Date: 30th January 2015
Game played: La Isla ( Alea ) BGG Id: 154246

My table of four moved on to La Isla, the lighter of the two Stefan Feld games released at Essen last year. This is a card management and set collection game where you are exploring an island trying to discover the rare animals hidden there. However, it is really a "find the best way to generate victory points" game, as you don't have to bother with the animals if you have special abilities that give you points in other ways. Each round is split into four phases and, having drawn three cards, you allocate one card to give you a special ability, one card to give you a resource, you use resources to send your explorers out to find the animals, and you use your final card to increase the rarity value of one of the creature types. The game end is triggered once the collective value of the animal types reaches a certain level (11 points in a four-player game) and you then score points for the animals you have collected plus a bonus if you have collected one of each type. However, your special abilities can give you in-game points for how you place your explorers and, in our game, Nige got a great combo, whereby he could be scoring six points per round by placing explorers on certain spots on the board so he ignored collecting animals just to concentrate on that. And it worked as, although he scored few points at the end, the rest of us hadn't got enough animal points to catch him. That said, if we'd managed to get the one-of-each-type bonus, which none of us did, two of us would probably have overtaken him. We really enjoyed La Isla and there were some tough choices to make throughout the game as resources are scarce and it is tricky to try and keep your special abilities working well for you as you can only have three active at any one time. Good stuff.

 
Player
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Nige
7
33
1
Garry
8
28
2
Guy
8
24
3
Mark G
8
18
4

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