Pandoria 2nd ed

At first glance this looks like a fairly standard exploration and exploitation game. Place terrain tiles and then pawns to claim them. When an area of the same terrain is enclosed, it provides resources. Except that these go to the players with their pieces on the surrounding tiles. Thus there's a lot of careful positional play just to acquire resources.

Resources are used to construct buildings, which then provide useful bonuses, or to cast spells, for one-off advantages. Key amongst these is generating the 'Prestige' that's needed to win the game.

This is a clever game that requires some serious thinking as it's tricky to get your head round. The second edition has tweaked the game a bit to balance the realms and spells, has new illustrations and a double-sided board to give players some options. Plus rules for a family game that's a bit less demanding.

For 2-4 players, aged 10+, playing time 90-120 minutes

Pandoria was designed by Jeffrey Allers and Bernd Eisenstein and is published by Irongames

Find out more:
    Pandoria on BoardGameGeek