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Faiyum
110m - 140m
1 - 5 Players
Ages 12+
Hand management games are games with cards in them that reward players for playing the cards in certain sequences or groups. The optimal sequence/grouping may vary, depending on board position, cards held and cards played by opponents. Managing your hand means gaining the most value out of available cards under given circumstances. Cards often have multiple uses in the game, further obfuscating an "optimal" sequence.
Hand Management
This mechanism requires players to select individual actions from a set of actions available to all players. Players generally select actions one-at-a-time and in turn order. There is usually(*) a limit on the number of times a single action may be taken. Actions are commonly selected by the placement of game pieces or tokens on the selected actions. Each player usually has a limited number of pieces with which to participate in the process.
Worker Placement
Ancient
Farming
48.00
€
30 day low:
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Faiyum quantity
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Kickstarter – Gamefound
Board Games
Strategy
Family and Children
Party
Adult
Thematic
Ελληνικα Παιχνιδια
LCG
Arkham Horror: The Card Game
Marvel Champions: The Card Game
The Lord of The Rings: The Card Game
RPGs
D & D
Pathfinder
Gamebooks
Others
Accessories
Game Mats
Bags
Dice
Sleeves
Sapphire Sleeves
Paladin Sleeves
Other
Novels – Books
Plunder boxes
Marvel: Crisis Protocol
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Andy Parsons
Faiyum is essentially a deckbuilder. It's cards allow resources to be gathered, money to be earned, developments to be built and points to be scored. The game's three actions are to play a card, purchase a card from a Power Grid-style market, or administer. The administration action that allows only the top three cards to be retrieved from your discard pile leads to the development of three-card micro engines that gather and then convert resources into points. Cards acquired from the market and the changing board state will require adaptation, but then you're into another three-card cycle for a while. The repetition and fairly incremental progress with the cards do seem to drain drama and fun out of Faiyum. The board play might have injected drama and fun back in, but the shared ownership of settlements, buildings, roads and workers means that it's simply a space for plonking developments down and taking resources off. Given all the card cycling and the lack of drama, Faiyum does seem to me to go on a bit too long. The Power Grid-style market shares the virtues and faults of its predecessor. Cards do come out in a fairly structured sequence (as in PG, they're all numbered) but there are those moments when a really good one appears and it's a long way from your next turn. There isn't even an auction in Faiyum to mitigate that. I'm struggling for positives about Faiyum, but really it is not a bad game. I would play it again. Knowing its deck better, particularly the late cards with the potential to score a lot, might improve my opinion of the game. Production quality is good. The artwork is functional. I tend to dislike rulebooks with lengthy glossaries. The glossary describes how each card works and - as another player in our game commented - knowing how they work really tells you how the game works. In this case, I think 2F made the right decision as there are too many unique cards to describe in a rules explanation.
BigD527
Probably among the Friese games I've enjoyed the most, this is a pretty clever combo-setting-up game with a mishmash of mechanisms from a bunch of really strong games, and is extremely interactive. I'll probably never play it again because it's not a game my gaming group will like, but I'm glad I gave it a shot.
colinthil
The shared infrastructure aspect of the game, where all players participate to the same edifice that emerge from the board (reminiscent of Medina) totally fit with the narrative arc of the game. Player begin by making the swamp habitable, then each player invest themselves either in settlement, roads or workshop, depending of their engine and where points can be made. The card play system is very ingenious and intriguing, and feel different each play. On the other hand, the worker placement aspect of the game doesn't really land and often leads to meaningless choices. In the end, this game should be regarded as a light hearted civilization building type game, that allows for clever play, but without any long term strategy.