What the Queen wants, the Queen gets. We say this in my house a lot, mostly referring to our cat. In true feline fashion, she believes this is her house, the other day, actually, but I digress. That’s not the queen we are here to talk about. In Peninsula, the queen wants a botanical garden and launches a contest to see which landscape architect can design the most compelling landscape. Using an entire island. Hey, she’s the queen, and what the queen wants… You get the idea.
You play as one of those architects looking to impress, and hopefully win royal patronage. How does one go about designing an entire island? Well, it starts as you would expect by shuffling cards.
Gameplay Overview:
Peninsula uses a deck of 30 icon cards (or 24 if you are playing solo) with icons for each of the landscape features you will be placing on the island. Each card has two icons separated by a river. In competitive play, the active player selects the icon they want to add to their island. The remaining icon on the opposite side of the river is used by the other players. In solo mode, you use four cards laid out so that there are two icons on each side of the river. You select one side of the river and play both icons. Selected icons can only be drawn in hexes adjacent to your location on the island map.
This isn’t solely about making a pretty island; you have to be able to move around this island, too. Three of the possible icons you can draw (villages, boats, and tunnels) provide movement to help you move around the island. This opens up more hexes to be filled with icons. Some of these (mountains, forests, and cliffs) are purely decorative.
In addition to the icons you draw on the island, there are predetermined landmark spots. The first time you land on these spots, you gain a bonus. Landmark bonuses are determined by a series of six cards chosen at setup. Landmark bonuses are varied and can provide movement options or unique icons, adding points at the end. Six missions are also selected at setup. These missions are patterns that you try to complete by filling hexes with the same icon to create the pattern. Completing missions earns bonus points, and completing missions in sequence earns immediate in-game bonuses (often movement options), which can be very helpful.
Once you have gone through all the icon cards, you review your island, tally points from icons, mission bonuses, and unused hexes. Highest score wins.
Game Experience:
This experience is based on solo play.
There’s more going on in this game than initially meets the eye. Movement is critical to this game, and it is tricky to manage. Only certain icons let you move; villages let you move in two directions, but boats only let you move in one. Tunnels can move from one tunnel to another, which means you can cover a lot of ground.
The landmarks help a lot when it comes to movement. It’s worth paying attention to those bonuses and maybe targeting specific landmarks that have bonuses you want to take advantage of early on. These are spread out over the map, so you won’t be able to get them all.
It’s easy to get really focused on just one aspect of this game and overlook other sources of points or bonuses. For me, I always get so focused on not trapping myself somewhere that I overlook the missions. Filling those patterns sounds easy on the surface, but it’s less so when you are actually looking at your map. Also, each mission needs to be completed using unique icons. So I can complete my first mission using boat icons, but I can’t complete any others using boat icons. If I am trying for a second mission, it will need to be completed with tunnels or mountains, or something else.
There’s enough going on to keep the game from getting boring or repetitive. There is a second map option to add just a little more variety, too. This plays smoothly and easily as a solo game, no bot to manage, just a different way of using the cards. Which is always a huge plus.
Final Thoughts:
Peninsula is a solid game that requires some adaptive planning (you don’t know what icons are coming up next) without being overly complex. This game is quick to learn and super fast to set up. Pick a map sheet, shuffle some cards, and you are ready to go. It’s a nice brain rest between heavier games while still requiring enough attention that you can forget some non-gaming worries for a while.
The only thing that feels a little slapdash is the theme. Granted, it was likely never meant to be a theme-heavy game. All that mention of the queen in the intro is inspired by less than a paragraph of text at the beginning of the rules. I like the idea of designing a botanical garden, but honestly, the game doesn’t feel like that is what you are doing. It feels much more exploratory. Like you’re creating the map of an island for some great building plan later. Or maybe trying to follow clues left by a less-than-great cartographer. Not a deal breaker to me, I will make up my own story.
Final Score: 3.5 Stars – Perfect middle ground of needing focus without fully depleting your mental resources. Sharpen your pencils and your strategizing, we’ve got an island to design.
Hits:
• Fast setup
• Quick learn
• Multiple bonus options
Misses
• Easy to get stuck
• Weak theme
• Those multiple options can start to feel like one too many
