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Review. Rats of Wistar
By STEFAN DUCKSCH
Players have exactly 15 turns to do all of this, spread across five rounds. Three times each round, players select an ac- tion by placing a chief rat on the rotating rondel. Confusingly, this is not the main action. Instead, there are other actions depicted on the board next to the rondel that players can take advantage of, de- pending on how many workers they place. This is how players gain resources like wood or metal or expand their burrows.
It takes a while to wrap your
head around how the rondel
and the main actions interact.
Only an optimal synergy will be efficient enough to really take advantage of the game’s limit-
ed number of actions. Players
who diligently expand their bur-
rows and build beds will attract
many mice workers. These are
then placed in the forest, burrow,
or farm areas on the board. These spaces do not move, and each one is ad- jacent to two rondel segments. If I have four mice at the farm, for example, I get additionally to the rondel action of my chief rat a main action multiplied by
T
group of escaped laboratory rats
he game’s story told through a dense block of text on the rule-
book’s cover, revolves around a
who settle near a farm. They dig an underground shelter and expand it throughout the game while also attracting more workers (mice). Simulta- neously, they explore the farm and gather resources
to build inventions that help them prog- ress.
Terraforming Rats?
It’s always wise to be cautious when making comparisons. However, since its release, Rats
of Wistar has occasionally been compared to Terraforming Mars or Ark Nova. It’s certainly not in the same league as those games, but it’s easy to spot the
similarities since there are 180 different invention cards you can bring to the table
Photos: Becker, Cranio Creations, Ducksch
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