1 - 4 Players 60 - 120 Minutes Age: 12+
Designers: Ross Arnold, Vladimir Suchy
Artist: Michal Peichl
Publisher: Delicious Games

Wood crafting - not just a simple wood work

I have to be honest here – my first game of Woodcraft was a rough experience. Learning this heavy Euro at night, after a particularly busy day, didn’t do this game a proper justice. I was struggling will all the options and actions available to me, some free, some tied to action tiles, some only triggered if you do something specific (like free sawing when planting a tree), all the tracks, resources… I ended up scoring something like 66 VP, which is not even close to 110, considered as an “OK” score. So, my first impressions were a bit of a mixed bag.

But, knowing from experience how all games from this particular designer get significantly better and better each time I play them, I didn’t worry too much about my initial impressions. Instead, I took my time with the rules, reserved a daylight-time for another session, and gave Woodcraft another go. Not surprisingly, what was a very confusing and chaotic first game, turned into a very deep and crunchy puzzle, where every piece of it started falling into place, forming a clearer picture of what my goal and general flow of play should be.

Woodcraft is therefore, without a doubt, well in line with both, Messina 1347 and Praga Caput Regni (designer’s previous games), in terms of its steep learning curve and tightness of it’s gameplay. This is not a euro where small mistakes can be mitigated or forgiven; you screw up here, you feel the pain in the full force. No “alternative” work-arounds, no second chances.

I myself experienced the punishing nature of this game many times in my 11 plays I’ve done so far – either by mis-calculating my resources, by incorrectly sequencing my actions, by choosing the wrong contracts in the worst possible time… I did it all and paid a price for it, usually costing me up to 10+ vps in the process.

Measure twice, cut once!

However, this crunchy nature of Woodcraft is also a reason why I cannot stop coming back for more. What’s the “Why”? I can clearly see how my gameplay improves each subsequent session, how my better understanding of all the actions lead to better synergies and sequencing. This game rewards you for your patience and AP, and for your ability to plan ahead but also have a flexible plan B and C in place.

This might sound like two contradicting things – to plan ahead but at the same time, having an alternative sub-strategies in place – however, this creates a very interesting and very rewarding gameplay experience where you are constantly making sure your general strategy is still followed but also being prepared for potential “twists and turns”, that will inevitably arise from a regular refresh of all the contracts, helpers and wood available to you.

Since I’ve mentioned contracts and other cards, this might be a perfect time to briefly outline what you’re trying to achieve here. The game is split into 14 rounds, plus 4 production phases sprinkled in-between. So, not a lot! And your goal? Score as many VPs as possible, either through fulfilling numerous contracts, or through other means such as regular scoring during production, one-off VPs etc. Each round, you can chose one of the actions from an action selection rondel wheel – the further back the action sits, the more bonuses you might get.

Now, the action you chose, allows you to do all the admin work associated with wood crafting: getting refining cubes, glue tokens and a new wood (in a clever form of dice that can be “chopped” into 2 or more with lesser pip values), improving your workshop, hiring new helpers, gaining new contracts, trading etc. These actions are very quick to execute – so if you really suck at the game (like I did at the beginning 😊) and don’t have any free actions that you can follow up with, you can breeze through a single session of Woodcraft in 20-30 minutes.

Your workshop - where all the scoring happens

Those free, anytime actions, are therefore the crux of this game. So, what are they? These are basically all the woodcrafting work you do in your workshop in order to fulfil the contracts. Sawing wood into smaller pieces, refining it, gluing it together – might not sound like a lot, but this is actually where your general strategy either succeeds, or falls apart. If you don’t think ahead, if you “slice” wood into wrong chunks, if you use your refining cubes and glue without thinking about your next contract, you will end up delivering one, but getting stuck with all the other ones.

See, each contract, upon completion, rewards you with money (in this game, blueberries) and other useful resources, so sometimes going for the easiest job (rewarding you less) first might not be a good idea. Why? Because if you tried harder and worked on a slightly harder one, that one might reward you with a very valuable and very useful piece of wood… which you can than chop again and use for other contracts.

Thinking forward can save you from disappointment

These slightly obscure and sometimes tricky-to-spot opportunities for future synergies is what makes this game such a delightful, crunchy brain teaser. You can of course approach each round the normal way, eg you just worry about the immediate situation – but this approach will cost you quite a lot of VPs in long run. Woodcraft might look like a relatively typical heavy euro from the outside (heavy mainly due to the tightness of resources and limited number of rounds to do something meaningful), but once you’ve played a couple of games, you will definitely start noticing the potential for chaining your actions across multiple turns. And it’s these chained “actions and reactions” that will ultimately make you smile from ear to ear, and convince you to keep on playing and keep trying to beat your best score yet.

Speaking from a solo perspective, I have just mentioned that the game is about beating your own score – so pretty much a standard solitaire mode we have seen in all the previous titles from this designer. Solo in Woodcraft also comes a very simple automa, not too dissimilar from both bots in Praga and Messina. In essence, you have a deck of cards which you use to move tiles to a next quadrant of the action wheel and sometimes also reroll the available wood at the market or refresh the available helpers and contracts. That’s it. There is no competition to beat, no active solo bot, just a pure, unrefined, solitaire puzzle.

Addressing potential concerns…

Now, I am aware of several concerns raised by other gamers, mainly taking aim at potentially stale market and a corresponding role of luck in the overall experience. Luck in a sense that if the available contracts, helpers, and wood do not match (and hence you would have to do a lot of inefficient refining and gluing), and if the market is not refreshed regularly, you might as well just restart the game. I have -so far- only played the game 11 times, and using the vanilla rules… but haven’t really experienced any issue with market being too samey to the point where I felt the game needs house-ruling.

The thing is – market gets refreshed regularly enough, either by me as a player (by gaining and buying contracts), or either by bot who does it regularly through his solo cards… and also during production phases (4 of them), with one completely changing all the contracts available to you. Same story goes for wood (you have always access to 6 dice, 2 per type of wood) - it gets refreshed on a regular basis (by me and the bot), PLUS you can plant your own trees which generate you free wood with increasing pip value… so really, running out of wood is not a fault of this game, just a result of a sub-optimal sequence of actions.

No way around it - this game will melt your brain and you will love it

In the end, Woodcraft is yet another stellar co-design from Mr. Suchy. His previous game (Messina 1347) is one of my most played, medium to heavy weight euros of this year and from my 10+ plays of Woodcraft so far, I can already see that the addiction factor of his new title is equally strong. So, if you are on the market for a crunchy, deep, tight, heavy euro, Woodcraft is definitely one of the best choices available to you this year. Just be ready to get your muscle brain flexed – despite looking warm and welcoming, this game will punish you for your poor choices and poor decisions in a blink of an eye!

Takahe’s Solo Den: Woodcraft