You see, Atiwa is a game about bats. I mean, if you want to be pedantic, it’s about developing a small community in the Atiwa Range area of Ghana. But really it’s about bats. Loads and loads of outrageously cute bat meeples. I’m a little bit in love with the bats. As I mentioned above, Atiwa isn’t anything as like as heavy as A Feast For Odin, and while it’s lighter than Hallertau, there are plenty of familial traits passed down through its genes. But even that’s not cut and dried. Anytime someone adds to their tableau, they get to take the Start Player marker from its current owner. So, do you add to your tableau right now (maybe you need space to place a Goat, for instance) and risk having the Start Player marker taken away from you? Or do you hold out for as long as you can before adding to your tableau? If you wait until your third worker, you’ll be missing out on the opportunity to take that Goat. So, is getting your hands on the Start Player marker worth giving up that Goat over? Atiwa is played over a total of seven rounds. At the beginning of the game, all the Action tiles will be in their rightmost positions. But, at the beginning of subsequent rounds, the leftmost one will move one space to the left. This has the effect of changing up the available actions from one round to the next. Each Action tile represents a single action of a two action structure: the action shown on the tile and the pre-printed action that is visible just beneath it. There are other stand alone actions dotted all over the board aside from the ones coupled to the Action tiles.

Preparation: Discard any unselected Terrain cards and draw new ones to replace them. Then shift the Action tile to the right of the empty spot on the Action board one space to the left. Then the next round begins with whoever currently holds the Start Player marker (which shifts via the acquisition of Location cards). End of the Game

On a player’s turn, they will place one of their workers onto an available action location, each of which can only accommodate a single worker, and then pay any associated costs before performing the action…or not. Players are allowed to place workers onto action spaces they have no intention of using if they choose to do so. And, players are not required to gain all the benefits from their chosen action location either. For example, if a player placed their worker on the space that rewards them with two Wild Animals, they could choose to take zero, one, or two animals. The Atiwa Range is a region in southeastern Ghana, Africa, made up of steep-sided hills with relatively flat tops. Much of the range includes an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many endangered species. However, logging and bushmeat hunting, as well as gold and bauxite mining, are putting great pressure on the reserve. Players must then feed their families based on the difference between the number of goats removed from their supply board and the number displayed on the family row. Goats, wild animals, fruit and gold can be used for food. Fruit bats – return the fruit bats from your night card. If there are not enough available spaces, return the rest to the supply If it isn’t obvious by now, I value a well-integrated theme more than clever mechanisms in my Euro games. In many Euros, theme can be an afterthought, added on during development to explain all the gears and levers the game is made up of. Not here. The designer wants you to know how important this theme is to him. So much so that the game includes a booklet about the Atiwa region including its history, geography, and people. I highly recommend players read this before playing. It also talks about the book that Mr. Rosenburg is writing about the Atiwa region and people, published in German only. Duolingo here I come! Players have a lot of choices but never enough workers. Final Thoughts:

On the surface Atiwa looks like a big complex euro. It has “Advanced Level” written on the box. There are a decent amount of components, however, I personally find it more mid-weight in complexity. Sure, there are a decent amount of rules and a seven step income phase but after a few games it flows very well and is relatively easy to teach and play. What To Do, When? Breeding – look at the current round space on the main board where there are 3 icons. If you have at least as many things as shown, gain exactly one more of that type. To set up the game, place the main action board on the table, putting terrain cards above the board and location cards below the board. The action tiles are shuffled and placed on the board as well. Put the appropriate board extension on the right based on the player count. Place all the pollution tokens in the bag. La phrase « Advanced Level » sur la boîte. Pour indiquer que le jeu est… complexe ? En réalité, non. Atiwa est beaucoup plus simple qu’il n’y paraît. Les règles sont certes denses, mais très claires. Et finalement très fluides. Avec des pictos extrêmement limpides et ergonomiques. On ne passe pas sa partie le nez dans les règles, et tant mieux !

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Feeding: To feed your Families, first determine the food demand. Subtract the number of the rightmost uncovered Goat from the number of the rightmost uncovered Family to determine the total. Then pay some combination of tokens and/or gold until this total is met. Wild Animals, Fruit, Goats, and Gold can be spent for different amounts. And untrained Families will even consume Fruit bats. You’ll lose two points for each unfed Family. However, in all the games that I have played, I have yet to see this happen. The food value of each item is shown on the Overview card. Next, each player receives a Supply board along with eight Wild Animal, thirteen Tree, eight Fruit, thirteen Family, and seven Goat tokens which are placed on top of their matching spots. Each player also receives a Night card, one of each Overview card, and the Worker meeples in their chosen color. They also take a Village card which is placed into the third slot from the left beneath their Supply board. The leftmost Family token is removed from the player’s Supply board and placed into one of the huts on this card, untrained side up. The difference between the trained and untrained sides will be made clear later. Terrain and location cards are important as these are the only places where you can play your tokens. Cards are always placed upright, so that the title is in the upper left corner. Note that some cards will have a leaf symbol in this space; these nature icons will become important for other actions. Some spaces have preprinted icons on them; this tells you what goes there. Empty spaces can be filled with anything so long as there is at least one other thing of the same type already on the card. In general, when you place a token, you take the leftmost available one from your supply board. If you spend or return tokens, place them on the rightmost available space. Atiwa is played over seven rounds, with each round consisting of a work phase in which players will take three actions, followed by a maintenance phase. Atiwa เป็นพื้นที่ทางตะวันออกเฉียงใต้ของกานาในแอฟริกา ประกอบด้วยเนินเขาสูงชันที่มียอดเขาค่อนข้างแบน พื้นที่ส่วนใหญ่ของเทือกเขาประกอบด้วยป่าสงวนที่เขียวชอุ่ม เป็นที่อยู่ของสัตว์ใกล้สูญพันธุ์หลายชนิด อย่างไรก็ตาม การตัดไม้และการล่าสัตว์ป่า รวมถึงการขุดทองและ bauxite (แร่อลูมิเนียม) กำลังทำให้การอนุรักษ์ได้รับแรงกดดันอย่างมาก

But it’s one thing to read about a concept in a book and an entirely different matter to actually experience it for yourself. And, let me tell you, Atiwa is an absolutely brilliant piece of game design. Mechanically, everything fits together like a cog in a well-oiled machine. There is zero fluff. And, despite how it looks on paper, it’s an incredibly easy game to teach and learn.

It’s a lovely core mechanism. And you really feel the pain of taking actions with sub-optimal timing. Atiwa is a one to four player worker placement, resource management game, designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Lookout Games. Atiwa is a region in southeastern Ghana with steep-sided hills and flat summits. The region consists of evergreen forests and is home to many endangered species. The Mayor of the nearby town of Kibi is giving shelter to fruit bats in his own garden. The Mayor has recognised the importance of these species that sleep during the day and head out at sunset in search of food. These bats excrete the seeds of the consumed fruit and spread them across large areas. ATIWA is a 1-4 player “advanced level” game based in the ATIWA region of Ghana and revolves around, you guessed it, building a new community! But this one has a fruity twist! You have seen a nearby area prosper as a result of harnessing the crop reseeding (aka pooping!) powers of the indigenous fruit bat population, and you want some of that action! You will therefore be tasked with establishing a village that exploits the eco-friendly relationship between fruit bats and farmers. Reforestation for roosting! Preservation for population growth! Poop for profits! There are a couple of criticisms here as well. After several plays, it feels like the possibility of discovering new strategies is low. I fear that after a few more plays that this one may be relegated to being “solved” and become a bit samey. The solo mode scenarios should help with this at least. I also don’t love the graphic design choice of the main board and the terrain cards. It’s a long-running joke that Euro games can be all beige, but in Atiwa, various shades of brown and green really do the heavy lifting in the art department. I wish they had opted for some more vibrant art befitting the beauty of the Atiwa rainforest. That being said, I have enjoyed my time with Atiwa, but worry that the theme will overshadow the gameplay after a few plays. I can’t help but think that maybe Uwe Rosenburg meant it to be that way.

Atiwa สร้างที่อยู่อาศัยสำหรับครอบครัวใหม่และแบ่งปันความรู้ที่เพิ่งได้รับเกี่ยวกับผลกระทบด้านลบของการทำเหมืองและความสำคัญที่ค้างคาวกินผลไม้มีต่อสิ่งแวดล้อม คุณต้องหาที่ดินใหม่ จัดการสัตว์และทรัพยากรของคุณ และทำให้ชุมชนของคุณเจริญรุ่งเรือง ผู้เล่นที่สร้างสมดุลระหว่างความต้องการของชุมชนและสิ่งแวดล้อมได้ดีที่สุดจะเป็นผู้ชนะ Good to know: A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats can contribute to the reforestation of 800 ha of forest within a year!Extraire du minerai, de l’or, déforester et polluer ? Ou vivre en harmonie avec la nature et tout faire pour accueillir les chauves-souris pour profiter de leur guano et ainsi reforester ? There are several different ways to score points in this game with you highly likely scoring in all the available categories but how you play the game will decide where you score the most. You can have a focus on hoarding gold and taking actions to get gold. This will mean that you are not building many locations but instead looking for terrain cards that have spaces to hold families. Also, getting several terrain cards that have the nature icon will mean you can collect a lot of gold with one worker placement action to boost this strategy further. These spaces are often fought for during the later rounds so you will need to make sure that you are as close to the start player as possible if you go for this strategy. Per the rules: “The Atiwa Range is a region of southeastern Ghana in Africa consisting of steep-sided hills with rather flat summits. A large portion of the range comprises an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many endangered species. However, logging and hunting for bushmeat, as well as mining for gold and bauxite, are putting the reserve under a lot of pressure. The game is played over 7 rounds, and in each round, players will get three chances to place a workers and take the associated action. Possible actions include: After a player has performed an action they can, optionally, perform the fruit bat action, but only if they have 1) at least three fruit bats, 2) at least one fruit in their tableau, 3) at least one tree left on their supply board and 4) at least room for one tree. The player can take the three fruit bats from their tableau and move them to their night card, spending one fruit and taking one tree.