Umbra Via - Strategy Board Game - Secret Auction & Tile Placement, Family-Friendly Board Games for Game Night - 30-45 Mins, 2-4 Players, Ages 8+

Just beyond the towering vines lies an ancient pathway into the unknown. Push back the thorn-riddled stocks to discover a clandestine garden, blooming with mysterious vigor. Vivid colors mark the way to intricate tiles zigging and zagging through the green. Within the flowers lies the key to greater meaning. An explanation for all things unknown...

I received this game specifically to write a review. That said, I try to be honest and open in all my reviews.(Please see the enclosed pictures.)Summary: Umbra Via (literally, street of shadows) is a game of strategic auction and placement for two to four players by Pandasaurus Games, ages 8+, that lasts 45 minutes to an hour.The game is played in turns. Each turn has several steps. In step one, path tiles are dealt onto “the altar” which is the platform where the tiles are held until placed on the main board. Then, a two phase auction is held.Each player draws three tokens out of his bag. Tokens come in two varieties, energy and soul (rarer and worth more). Then, he places the tokens on the space of his bidding track corresponding to the track he wants to bid on. After the first phase, the bets are placed on the corresponding track pieces on the altar, and then, in the second phase the process is repeated, but whoever has the most points on a piece gets to place it on the board. Pieces without any bets are discarded. There is a mechanic for dealing with ties, and it is clever and fair.If placing the tiles produces a closed path then a “summoning” occurs. Then points are accrued as follows. The players count the total number of energy tokens in the completed path. The highest player gets one soul token per length of the route, and then subsequent places get half of the tokens that the rank above them got, rounded down. So, a one tile path gets one soul token for the winner and none for anyone else, while a four tile route would score 4, 2, and 1 points in a three or four player game.The awarded soul tokens are taken from your soul flower, a special token.The completed path tiles are put back into the discard pile, and the tokens go back into the players’ token bags for subsequent rounds.The game ends when someone scores at least two soul tokens, has taken all of the soul tokens off of their soul flower previously, and is the top player for the path with at least two tiles long.On to the Dr Games’ Criteria …GO/NO GO Criterion• Complexity: (GO) It is a little complex, but the rules are pretty good. Players need to be able to keep several things in mind simultaneously. First, you want to bid just the right amount to win, and you need to balance the number of energy and soul tokens you use because only the energy tokens count for the route once it is closed. If you are great at memorizing the number or resources left, you have an advantage, but my group did not play enough times to get to that point.• Balanced: (GO ) It is completely balanced, but our older players tended to do better in this game. This is best done as an all kids, all college kids, or all adults as players game. It did not work as well as a mixed, family game.• Chance (GO) The random draws for the tiles and tokens added variability without adding chaos.• Clarity: (GO) The rules are well illustrated, clear, and very well done.• Reasonable Time: (GO) It takes about an hour, but you feel like you got your time worth by the end of the game. Every game came down to the wire for us with at least two and sometimes all four in contention by the final turn.Bonus Criteria• Social: It is neither social, nor anti-social.• Unique/Interesting Mechanics: The varying types of counters are fun, the artwork is beautiful, and the idea of keeping the orientation of the tiles once drawn is very nice.• Informed: Nothing in particular comes to mind for this for Umbra Via.• Rewards Throughout: Yes, each turn you potentially decrease the soul tokens on your soul flower, moving you towards victory.All in all, this is a fun game, and I recommend it for your game closet.

We have played/owned several hundred modern board games and have someCOMPONENTS:+ Flowers are nice tokens.+ Bags feel and work great.+ Board is kind of boring, but it doesn't need to be much as it gets covered up by tiles anyway.+ Thickness of the player tiles is good and should last.GAMEPLAY:* Tiles and their orientation are revealed for all players.* Draw three of your pieces from your draw bag.* Secretly, behind your screen, place your pieces on the tiels you want to bid on.* Once everyone has distributed accordingly behind their screen, then place your tokens on the revealed tiles you bid on and the others are going to do the same thing.* Repeat the process.* After a 2nd round of picking and placing, the tile with the fewest flowers on it will go first, resolving them 1 at a time.* The player with the highest value on a tile, wins, and the winning player gets to place that tile on the board. Ties on value are broken by placement on the right side of board. The winner of ties has their color moved down and so next time there is a tie the other colors may possibly win out.* Place the tiles, filling out the middle 4 spots first, but you aren't required to place it so the paths connect or complete. But completing a path (a path that can no longer be extended, rather is blocked) allows players to add more flowers off their tile in their bag.* First player to clear all flowers off their tile = a summoning and a winner; depending on some additional conditions.THEME:Non-existent, as this is an abstract game. But it doesn't really matter much unless you are a player that insists on a theme in games.SCALEABILITY:Works great for 2,3, or 4 players.REPLAYABILITY:Like many games with shuffled tiles/cards to be revealed, means by their nature it adds an aspect of randomness that allows for different combos of tiles revealed at any turn. Players making decisions during 1st bidding phase means sticking with the same or mixing up strategies/focus during the 2nd bidding phase.OVERALL:If you like to have an element of blocking and/or outbidding other players then you may like this. If you don't like that, then this would not be for you.This is an abstract game, which means players wanting theme will not be happy.Fun little game that seems to be closer to thirty minutes to play.We thought it was good overall.

Let me begin by saying this is a handsome game containing pretty wooden pastel flower pieces and housed in a beautiful box.. The board itself and the cards played on the board are kind of blah in contrast...Game action is both abstract and kind of fiddly. You play with two types of flowers: soul flowers and regular flowers. Soul flowers and regular flowers are your currency, but soul flowers are also the game's scoring mechanism. You have a separate stack of soul flowers you need to get rid of to win the game and you do that by effectively deploying your currency flowers (both soul and regular--soul flowers are worth two regular flowers as currency) in order to complete and win paths. Completing and winning paths allows you to remove soul flowers from your non-currency stack of flowers.Competing is constant: you're competing for tiles by bidding, competing to win paths by adding tiles you've won in bidding to paths and competing to get rid of soul flowers. Three special tiles seem to add complexity without adding fun. Bidding is double bidding and kind of interesting, especially with the first round being blind and the second round making clear where players are headed.There's a lot of thinking necessary in placing tiles effectively to keep others from claiming paths while also gaining your own. But I don't like the arbitrary closure of paths throughout the game. There's no benefit to a long path and no penalty for closing a one-tile path. It seems inelegant to have a path close just because another path goes past it without connecting. I don't know how it could be done differently, but it's jarring to see a path suddenly closed off for no apparent reason and no obvious benefit. I wish there were some incentive to keep a path going, to extend a path. I understand that longer paths are more dangerous and lead to higher scoring, but something here strikes me negatively. A big long path would be kind of cool if it brought some kind of reward--like longest track in Trains--but it's dangerous because if it gets big enough the game could end at the completion of just one path. So there's no great incentive to extend a path and a fair bit of risk in allowing others to do so.At two players, this game is boring. Three or four is more fun.Finally, this is a cerebral game, yet it seems often to come down to all players being neck-and-neck at the last possible bid and path closure. Even the proxy player in the two player game is often able to stay competitive to the end, and that's without employing strategy at all. Though they can't win, the proxy is necessary in a two-player game.So in the end, I'm not particularly a fan of this game. It has extraordinary box and piece design, but mechanics and strategy are fiddly and un-fun to my mind.Now I must add that I am a simple guy and not a dedicated gamer. I'm the player my kids humor and try not to blow out of games when we're having a gaming night. But I know what I like. More advanced gamers may enjoy the abstract nature of the game and the fiddliness of game play. I like more variety and purpose.

I seem to typically enjoy games that are produced by Pandasaurus, the company that puts this game out. And, I heard quite a bit of positive buzz about this game.The instructions seemed fairly straightforward and I have been looking forward to giving this game a try. So far, I have only played it with 2 players. When it started, I thought that I might be disappointed by it. But after a few rounds, some of the strategies and tactics started to surface and the game took a very interesting turn for the better!I have often found that games with a fairly simple rule set have some of the most profound gameplay. This one is no exception.Let me start by saying that the entire game is a quality product. Although the wooden components are simple, the coloring is nice and it is easy to distinguish between the soul flowers and the energy flowers for each color. The box insert does an excellent job of storing the components efficiently and the game itself has a rather small footprint - nice now that my collection is growing! The tiles and cardboard components are thick and sturdy and the board (although a little bland) is sturdy as well. It seems like there could have been a great opportunity to make the game look better from an artistic point of view, but as the game is pretty much just an abstract one, it's not the end of the world. It just would have been a little more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.If you are looking for a game that is intense - look no further. The simple bidding mechanic is nail biting and by game's end, my shoulders were in desperate need of a massage. I can only imagine what playing this with 4 players would be like. As a matter of fact, I am most curious. I really believe that it will be even more fun.The 2 player game was more interesting than most 2 player variations. In a way, there is an AI player but his pieces are used to help you as well. The AI pieces function as a "double edged sword" since while they might help, they also might hinder you.All in all, this game is a home run. Some casual gamers might initially be put off by rules that sound more difficult than they really are, but ultimately a round or two is all that is needed to get the point across.So glad to have this in my collection.