Glen More II: Chronicles First Impressions

Glen More II: Chronicles is a deceptively simple game.

Grab yourself a whiskey and enjoy!

Each player represents the leader of a Scottish clan from the early medieval ages until the 19th century, a leader looking to expand their territory and wealth. The success of your clan depends on your ability to make the right decision at the right time, be it by creating a new pasture for your livestock, growing barley for whisky production, selling your goods on the various markets, or gaining control of special landmarks such as lochs and castles.

Glen More II: Chronicles Game Play

Theme

The Scottishness of it all is visible. But games, where you place real landmarks randomly into an area, are always going to feel abstract.

Setup

Stacking tiles is the hard part. I’m not sure how much setup comes with each of the chronicle boxes but the rest feels straightforward.

Components & Artwork

The components are really nice, especially for the resources with cute cows and sheep. The clan tokens and Scotsmen are nice too.

Ease of Teaching

I was surprised as I was expecting this to be a heavy euro based on the box but it’s actually quite light to light/medium. The rules are straightforward and everything is open information no problems here.

Glen More II: Chronicles Summary

Obviously, I know the original version of this game came first. But, it has the time mechanisms I know from Tokaido and lots of similarities to Isle of Skye. It’s definitely more game than the first and more fun than the latter.

The time track makes it so you can balance between taking more tiles, or fewer less useful ones. Skipping ahead to a perfect tile is often worth it, but it comes at a cost of fewer turns/tiles overall.

Then you have to balance your income with what you can do with it. If you can get a little engine going to generate resources and then turn those resources into points it’s a good start.

You also need to look at the people tiles available for scoring and bonuses and of course gain that precious whiskey.

On top of that which Landmark tiles do you take or skip?

So the gameplay is very simple. But the amount of choice you have on your turn makes this a very fun game.

Jesta ThaRogue