Mandala: My Favorite Game Mechanism

[@MrHalstedt]

Great game, we've loved playing it in beer gardens over summer

[@stephenspackman5573]

I feel I want to connect this with the Action Deck management subgame of The 7th Continent (which slowly becomes more expansive as you progress both within the game and with the game), but I think a spoiler-free discussion is literally impossible beyond saying that even at the start of the game there's a tension between wanting the deck thick (lots of ‘life’) and thin (richer hand, more possibilities for digging in the discard pile). The parallel is obscured by the fact that T7C's Action Deck is so large, varied, and indeed variable-the ideas are at vastly different scales-but I don't think I'm imagining it.

[@StevenStJohn-kj9eb]

Everyone raves about this game, so I'm certain it's a good game. Something about the components really turns me off though. Seems like the game demands much more table space than necessary, and it looks like you're playing on a garish table cloth instead of a game board. And all of the unnecessary terminology - cup, mountain (mountain?!), field... it's weird. I wonder if it could have been done with bakelite tiles instead of cards, drawn from a bag? It seems like there's a great game here, but I would want to rethink it completely from a component perspective.

[@JerzyMuller]

There are around 100 cards in the game, going with tiles would a) cost a lot an b) take a huge big to fit them.

[@JerzyMuller]

And to me the cloth is great, we play it in bed often 🙂

[@JerzyMuller]

And as for the custom names, we call them “here” and “there” 😁 Looks like they just wanted to have some thematic names for places where you put the cards instead of “Center row”, “player row” etc.

[@Nove811]

yes it's a good game, terms are abstract and game doesnt look appealing and i played this remotely via discord. It's basically a mind game and there are colours where you know your friend would want more of because you can see what they score for it and you can try and push your luck in getting a higher score with a different colour. It's truly simple but an amazingly brilliant game with just colour cards and a cloth mat, you can knock out a game while having a cup of coffee or just before you sleep

[@StevenStJohn-kj9eb]

@@JerzyMuller thanks for the info. There are 100 tiles in Azul, and that's the style I was thinking of. Azul isn't a super expensive game. But you can't easily play it in bed...