IUNU Board Game First Impressions

IUNU is a set collection game set in ancient Egypt.

Time to bake bread.

The dynasties of Ancient Egypt rise and fall. Will your rule be strong enough to survive? Feed your citizens, protect them from invaders, and secure their places in the afterlife!

IUNU Game Play

TL;DR You’re playing sets of cards for their abilities but to also have the most of that set, also, bread.

Theme

Maybe? I have no idea bread was so important!

Setup

Shuffle and deal I believe?

Components & Artwork

The cards are pretty standard and the erm… bread is wooden.

The art is minimalistic and pretty nice. The graphic design is helpful, once you work it out.

Ease of Teaching

I would say this is more complicated than it looks. There isn’t much in the game but there is a lot to try and keep track of.

IUNU Summary

There are not many games exactly like this obviously but there are tableau builders. I like St Petersburg personally, it’s more in-depth than this and quite different but I like it more.

So the basics of the game are pretty good with the drawing and playing of cards and using the dice to your advantage.

A big problem is all about randomness really. The Afterlife cards give end-game points and the winner of our game got a couple of them.

These cards can only be obtained by playing Priests so if you don’t get one you can’t get an Afterlife card. There are only 4 in the deck too so in a 4 player game the likelihood of you getting one is quite low.

Priests are also worth 2 points if they have bread and 6 points if you have the most.

The Pharoh is worth 9 points if you are lucky enough to get the one copy in the game.

So while I don’t mind the mechanisms and the look of the game, I don’t feel that there is enough control for the game to be fun for me.

Jesta ThaRogue