Have you ever wondered what that mystical light was at the end of your garden? Perhaps out of the corner of your eye, you’re sure you saw a tiny creature that you’ve never seen before flittering about in the bushes.
If you take a closer look you might just find an entrance to an incredible realm, a place full of wonder, magic and faeries. If you have the courage to enter it. This is the mystical world you enter when you play Faeries and Magical Creatures, released in 2023 and published by Forbidden Games, with artwork from the award winning Annie Stegg-Gerard, so you know you’re going to be in for a visual treat.
On opening the box the first thing you do is get to read a wonderful little children’s story that accompanies the game, which is then fleshed out in the rules, to evoke a lovely sense of wonder.
Aimed as a lightweight family game for 2-4 players, Faeries and Magical Creatures quickly enticed me in to its realms, but was this game pure magic, or should the creatures and faeries have remained in the game box?
How Does Your Garden Grow?
In Faeries and Magical Creatures, you are trying to achieve the time honoured board game tradition of amassing more victory points that your opponents, through a variety of means.
In each of your turns, you can play a card from your hand, and do one of 5 actions. That could be play another card, draw up to 5 cards, place a garden tile or path into your mystical faerie garden you’re building, draft a new card to add to your deck, or place a kinship token on one of the five faerie folk areas.
Importantly, the action you choose, your opponents can also perform, so you need to weigh up what benefits you, and crucially, what might also benefit the opposition.
Despite being a game likely aimed at a younger audience, Faeries and Magical Creatures has a whole host of different board game mechanics at play. The drawing, drafting and playing of cards provides some classic deckbuilding. You start with 4 basic cards which allow simple plays, but you can draft faeries and creatures to your garden for some big, powerful moves later in the game. There’s tile placement straight out of Patchwork or My City, which allows you to score points based on how many garden tiles you have in your garden adjacent to any paths you have laid for some end game and scoring.
There’s even area control. The kinship tokens you place into 5 different fairy folk area as you look to gain influence and respect from the different creatures available. The first person to have 10 kinship tokens in one area gains that creatures faerie home, a way of doubling your tile placing scores. Not only that, but the person with the most kinship tokens in each area at the end of the game will score points based on how many kinship tokens, they, and their opponents, have in that area.
The cards your drafting and playing all effect these different scoring conditions. They might allow you to move kinship tokens to different areas to ruin your opponents plans. They might give you a way to play extra garden tiles compared to the other players. Some cards even let you steal your opponent’s cards. It creates a good amount of player interaction, whether you’re playing it as a head to head experience, or with 3-4 players.
For a game which comes across as very family friendly, there is a lot here, a potentially perfect introduction to these kind of board mechanics for any budding board gaming hobbyist, all while still actually being fairly simple to learn and play.
So there is an awful lot of game in Faeries and Magical Creatures within its hour or so of play, but this might be where the faerie garden gets a little overgrown.
Jack of All Trades, Master of None
While I think its admirable to throw so much into quite a lightweight game such as Faeries and Magical Creatures, and I do think it might make a nice gateway game for some, I do think the overall quality of the game is hampered by its approach.
All of the different mechanics, from deckbuilding to tile placement are decent in their own way, but none of them greatly standout compared to other games that implement them so well.
The deckbuilding gives you opportunities to get some nice cards which can do some fun things, but ultimately they are either the same kind of action with little variation in terms of strategy, or they are way too overpowerful, meaning whoever gets that card has a huge advantage.
The tile placing is nice and semi thematic, but mostly becomes a distraction from the other things you’re trying to do, so that your focus stays on this action, and as one of the conditions for the game end is the tile bag running out of pieces, you will find the game often ends via this method, so that every game I have played has always felt like it ended just at the point of it starting to get interesting. And its not often I will complain that a game is too short!
Even the area control is a bit flimsy and uninspiring. As there are 5 places to put your tokens, you will find, especially in a two player game, that more often than not you just leave your opponent to take an area, while you focus on another, so that wonderful push and pull that area control games can provide you isn’t massively present, just one person dominates one area and someone else claims dominion over the other.
I think by spreading its gameplay quite thin, the wonderful theme that the story within the rulebook beautifully evokes is kind of lost while playing. It fails to fully excel in any parts of the gameplay, with even the game scoring at the end a bit of a chore as even if you have played badly (which I am want to do), you will likely still score big points, with tracking what tiles you have already scored quite difficult.
Perhaps most frustratingly of all though is the rules of the game. They are simple and easy to learn, but a lot of the cards have rules or context specific actions which are just not addressed anywhere in the rulebook. This leads to a lot of internet checking and house ruling on certain cards, which can affect the balance of the game as at times if you go by how you read the card, some of the effects can feel uber powerful, as mentioned before, and can feel a little unfair for the person on the receiving end of it.
It would be so simple to have a little glossary for the more complex cards, which would hopefully make the game even simpler if teaching to younger children, and create a better, more balanced game.
Enchanting artistry
As I mentioned at the beginning, the art in this game was designed by award winning artist Annie Stegg-Gerard, and while I might have my reservations about some of the mechanics of the game and its theme within that, where it really does thrive is in the incredible art Annie has provided to this.
The designs on each of the various cards absolutely evoke a world of magic and wonder, so that you truly feel you’re stepping into a storybook.
The majestic nymphs, the mischievous trolls, the imposing centaurs, they are all brought to life so well that if you did have a child interested in fantasy fiction then this could be a firm favourite with them.
The idea of building a kinship with the creatures is something you have a real desire to do as just one look at the cards will have your childlike imagination wanting to befriend them. Its why it’s a shame the theme does fall away as you play it, as you simply place wooden tokens on a space to invoke this idea of achieving kinship with the creatures, which falls quite flat in comparison to the amazing art you’re looking at and the idea of what you’re trying to achieve within the story of the game.
Final Thoughts
When I opened the game box and started taking in the beautiful cards and enveloping myself into the fun story of the game, I really couldn’t wait to play it. It has three mechanics I really enjoy in games, incredible art, a whimsical theme and it seemed simple to learn.
And overall, I did really enjoy this game. I do think it has its place in the board gaming sphere, a potential gateway game for your children or young adults who are starting to take an interest in board games.
However, I do think there was a missed opportunity. The ambition was clearly there, but I think Faeries and Magical Creatures almost got lost in its own garden of ideas, as it couldn’t fully work out what it wanted to be. I think it would have benefitted the game to drop maybe one of its mechanics, fully worked on shoring up the other two to make them truly sing, tweak some of the cards and rules, and mostly, find a way to transport its incredible theme further into its gameplay.
Faeries and Magical Creatures is a really good game, that others might warm to more. My wife really enjoyed it, and I don’t think it will be leaving our collection anytime soon. It’s simply too lovely to look at. But for me, it doesn’t quite live up to the promise I was hoping to find when I first spotted those enchanting faeries and creatures at the bottom of the garden.
About the Author:
Paul Websell is a freelance contributor for Zatu who spends his time either playing board and video games or talking about them. While he’s not on social media, you can view his other blogs right here on Zatu!
