Wispwood, at first glance, is a very simple-looking tile-drafting/pattern-building game – very pretty, but at risk of being too light for all but the most casual play. Don’t be fooled. There are some very clever tricks and twists that give it real bite as the game progresses.
In this game for 1-4 players, you play as cats that have wandered into the forest. Your job is to help arrange the forest’s Wisps into the best positions, so they can most enjoy their surroundings.
Setting up
(Everything you need to know for your actions is laid out on the pond)
Wispwood, at first glance, is a very simple-looking tile-drafting/pattern-building game – very pretty, but at risk of being too light for all but the most casual play. Don’t be fooled. There are some very clever tricks and twists that give it real bite as the game progresses.
In this game for 1-4 players, you play as cats that have wandered into the forest. Your job is to help arrange the forest’s Wisps into the best positions, so they can most enjoy their surroundings.
Setting up
(Everything you need to know for your actions is laid out on the pond)
Setup is quick and easy. Place the central pond tile, then shuffle the four edge pieces and place them around it. This sets up a random pattern of shapes for each game.
The tree tiles are placed in stacks near the board. You then fill the pond’s edge by flipping tree tiles to reveal the wisps underneath, and place them in each of the spaces between two shapes.
Next is the goal cards. These set how you score for each of the four types of Wisp and the trees. Each Wisp’s scoring is distinct (Witches have to be placed relative to where your cat is, Orbs score based on other Wisp types around them, Trees score by largest group, etc.). With 5 cards of differing complexities for each type of Wisp, this boosts replayability by quite a lot.
Lastly, grab a tree tile to start your forest, choose a cat and place it on that tree.
Gameplay
The game runs through three rounds where players take turns to build up their forest. The usual action is to take a Wisp and choose one of the two shapes either side of it. You build this shape using the chosen Wisp and some extra tree tiles, rotating or mirroring the shape as required. Now, place it in your forest. The only restriction for this is that the shape must be touching an existing tile in your forest, and in round one you need to keep everything within a 4×4 grid.
(If you need to keep an eye on the grid boundaries you can use the handy guide included)
As each player takes their turn, your options quickly narrow, as the Wisps in the pond don’t refill unless they are either all gone (in which case the Wisps are refilled) or all of the same type (in which case the current player can sweep the pond and refill). This means you will often have to choose between the Wisp you want or the shape you need to fit in the forest. You also want to avoid taking the last dissimilar Wisp – leaving it for another player delays when the pond gets swept and improves your selection when it gets back to your turn.
You’re not entirely trapped in your options. Each player has their cat in the forest that can be used to either sweep the pond or use any Wisp with any shape. The cat then hides (flip the cat over) and can’t be used until it comes back out.
If you can’t fit an available shape in your forest, the alternative action is to take a tree turn. Take 1-3 tree tiles and place them in your forest, scattering them as necessary to fill gaps, and bring your cat back out of hiding. This does mean you miss out on a Wisp, but is often a necessary sacrifice to complete your forest.
Turns continue like this until someone has filled their grid. Play continues until everyone has taken the same number of turns; then each player scores for their forest’s Wisps and trees according to the goal cards.
So far, all of this is a nice simple puzzle, but not exactly ground-breaking. However, next comes the twist that really makes this game shine. Move your cat to another tree and then remove all of the other tree tiles. Leave all the Wisps where they are. A new round is started; however, your forest is now a 5×5 grid, and all new shapes drafted have to fit in with the wisps already in your forest.
(At the start of a new round, everything but your cat and the Wisps are removed)
After the second round is over, score again, then move the cat, remove the trees, and play the final round in a 6×6 grid. At the end of this round you score a final time, and the player with the highest total wins.
Components
Describing a game as “charming” can sometimes be damning with faint praise, but with Wispwood there is a lot of thought underneath the charm.
That said, this game really is very charming. The box art is striking with its vibrant colours and a deep black background, a style that is used well in all of the in-game artwork. The artwork never gets in the way of the game, though, with the board combining vibrant imagery and clear gameplay components.
Another pro is having the tree tiles serve as all of the playing pieces used in the game. No need to keep track of different types of tokens and cards; everything is handled just with tree tiles. With dark trees on one side and glowing Wisps on the other, as you build your forest, it continues the theme, but your forest is still easy to follow.
A special shout-out goes to the cat tiles. They are dual layer, with your cat standing on one side and your cat peeking through a hole in the tree stump tile on the other. It’s both really charming and makes it easy to track whether your cat is hidden or not.
Final Thoughts
I can heartily recommend this game if you enjoy a reasonably light but clever puzzle game. Easy rules, good strategy options, quick turns, and an elegant drafting system. It seems like a minor thing, but the moment you go from one round to the next and look at the maze that you’ve built for yourself to fill, the game really does become so much more.
Wispwood definitely has the DNA of Cascadia running through it, but to me it improves on every aspect in direct comparison. Better components, a tighter puzzle, a better-controlled table space, and a better variety of scoring conditions. It definitely replaces Cascadia for me if given the choice.
While I do want to point out that Wispwood is more than a simple family game, it does still work extremely well as an accessible game for reasonably adept families. The rulebook is great, easy to read with useful examples and lots of images. The vibrant colours and distinctly different Wisps make it easy to follow; the tiles are chunky and tactile, and it includes 4/5/6 tile guides to help keep track of the space you have to work with. Regarding gameplay, you can stick to the simpler goal cards, but the rules also suggest two additional ways to run even simpler games. Firstly, you can remove the goal cards for trees and just score for Wisps. Secondly, you can just play two rounds rather than the full three.
I did have concerns that the drafting system would punish players with unlucky draws or if two people were fighting over the same type of Wisp. This does play some part in Wispwood; however, the scoring does a good job of not punishing diversification by not making scoring a particular type of Wisp snowball too much. Similar games can overdo this, the scaling of how a particular type scores accelerating to the point where you have to pick one and never falter. In Wispwood the Wisps generally score between 4 and 8 points (depending on how well they meet scoring criteria), and you don’t necessarily need to concentrate particularly hard on one type to get up to scoring well on them. This means if you have problems finding the right Wisp then you can easily switch strategy. Wisps often rely on the placement of other types to make the most of the scoring, so adaptability is rewarded rather than punished.
The solo mode is decent; the gameplay is mostly unchanged, but the very simple opponent AI runs completely differently to interaction with other players. This keeps the game easy to run and avoids the solo game becoming something that works more as practice than a game in itself. I wouldn’t get it just for the solo mode, but it’s a nice addition.
Overall, an excellent game that’s easy to teach and great fun to play.
