The nuts!
By Flundran at 2020-09-16
Regarding Giants!
In 1772 the dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen anchored up outside the coast lie of one of the most desolate places on the planet; the navel of the world – Rapa Nui.
As the island was “unknown” by then and as he arrived at easter he used his wild imagination and named the island; Easter Island. Mind blowing.
Now, the island wasn’t unknown there was of cause people already living there. How they actually got there is a matter of some dispute but they settled and created a fascinating and intricate civilisation. In the absolutely brilliant book Aku-Aku Thor Heyerdahl describes the fascinating island and uncovers a lot of old secrets from the islanders. In the later book Easter Island: The Mystery Solved Mr Heyerdahl journals his second, and more scientific trip to Rapa Nui and here he describes more about the moais, their creations and their presumed role.
In Giants you take the role of a budding tribe leader that compete with other tribes to erect the most and biggest moans around the island to gain status and reputation. You must manage you workers, take help from the wizard and even utilise and cooperate with the other tribes to gain status, recruit workers and collect resourses to move your moai over the island.
You need to outbid you opponents to get you hands on the precious moais as they are limited in supply. You can bet big to get the best moai but then you will perhaps miss out on other crucial actions later in the round. This is gives a great element of calculating and reading you co-players. Should you go big or should you play it cool? Can you trick your opponents to pay more than they needed and thus handicap them later on?
The transport lines in Giants are a really nice feature. You work, in conjunction wit you competitors, to move the moais over the island using both your own and other players worker units. You place them to form a transport lines, road, for the moais. This gives a special feel and challenge as you have to guess what the other players will do, block them or work with them. You may commit your more powerful units to this transport as well but then you might miss out on important resources or upgrades. This balancing act is perhaps the best feature of Giants.
Giants is a stunner, really beautiful and of high quality. The tribesmen have different poses, the logs are actually small logs and the moais have a heavy, solid feel to them. The board, after a few turns, looks just gorgeous with moans, workers all over and it ties in so well with the mechanics of the game too.
Giants gives a nice twist on the worker placement genre and places you asa player in a fascinating and beautiful setting. The art, the semi-coop, the back story makes Giants a good, just intense enough game to enjoy over and over again. Let’s bring glory to the tribe!