Tales & Games: Baba Yaga
15m
2 - 5 Players
Ages 6+
Meeple on Board Rating
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Many Russian tales speak of the character of Baba Yaga, the ogress witch who lives in a house with chicken legs. Fortunately for them, children always find unexpected allies and manage to escape her. Will you prove as fortunate?
In Baba Yaga, you need to escape the claws of the hideous Baba Yaga. To do so, however, you need to collect the ingredients for your three spell cards, and to do that you need to search the forest while Baba Yaga searches for you.
To set up the game, place nine Baba Yaga tiles in a cross to form a flight path, then place the 16 ingredient tokens face down, with four tokens in each section of the cross. Each player starts the game with three spell cards, which must remain hidden. On a turn, the active player reveals her top spell card, which shows four ingredients, then starts searching for these ingredients in the forest, turning over tiles one by one with a single hand and hiding those she doesn’t need. While she does this, the other players take turns moving the Baba Yaga figurine one step at a time along one branch of the flight path, then back. If Baba Yaga completes a circuit before the player finds the ingredients, she must place her spell card on the bottom of her stack; if she finds the ingredients, however, she gets to cast the spell on the card, lengthening or shortening the flight path, swapping the location of ingredients, requiring fewer ingredients next time, forcing an opponent to play in a distorted position, and so on. The first player to complete her three spells wins!
Baba Yaga includes variants for younger players, more experienced players, and those who want the chicken-legged house to be constantly on the move. In the two-player game, the single opponent does all the moving of Baba Yaga, but must swap hands with each move, keeping the inactive hand on her head.
Ages | 6+ |
---|---|
Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players |
Play Time | 15m |
Designer | Jérémie Caplanne |
Mechanics | Memory, Simultaneous Action Selection |
Theme | Action / Dexterity, Children's Game, Memory, Novel-based, Party Game, Real-time |
Publisher | 2 Pionki, Purple Brain Creations, Albi, Asterion Press, Delta Vision Publishing, IELLO, Lex Games, Portal Games |
MissJekyll
More real-time "flip things over as quickly as you can" mechanics, mixed with a memory element. We just got in each other's way (one person had to move the figure while the other tried to find matches by turning over face down tiles), and the game felt clunky. I don't like real-time races in games, I have no interest in being challenged on how quickly I can flip tiles or move a figure.
Arathreel
Fantastic game. I was worried, due to my son only being four, but he picked it up incredibly quickly. It has near instantly become a family favorite. And, as someone who has studied Russian folklore and the mythology of Baba Yaga, there are a lot of special treats in the game for me. The fact my four year old can set up the whole game and put it away by himself is a huge bonus.
MentatYP
Speed 1-vs-many memory game. Strange combo that somehow works. Beware of memory requirement, although my bad memory makes the game an even playing field with kids. Difficulty is easily adjusted by making the path longer or shorter as needed.