Black Box Adventures | SKU: Green

Itchy Monkey (Base Game) (Import)

Name: Itchy Monkey (Base Game) (Import)
Brand: Black Box Adventures
SKU: Green
Price: 45.67 EUR
Availability: OutOfStock

€45.67 EUR

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Description

Designer	Allan Kirkeby
Publisher	Black Box Adventures
Players	2-4
Playtime	15-45 mins
Suggested Age	8 and up
Expansions	Itchy Monkey: Licence to Kill
Additional Info	249404/itchy-monkey http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/249404/itchy-monkey/forums/63

Behold, the Phthiraptera in its natural habitat, also known as the common louse or head lice. The lice live on the monkeys, and the monkeys eat the lice. Although it's quite a nasty symbiosis, it's also a perfect example of something we refer to as the circle of life — beautiful!

In Itchy Monkey, several families of lice try to become the more dominant type. Each turn, you spawn new lice and jump over to nearby monkeys. Alternatively you can tickle the monkey, which makes it move and bump into other monkeys. That way more of your little friends can jump over! But beware of your rival families because nobody likes nit picking. The family lice that can build a colony on three gorillas, four of the same animal, or five different species of monkeys wins!

Itchy Monkey is an easy to learn, but very strategic and tactical game, with various starting positions, optional abilities, and a fair amount of monkey business...

—description from the publisher

bring on the theme

This really adds to the fun when playing the game

Ultimate Guard - Boulder™ 60+ Deck Case (Emerald)

Awesome game

Nice abstract

What I liked:
• Visually, the game is stunning. I'm usually more into mechanics and don't get swayed by aesthetics alone, but here, I found myself enjoying the artwork and the fact that the tokens aren't just circular, but uniquely shaped.
• The player’s board is quite small, so you face interesting decisions about how to squeeze in as many animals as possible and maximize your score. That said, it could potentially lead to analysis paralysis.
• I enjoy 3D abstracts like Santorini, so I really liked the mechanic where you can build mountains, trees, and buildings on multiple levels. It adds another layer of strategy. In Cascadia, you're just rotating a landscape tile to expand similar terrains, but in Harmonies, you think, “Okay, I’ll use this 'one-level' mountain for this animal, and then I’ll build a second level to score even more.” Or, “This building is here, so I need to surround it with different colors, and if I can fit a field near it, that’s an extra five points.” The scoring for terrain feels more engaging.
• I love that there are combo opportunities here. In Cascadia, you populate an eagle, and maybe you get extra points from a fox. But in Harmonies, you could have parrots that need to be near water, and then you draw a fish card and manage to place six of them because everything was already set up with the parrots. When the puzzle clicks into place like that, it’s incredibly satisfying.
What I didn’t like:
• There’s little player interaction, and the draft always has alternatives. Taking animals your opponent needs doesn’t make sense since you can only hold four cards, and you don’t want to be stuck with a useless one. This is why I like Splendor Duel—there you have to pay attention to your opponent and disrupt their engine. Harmonies feels more like a friendly family game where everyone just focuses on their own board (which is a matter of taste).
• There’s no way to discard tokens or cards. You can make something work with almost any card, but some fit better in certain combos. You end up with around 20 cards in a two-player game, and I missed having something like a wild token in Cascadia to refresh the row.
• I feel like they could’ve improved Harmonies by printing some instant bonuses on the player’s board—maybe tokens for discarding, an extra tile of any color, or the ability to hold a fifth card.
Final thoughts: It’s a solid abstract game. We played three games almost in a row. I’m not sure if I’ll keep both Cascadia and Harmonies in my collection, as they leave a similar impression. In Cascadia, I enjoy rotating the tiles, while in Harmonies, it’s more about solving the puzzle of fitting in the animals.
My rating: 8 out of 10

Exactly as seen.

Good card and fast delivery

Itchy Monkey (Base Game) (Import)

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