I had been looking forward to trying this game for a long time. Designed by Vladimir Suchy and Ross Arnold, names you may not be familiar with, but Suchy is the guy who designed Underwater Cities. I loved that game when I first played it, and had been looking forward to another game from him. Ross Arnold is fairly new to the scene, but this is a great first title from him.

Woodcraft is primarily a rondel game. That big circle thing in the middle of the picture! There are 7 action tiles on the rondel, and on your turn you will choose one of them and slide the chosen tile to the next circular arc area. The options before you are always the same, but at times there are bonuses for actions that haven’t been taken yet. And those bonuses will entice you to take those actions.

The nature of the actions you take will result in you getting dice or choosing a project to build or hiring a helper or upgrading your shop. All things you want to do. And depending on what you choose, you will earn victory points, or go up on one of the two income tracks (one for money and one for victory points.) I like the helpers. It’s the sort of side game in a game that I want to explore. The deck of helpers is actually too big to get through in a game, so it makes every game very different. Wish it was possible to see them all.

But you don’t have much time. The game is about 14 rounds long, so you have to figure things out quickly. The game starts slow and builds. At the start it will feel like you are doing nothing, and then you won’t have time to accomplish all you want. In the style of most Euro games there aren’t enough actions open to you for you to feel like you did what you wanted.

It’s a race against time to do as much as you can in the short time you have. To date, I have played this twice. Once as a four player game and once as a solo game. I enjoyed it immensely. The decisions are hard to make and you will regret what you weren’t able to do and then the round will end and you will want to scream… It’s great fun.

I will say that I think Underwater Cities is a better game, but this is a worthy successor. I give it an 8 and wish I had the ability to get it to the table more often.

One interesting side effect to the idea of playing solo is that it can make you better at a game in ways that your play group isn’t prepared for. Creating a gap in skills that can be satisfying as you win, but frustrating to the others. There are many games I want to play solo that I have not for this reason.