With Expansions (most are simple and good – leaving out the complicated not so good ones)!
=> BoardGameGeek: Core Game / Expansion
=> Kickstarter: Core Game / Expansion
=> Official website
=> Rules: Core Game / Expansion
=> Len’s 1 page Rule Summary (v5) includes a 2nd page in story form! PLUS more notes at the end of this page
=> Winning and Waning (v1) How to win with 2, 3, 4 or 5 players (slight changes with player count, including Sudden Death Mode with 3 players)
Note: 2 players? Use the variant of 2 side by side towers for each player, but only 1 bucket & hand of cards!
Note: when placing a fire gem on the board, it must be orthogonally adjacent to a fire gem (or eternal fire in the center). This means it must be edge to edge next to a fire gem already on the board (ie, diagonally is NOT adjacent for placing fire gems). However, the game is interesting because the purple firebreak tokens are the opposite and must NOT be placed edge to edge next to another purple firebreak tokens (but diagonal is fine).
How To Play (5 mins)
How To Play (stop motion animation style):
Game Designers do a 2 player playthrough:
Playthrough (3 people) … but they did not play where when your tower burned down you still were in the game as a shadow (Shadow of the Wood card ending) where they can come back and actually win the game (without their tower)!
2 Player playthrough
Playthrough (2 players) but without the Shadow of the Wood ending :(
Review / Overview of the Expansion:
Expansion 2 player playthrough
With 4 players I always play the team variant, because I don’t like player elimination that much even if one game only lasts 15-30 minutes (unbelievable, but the numbers on the box are correct). 3 players is also fine but Fire Tower shines at 2 or 4.
From the designer: the last active tower wins! The partial firestorm only takes place when there is more than one active tower remaining or if a tower is burned during the Shadow’s turn.
Yes, you can BURN YOUR OWN TOWER! (from the game developer): You can burn your own tower. Sometimes this is the right strategy to guarantee yourself a spot on the shadow team, also it means that no one gets to take you hand of cards as a reward for burning you, as you will just discard them if you burn your own tower.
PLUS: What if player2 is already burned and a shadow and the Firestorm after you (player1) burn the 2nd last tower (player4) which then actually burns the other tower (player3)? From game designer: In this case player one would win the game. The revenge firestorm for player 4’s tower was triggered on player 1’s turn and therefore their turn is not over until it is resolved. Congrats to player one for destroying two towers in one turn!
Online Comment: We found this to be one of the most fun games we’ve played out of our 200 plus game collection. Worth every penny to us.
Notes after my first time playing the game:
=> Rule Clarifications & Reminders: Rules Clarifications and Reminders
The game:
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