Quagmire
Transcript
Hello. So, today I want to tell you about the game Quagmire from Perplexed Games. And they make Longshot the dice game, which I really, really love. And then they make lots of these little tiny games that kind of look like they come in a gum pack. And in their most recent line was a game called Bog, which was really popular and it actually inspired now this much larger game of Quagmire. So, they sent this to me um as a review copy to see what I thought because I have enjoyed their games. So, let me tell you about this. It plays two to four players and it is a spatial strategy game and it's one of those that doesn't have a rulesheavy set, but the amount of strategy that it has is very deep and satisfying. So, if you are playing with two players, you use these red beetles in these four position.
There's going to be 16 lily pads. If you are not playing, if you're playing with three or four players, you just ignore those and you put out 16 lily pads. All the red beetles really do in a two-player game is you can't place your flies there. When you land on a fly, you get to bring a new card into your hand. So, flies are helpful in that way. The flowers don't mean anything other than they make the board look prettier. So, if you're playing a two-player game, you're going to play across from each other. If you add in a third player, they can go in either spot. and four. You're going to be filling the whole board. Everybody has a shore and it can hold up to two frogs and you will have nine frogs that are going to be available to you during the game. Now, depending on your player count and your position in turn order will determine how many of those frogs you get to start with in your hand. So, I will get my three. Now, these frog tiles have a few different things on them. One, they have a funny looking frog on them. And then two, they show a pattern of where my frog wants to go. And three, they show a light colored symbol, which is called a formation, and that can score me points as well. So, if I can complete the path that my frog wants to do, I will get points equal to the number of players in the game. And I love that they have little notches for one, two, three, and four. So in a two-player game, every
frog that completes its route gets to be worth two points. In higher player games, it's worth more points because it's much harder to do because yes, you get to splat other frogs. You can also splat your own, but that's generally ill advised. So you are trying to get, like I said, your frogs through essentially their pattern of the 16. Or I can play a frog, like I said, for its formation. Meaning everything is from my perspective with my frog. These four squares, however many frogs were occupying those, I could get that many points instead. So then if I squash someone else's frog, I get one point. And if I have any flies left at the end of the game, I get one point. So if my frog lands where a fly is, then I get to take the fly. I put a new frog in my hand and then I put the fly back out somewhere else that's not my row. But obviously once I have gotten all of my frog cards, I don't need that fly anymore. So you can save them at the end for points. So what can I do on my turn? Everybody gets this little handy dandy scoring aid and I can do one of four things. The first thing I can do is play a frog. So from the three in my hand, I can decide who I want to play first and I just put them on my shore.
My shore can hold two frogs. It can never hold more than that. So that is one option on my turn. My next option is I can move a frog. So I will move a frog. Again, looking from my perspective, it doesn't matter how this would look from someone else's to the first spot. It shows that he wants to go, which would be here. If he were already on the board and I wanted to take the move a frog action, I would move him to the next spot in his formation. Um, the other thing I can do is complete a frog's route. So, once I have moved a frog all the way through, which woohoo! I would get a fly there all the way through his formation. This is his fourth spot. So, move a frog and that got him to his final destination. But that was my turn. He now has to survive until my next turn and then I can score the frog. So, complete the frog's route. Let's say he survived. I complete him. If we're playing a two-player game, I just got two points.
And then the other thing I can do is discard a frog card from my hand to score the formation. So, if I discarded this and there were three frogs in the formation, then I would get three points. If at any point I can't take a turn, then I lose three points that I have banked and I get to draw two new cards. Now, once someone has gotten their final frog into their hand, so there are no more for them to draw, at that point, the first person who cannot make a move will end the game. And there's no penalty at that point because the endame has been triggered. So, until the endame is triggered, if you cannot make a legal move, then you're penalized. Once the endame is triggered, meaning someone has drawn their final of their nine frogs and someone can't make a move, then that will end the game and you simply score up your points, which is really easy because everything is right here in front of you and whoever has the most points wins. So, I really like this game because again, it is super simple. I can put a frog on my shore. I can move a frog on its path. If it's completed its path and survived, I can take it off of the board and score it or I can score a formation. And like I said, when other players have frogs out there and my move takes me to that spot, I get to splat them and I get a point for their frog.
So yes, there is take that in this. It's a lot of strategy of how you're moving and also looking to see where your opponent's frogs are going to move and not being on a lily pad that they're going to get to in their next turn because they're going to splat your frog and all that work you just did was for nothing. So that is Quagmire. Excellent game. Plays really well at all player counts. Definitely gets more complicated at those three and four player counts because there's more frogs out on the board. So that's why you get so many more points for completing your mission. But this is a really fun game. It's super cute and it is one of those that doesn't have a lot of rules but has a lot of payoff in the strategy. So, let me know what do you think of this. Are you going to give it a try? Give me a like and a follow and I'll keep bringing you more board game content. Thanks.
Bye.