Tobago Review
Unlike any game that we’ve played before, Tobago incorporates a location-deduction mechanic that requires each player to lay a series of cards in order to isolate where a given treasure is NOT. Now you may be asking yourself, “how is that useful?” Well… as my primary school math teacher would say while in between swigs of brandy from his flask (true story), “finding where something is not, allows you to deduce where something is!” As much as I may disagreed with the fellows methods, his tutelage would better prepare me for hours of alcohol induced fun with this week’s game.
Behold, the treasure scrounging, ale consuming, 2D6 review of Tobago by: Rio Grande games.
Review Cast: Travis Ross, Emily Ross, Ashly Simmons, and Matthew Falk.
Filmed By: Nicholas Cassidy.
Edited By: Ashly Simmons
Production Notes: We had a few beers during this shoot – yeah I didn’t lie. Instead of making us more talkative, the alcohol seems to have made us a bit tired. We promise to be more peppy during our next review!
Our Review:
Craftsmanship: 4.5 / 5
Accessibility: 4 / 5
Gameplay: 4 / 5
Replayability: 4 / 5
Final Verdict: Buy it – especially if you’re looking for a game to play with family.
Other Tobago reviews that we enjoyed:
“SdJ? Not quite…“ By: Steve Oksienik
“ A Great Family Game“ By: Mary Weisbeck
I played Tobago at BGG.con in November – I think I played it 4 times practically in a row. At first I was really enjoying the game because, as you pointed out, the mechanisms are dissimilar to other games I’ve played, and it was fun to “deduce” (by playing cards) where the treasures were, and to do so in such a way that I would be the one to collect it if possible. However, where my enjoyment stopped (and where I think the game falls apart) was in the scoring. In an effort to inject some danger to just piling all of our cards in one pile and scoring a lot of cards at a time (I guess), they added 2 Curses to the treasure deck. This is not something you mentioned in the video, so for those who are not familiar, treasure cards are divvied up amongst the players who contributed to finding each treasure. Most of the treasure cards are valuable, and they’re worth some amount of points (between 2 and 6 I think), but as I mentioned, 2 of them are ‘curses’. When a Curse card comes up, not only do all players who have yet to receive their rewards for that treasure lose out on that reward, but they in fact must discard they’re biggest treasure card accumulated so far! Meanwhile, anyone who already got their treasure card this time around is safe from the curse.
Furthermore, the curses are removed from the game once they come up, so once you’ve seen both curses, everybody knows there’s no more danger involved, so any tension the curses might have brought to the game is lost. In at least 2 of the 4 games I played, both curses came up in the same treasure draw, making that draw awful, and the rest of the game curse-free.
This haphazard scoring with the random curse draws really turned me off of the game, which is too bad because with a better scoring system I could see playing this game a lot.
Hey-
Love the site. Keep up the good work!
I feel the need to pass along one comment about your Tobago review. There is close to nothing in this review (if anything) about the game’s theme and the goals of the players within the game. I found this mildly dissatisfying.
Anyway,
Ideally, we would include a tutorial with the review such that a more in depth understanding of the game was included. At this point, we’re not going to go back and create tutorials for games that we have already reviewed. It just takes far too much time to go back when we could continue moving forward and just create tutorials for games as we review them.
That being said, most euro games are abstract to the point that the theme is irrelevant, but I do believe that we could have included a bit more information pertaining to the theme, even though you could pick up the theme fairly well just by reading the copy and watching the review.
Thanks for the feedback.
-Nick
Far enough. But I wasn’t thinking anything too extensive (that is, anything that would constitute a tutorial); just a few sentences about the theme, goals, and mechanics.
In any case, I like what you all are doing here. And I’ll continue to follow your site.
My previous comment should have read:
Fair enough. But I wasn’t thinking anything too extensive (that is, not anything that would constitute a tutorial); just a few sentences about the theme, goals, and mechanics.
In any case, I like what you all are doing here. And I’ll continue to follow your site.
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