Gatsby

Gatsby is a light 2-player game about trying to gain the favours of the rich and famous. There are 15 characters in the game, three each in five different colours. However each time you play, a few are removed unseen. To win, you need to collect three characters of the same colour, or five characters of different colours. If no one achieves either condition, you compare total point values of characters you manage to collect. 

The fun part of the game is that some characters are face-down. You don’t know which characters are in play. You need to take a specific action to peek at and possibly swap the positions of characters. You play on three different boards, and there are characters on all three. You place or move your markers on these boards in order to win characters. 

There are four action tiles which let you perform different combinations of actions on the three boards. You share a common disc with your opponent. On your turn you move the disc to a new action tile and perform the corresponding actions. What this means is you are also preventing your opponent from performing that action, because he must move the disc when his turn comes. 

The three boards work differently. There are five tracks on the race course board. You fill them from left to right. When a track is full, whoever has more markers wins the character. At the dance floor, which is a square grid, you win characters when your markers connect two edges and when you occupy four specific spaces. At the tower building, you win characters when you reach specific levels. One interesting twist here is whoever is behind moves two steps at a time. 

The general mechanisms of the three boards do not make an interesting enough game. What makes the game fun is the special powers on some of the spaces. Some let you peek at and swap characters. Some let you swap markers with your opponent. Some let you specify which action tile your opponent must use next. Some let you draw a special single-use action tile which is only available to you. These special action tiles can be very powerful. One dilemma you often have is when you place your marker on a space, you are making adjacent spaces accessible to your opponent, and these newly accessible spaces may have useful special powers. 

The game is a tug of war with three arenas you need to compete in. Tension comes from the unknown characters. You need to figure out which are in play because it affects your strategy and you also need to know that to stop your opponent from winning. Due to this hidden information, you can have psychological play, trying to mislead your opponent. There are also clever action combos you can make. These are fun tactical plays which make you feel smart.