Renature

 

Renature is a game from master duo Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande, Tikal, Take 5) and Michael Kiesling (Azul, Tikal, Linko). It is a mid-weight game about nature, animals and trees. It is a tile placement game, and the tiles are dominos, each half showing an animal. During game setup, every player gets his own pile of face-down tiles, and a starting hand of three tiles. You play until everyone uses up all his tiles. 

Tiles in the game

The game board is divided into many sections (those brown, fertile patches), bordered by streams. You will place your tiles on streams to surround those sections of various sizes. At the start of the game, tiles must be placed on specific starting spots. Subsequent tiles must be placed adjacent to existing tiles, and where the tiles touch, the animals must match. By default, the butterfly is wild, as in it is a joker. It can match with any other animal. During the game you can change which animal is wild by paying some resources. The resource in the game is clouds. 

When you place a tile, you may also place a plant next to it, in an adjacent section. You have your own player board and it starts with many plants of different sizes. There are plants in your colour and also plants in a neutral colour. You place plants to do area majority competition. The plants of different sizes have different strengths. When a section is completely enclosed, you compare who has the highest strength in it. The highest and second highest score points. The neutral colour competes too, and if it does well it will reduce the points the players earn. One interesting thing is if two players tie in strength, they are both disqualified, and it is the next player who scores. If you use the neutral colour plants well, you can force your opponents to get disqualified and score nothing. By the end of the game, ideally you place all the plants from your board, because any remaining costs you points. 

Whenever you place a plant, you score 1 point. If the section it is placed in contains other plants, you can score additional points. This encourages you to compete with others, because it makes you want to barge into sections others are already in. Also, whether you score the additional points depends on your plant size. You score for existing plants which are smaller or of the same size as your newly placed plant. If you place a small plant, you won't earn points for existing plants which are larger than yours. This mechanism also encourages players to compete. You are incentivised to place large plants so that you'd score more points, and when you place large plants, you will be competing with the existing players in the section. Whenever you fully close a section, you score points too. That's yet another way to earn points. If you are leading in a section, you probably want to close it to prevent others from sneaking in a plant at the last minute to take over the lead. 

The game looks a little complex, but once you start playing, you will find that it runs smoothly. The area majority competition can be merciless. Players more or less have the same resources. You want to optimise how you use your resources. You want to win at as many places as possible, while spending as few resources as possible. You only have a hand of three tiles, and that often limits where you will be able to play a tile. 

Renature has an old school feel. It is a solid design. It is mature and well crafted. Picture an experienced artist patiently shaping a sculpture, paying attention to every little detail. No superfluous bits. Every stroke has its place. This may look like a peaceful game about nature, but nature can be highly competitive and brutal. There is a nice balance between being tactical and strategic. It is tactical in that you are limited by the three tiles in your hand. The map may be open, but not all spots are available to you due to your hand. You need to watch out for opportunities and grab them. For example another player places the second last tile around a section and you have the opportunity to close it. You will be making these tactical assessments and trying to utilise as many of them as you can. At the strategic level, you do have to plan where to compete and where to give up on. Although you only have three tiles, you can still plan ahead a little. Clouds (the currency in the game) let you do some nifty things, which means breaking the restrictions. You don't get many clouds in the whole game so you will be saving them for the most crucial moments. When you use clouds to change the wild animal, you create flexibility for yourself. You can also use clouds to take back plants for reuse. I feel the theme of the game is interchangeable. I wonder whether this design started with this theme, or the theme was applied only later.