Tidal Blades - Banner Festival: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Area Control, Trick Taking
Player Age: 8+ Player Count: 2 - 5 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 45 Minutes
Game Designer: J.B. Howell, Michael Mihealsick
Player Age: 8+
Game Designer: J.B. Howell, Michael Mihealsick
Rundown:
The Banner of Festivals has arrived in the coastal city of Tidal Blades. Over three days (rounds), you are a merchant trying to sell the best wears and bid successfully on the watercraft races. The gameplay of Banner Festival works as a trick-taking and area control game. There are four quadrants that each have their own hierarchy of best to worst suit out of the four colours. These colours are teal, purple, orange and yellow.
The lowest player of the last trick will be able to move the trade gate 1, 2, 3 or 4 spaces, changing the quadrant players are competing in and the hierarchy of merchandise. Using the merchandise cards, each player simultaneously chooses their card for the trick. The game lasts for three rounds where each of these rounds includes 8 tricks. At the end of the game the player with the most profit is clearly the best merchant and winner.
Aftermath of Each Trick:
Each trick has three different outcomes; the highest player, the lowest player and the players in between.
Highest Card:
The player with the highest card will be able to move their watercraft to meet the trade gate. If the player’s watercraft passes section number 8 to meet the trade gate, this is considered a lap. Upon completing a lap the player will reveal their next player card which awards points at the end of the game and alerts to a potential stunt location. This is a location that will give the player fruit if they landing their watercraft on that location. If you start your turn on the trade gate and win the trick then it is considered a lap.
Lowest Card:
If you have the lowest card you get to move the water gate at the start of the next turn. Additionally you are the only person that gets to activate the ability on the bottom of your merchandise card.
These abilities will allow you to move your watercraft, place banners, gain fruit or even score the card.
Everything In-Between:
If you are anywhere between the highest and lowest card you get to place a banner. In the water gate section.The banner will be placed at the first vacant spot that your card qualifies for. This will either be based on odd/even numbers or card colour. When placing your banner you will be awarded one or two fruit(s). This location is no longer vacant. There are region towers available for banner placement if there is no valid spot. Any amount of banners are allowed at this tower location.
Player-Count:
As it is paramount that players chose how they want to finish in the trick highest, middle or lowest there will be at least four cards in every trick, in a three player game one card from the merchandise deck is revealed face-up before the trick and in a two player game a second card is added face-down. This makes sure that there is always room to be in the middle of the trick. But more importantly at the lower player counts gives players information on what they are competing against.
Interaction:
There is plenty of interaction between players due to the area control aspect. There are actually two ways of area control; banners in quadrants and the fruit feast.
The banners score at the end of round scoring where each region (two quadrants combined that share a tower) will check to see which player has the most banners. The player with the highest amount will score six points; three points for the second most player; one point for third most player if playing with 4-5 players. There are two interesting caveats with this scoring, if playing with 2-3 players there is a neutral coloured banner covering the odd/even location. This cover counts as a person in terms of scoring so to get second place you will need at least two or more banners per region. Secondly, the banners in the tower will stay where they are for the rest of the game, creating a way for players to work on controlling the region for future rounds.
The other form of area control is the fruit feast. A number of ways to get fruit have already been mentioned but I have yet to explain what fruit are. Structurally they are little squishy, yellow, glittery tokens but more importantly they are a scoring timer. The amount of fruit placed on the board is based on player count during game setup. When this amount has been depleted, a feast will occur. The player with the most fruit will score one profit for each fruit where all the other players score only half their amount rounded up.
Determination:
- Theme comes across great.
- Feels like more content than a standard trick taking game.
- Each result of the trick is important at different times so you aren’t always aiming to win.
- Planning is important in relation to multiple factors: the water gate quadrant, your hand of cards, and the location of your watercraft.
Trick taking games have always taken longer for me to warm up to but I have noticed more games have been pushing the envelope on this mechanism by incorporating them into games that are more than a glorified deck of cards. Tidal Blades Banner Festival is a perfect example of this. The game uses the trick taking mechanism but expands on it so much more than originally expected. Players are constantly faced with what result they want in the trick and successfully gaining either first, middle or last tiers can be as hard as each other. Players need to win tricks to keep their watercraft from being overtaken by the gate and reveal enough player cards, scoring a profit at the end of the game. Players must also consider losing tricks in order to activate their card abilities, as well as moving the gate to their choice of quadrant. To use most of these cards effectively players need to gain banner superiority and fruit by scoring the middle of the trick.
The two pivotal focuses in the game is the watercraft race (revealing player cards and moving the gate to suit you) and gaining majority control of the fruits/regions. Both of these are equally important which makes the game feel full of decisions. This is a trick taking game that I am glad to add to my collection and will be celebrating the win, lose or in-between whenever I play.
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