming or trying to chain um colors together and control them for yourself now the one thing this game does keep from the original uh mandala is the scoring system system where the first color you claim is going to be worth one point for each one chaining off your um scoring token but the sixth one is going to be worth a massive six uh Points each you going to start with some of these control tokens just to help you um manage your different colors which I'll talk about shortly and also a starting token which you can work with so when it comes to your turn you can do one of two things you can either create a new region with a color that you've not created yet or you can expand an existing color or region if you want to put it that way so the first thing you can do again let's say I'm going to have to create a new region because I've got no um I got no tokens down yet I can take my token that's in my bowl and swap it with one that is on the board here so let's just say I take this one like so that's going to be my next piece to play with and I can put this one like this showing the kind of main colored area and because that's my first color I'm going to put my number one next to it like this on top of it like this and I'm going to put this token on my number one spot just to show me that that color is going to be worth one point for each one that I managed to um control so that creates a new region now the second action you can take is to expand an existing region so to do that I might want to flip this one over like so because it is adjacent to where I have one of my control markers of the same color so again this is that light blue color as a expand action I could flip this one over just as I could do this one um on a later turn and these ones now are going to be worth one point each because they are orthagonal um connected to that one point uh token diagonals will not count and you cannot Venture into somebody else's region um of the same color now the second way you can expand a region is to place a new token uh there so in this scenario I couldn't do that because I've got no matching blue ones but just think a couple of turns ahead let's just say I spent my turn um placing this one let's say here putting it like this again I'll take this one into my bowl ready for my next piece this is my second color place now so I'll place my second color token there and place the little corresponding marker here just to show me that's worth uh two points or will be worth two points and then as another way to expand a region I could take my token and place it next to um where I've already got a control marker like so like this and that's you can see that you can start connecting things together and as future turns I could expand regions by flipping these like such and that is essentially how the game will work until one player can no longer take one of those two actions of course all of these tokens would normally be taken and you'll have probably at least five or six of these different things mapped out um on the board and then at the end of the game you're going to move all of your tokens from their respective regions into your scoring piles and each of those tokens apart from the one with a mark on itself will be worth that many points so you can see here that the white player every one of these kind of orange tokens will be worth three points each of course you want to be creating a big chain as possible and hopefully um scoring your six piece as many times as possible because you can imagine that's quite a a large swing of points there and the player with the most points at the end of the game will be the winner so hopefully you got an idea about how the game works there but let's share some thoughts on the game so when I heard that there was going to be a sequel um to the original mandala which just happens to be my favorite two-player game um of all time naturally I was excited because um you know the the original was so so good and it's the same design team but I was apprehensive because I had a hell of a lot to uh live up to what that's ecstatic to see is that this is a completely different game but it kind of keeps the feel of the original mandala purely through the scoring system and this is one of my favorite scoring systems um of all time I love the fact that you have to pace yourself and kind of um map out what you think things are going to be worth because you don't want to put too much energy into flipping the one tiles over because of course they're helpful but they're only going to be worth one point to you but at the same time those blue tokens could be worth five or six points to your opponent so it might be worth trying to flip them all before your opponent gets to convert them into a higher points ratio so it's kind of about like grabbing or seizing opportunities but still looking to the Future to try and build up these regions to be the bigger ones but at the same time of course your opponent is doing the same thing but at a different ratio to you because as I said just because something's worth very few points to you does not mean that it's worth few points to your opponent the player tension that comes through the board here is so so strong because although it looks like there's a ton of space and maneuverability on the board that's actually uh not the case it very quickly starts to get swallowed up by the other players and opportunities are always slipping uh through your fingers you really do need to know when to prioritize uh your actions because because you might line up the perfect Arrangement here by you know maybe making all of these particular color tokens worth a hell of a lot of points you got everything in the right place uh but then your opponent starts grabbing them and grabbing them away and pulling those points away from you meaning that you have to spend quite a lot of effort flipping them over and converting them into points but every time you do so you are giving your opponent the option to do something else and seize another opportunity um on the board it also kind of counteracts the idea of early opportunities um being kind of um you you can make up for it because again if there's a great space um available on the board where a bunch of the same tiles are next to each other yes you might go jump in there and get that somewhat first player Advantage but again those are only going to be worth one point each and later in the game it's going to balance itself out as another opportunity has fallen at the feet um of your opponent this game also does a fantastic job of blending strategic and tactical gameplay because you can plan several turns in advance here as as long as your opponents don't mess with your plans um that is so you do need to know when to Pivot um when needed but because you only ever have one token to play with at any time sometimes you are restricted on what you can do because if an opportunity arises and you want to get in there you might not be able to do that because you don't not have the appropriate token and it gets more difficult as you start committing to the color types because in order to share these tokens that you've already got established you need to be able to expand all already on the board which is not always um possible so you might need to waste a turn or to flipping tokens before you can even swap your token over so yeah and of course at the same time your opponent is doing their own thing and the board state is always Dynamic always changing and new things are always popping up and you know the optimal optimal plays are always changing so mechanically this game is super elegant I think maybe it's going to take you the first few turns to understand how each of the mechanisms work but once you wrap your head around it it's very simple again just expand a region or start a new one and of course there are two different ways to expand an existing region one of which is so simple just flipping a token over and the other of which is of course swapping a token over to a space or next to a space you've already got one of those matching tiles so again Elegance personified here in terms of the rules overhead no fiddly rules by new sha no exceptions to rules or anything like that which is what I loved about the original and is definitely uh maintained here this game offers an abundance of meaningful decisions from start uh to finish it is quite astonishing actually how much game here is here for a 20 minute experience you know really off the charts in terms of the time investment and that ratio so full respect to that um if it was very Punchy there's very little downtime yes you can get a little bit bog down in AP if you want to plan too far ahead but with it only being a two-player game it kind of ramps up the tension as you want to optimize um your moves and in terms of replayability this is one one of those games that really does reward repeated plays with the same players as you fine-tune your skills and start to you know make fewer and fewer mistakes and get better so it's definitely a game here where Iron Will sharpen iron and I think more of a meta is going to develop the more you play this one so definitely one that you're going to um find more layers and unravel more layers the more you play it production wise it's generally uh decent it does maintain the original um teail as the uh as the original um which I suppose is kind of its um gimmick now um it looks a little bit drab and a little bit Bland but um it's absolutely fine I've got no issue uh with it the player pieces look nice all the different um you know tokens look nice a couple of them aren't the most um color blind friendly but I can just about um forgive that um and it is relatively an affordable game so I've got no real issue with the production it does a good job and it all fits into that um nice little Lookout games um size box there okay so let's share some final thoughts on on patterns and if you couldn't tell by my enthusiasm throughout the review um I absolutely love this game and I'm so happy to say that because the pressure was strong for this one to live up um to the original now I could even say with more experience with this one it could even reach the level of the original which I think is like a 9 out of 10 I think it's that good this one I'm still kind of finding my feet with it but I can certainly say without doubt it is a fantastic design that again feels distinct and unique in its own it feels more like a traditional abstract game but blended with that mandala scoring system it just takes it above and beyond it managed to stay concise it managed to say streamlined with only two really two simple actions that you can take really everything has an opportunity cost um it flows wonderfully 20 minutes to play um rich in decisions it's kind of everything I want really um in a two-play game or in a board game uh in general so this is undoubtedly one of the best games of 2023 it's heads above heads and shoulders above any other game in terms of the best two-player game of 2023 and it's gone straight to the top of kind of my my rankings in two-player games in general I think it is that good um I've loved every single game I've played of this one everyone every new game gets better than the last and it's just a phenomenal experience and just a complete Triumph um of design in my opinion so if you like these kind of streamlined Timeless Elegant Style games then you can't really go wrong um with patterns undoubtedly um a Chairman's Commendation and I can see this one going from strength to strength