In Fae, players will move Druids around a board to score Rituals.
Can you get your Druids in most Rituals without other players knowing which Druids are yours?
In Fae, each player is trying to achieve victory by scoring as many points for their color as they can. This is tricky as each player’s colour is chosen at random and kept hidden until the end of the game.
Fae Game Play
You have a board divided into regions of different terrains each with one random Druid placed on it during setup. There are 5 colours of Druid scattered all over the place.
No player owns a colour of Druid, at least not yet. Before the game begins players will secretly be given a card, which will determine their colour for the game.
You take turns moving these Druids. All you do is take ALL the Druids in one region and move them into an adjacent region that contains other Druids.
That’s it.
Eventually, you’ll create a cluster of Druids that are surrounded by empty regions and therefore can’t move, they score.
First, you look at the type of region this group is on and compare it to the current scoring card. These are called ‘Rituals’.
These cards have 3 pieces of information. The first thing to check is the bottom’ cursed’ terrain. If the scoring group is on this terrain, too bad, all the Druids are returned to the box and play moves on.
If all 5 colours are represented, all colours that have just 1 Druid in the region are returned to the box.
Then you score, and each colour represented gains points equal to the number of Druids in the scoring region. So if there are 2 Purple, 1 Blue and 1 Orange Druid, Purple, Blue and Orange will score 4 points each.
Purple doesn’t score twice just because they have 2 Druids, each colour scores the same.
Blessed Terrain
The second part of the card is the top Terrain, which is blessed. If the scoring takes part in this Terrain, each colour represented also scores the points shown on the card, in the image above, it’s 1 point.
Blessed, Cursed or neither, the player that triggered scoring gets to take the card, revealing the next one.
The cards change their Blessed/Cursed combos as the game goes on as well as giving a points increase. Points are tracked as the game goes on.
This continues until there are 12 Rituals or no legal moves. Players score the points gained so far by their hidden colour plus 1 point for each Ritual card they have, and most points win.
Theme
Erm… No. Nothing to see here, move on.
I mean, there is blessed and cursed Terrain but that’s about it.
Setup & Rulebook
The setup is OK. Fold out the board, lay out the cards and put a Druid in each Region, which is annoying 🙂
The rulebook is clear. There aren’t too many rules but each is described fairly well.
I was a little confused about scoring though, I think that could have been explained better. It doesn’t seem to be written in a logical flow with enough examples for the different parts of scoring.
Components & Artwork
The components are really nice. The Druids are weird looking but nice and bright. The regions on the board are easy to see and different enough from each other that you can tell them apart. At least, they all have 1 distinctive feature.
The cards are not so good. The number 1 specifically which I didn’t know was a 1 until I saw the other cards and realised it was a number..
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
As I mentioned earlier there are VERY few rules so teaching is easy.
The ‘if this then that’ part of scoring is a little tricky but it’s not too difficult. It doesn’t hurt accessibility at all because the game is really easy to play.
“Get your Druids in as many scoring opportunities as possible without being obvious” is the base strategy really. That can be given to new players and they’re good to go.
Fae Summary
This is a remake of Clans which I have played before. It’s pretty much the same. Here you have plastic Druids instead of wooden (I think) Huts and the cards are cards not part of the board.
I like the strategy. You want to spread your Druids out and get as many scoring opportunities as possible. But if all 5 colours are represented you need to have more than 1 Druid in there or you lose out.
You also want to avoid Cursed terrain and hit Blessed terrain when possible for the extra points.
I also like to ‘accidentally’ group Druids of one colour onto one region. Yes, they score that one time. But if you get 3 into a group that’s fewer scoring opportunities for them. I’m not sure if the math checks out but in my head it does 🙂
Jesta ThaRogue