The Grand Carnival Review

It was less than two years ago that I discovered my first polyomino board game. It’s so satisfying to get that perfect fit. The game in question was The Isle of Cats and I still choose to play it every time I visit my sister. But a polyomino game of my own was in order and after a bit of research, I decided to buy The Grand Carnival. It’s designed by Rob Cramer with artwork by Ryan Goldsberry and is published by Uproarious.

The aim of the game is to build the best carnival, filling it with fabulous attractions like trapeze artists and ghost trains. As soon as you get started on construction, you can also bring visitors in to purchase tickets.

On your turn you must decide whether to place a foundation from the railyard, build an attraction (as long as you have the foundations in place for it), or move a guest (as long as you have pathways for your guest to move along). You can do the same action for every turn of the round if you are able, or mix and match. There are five turns in each round, and a round for every day of the week. At the end of the week, add up all your points and find out whether your carnival was the grandest!

If you want to earn big points, collect groups of attractions the same size and try to get at least one of each size. Don’t forget to get tickets on them, or they won’t score you anything.

There are other ways to score points too. Carnival barkers can be gained by moving more guests into your carnival, adding one to all your guest movements as well as adding to your points tally at the end. If you can move visitors all the way to the big top by the end of the week, they score you extra points. And try to cover all the foundations with attractions. You will lose points if you have bare earth at the end of the game.

Mechanisms

There are several mechanisms in this game that make it a firm favourite for me:

Action slots are numbered 1 to 5, and have a corresponding value. For example, if you use the number 3 slot to move a guest, you can her 3 spaces or less. You can only use each numbered action slot once per round so you need to plan carefully. If you use the number 5 action slot to buy the foundation tile you really want before someone else nabs it, you can’t buy a 5-point attraction until the next round. Will it still be there then? Do you want to move that guest close to the big top where he will score you points at the end, or take him there in a series of smaller moves so he buys more tickets on the way? This multi-value action mechanism makes you consider carefully which order you take actions in, and can catch you out if you get too focussed on one goal!

The placement of polyomino attractions on top of the foundations is another great mechanism. It’s a real puzzle to make sure you have enough building space for the attractions on offer, while ensuring you leave pathways for your guests to access each one. Guests can only move on the grass, and if they can’t get to an attraction, it is more or less worthless. I’ve played The Grand Carnival many times since buying it last month, and the number of turns you get is cleverly balanced so that you can never quite get the layout perfect. At the end of the game there is always the tantalizing idea that you can do better next time!

Another great feature is in the acquisition of ‘tricks of the trade’. Each time you play, there are 3 of 14 goals you can work towards in order to gain an advantage over your opponents. For example, once you have 8 foundation tiles, any attraction you build next to a guest automatically gets a ticket. The clever part is that once the first player has achieved the goal associated with a trick of the trade, everyone else must achieve it on their next turn, or forfeit the chance for the rest of the game. This means you have to watch carefully what your opponents are doing. Are they working towards the same trick as you? Can you keep up with them or would you be better off aiming for a different advantage?

Art & Packaging

Although the artwork is not in a style that would usually appeal to me, I can see that it’s skilful and it really does match nicely with the theme. It’s clear and full of energy and looks better on the polyomino pieces than it does on the box in my opinion. I like that you can choose which attraction of a certain size you want even though it makes no difference to the score. Firebreather or fortune teller?

The box has no plastic insert which can mean things are a bit of a mess when you get the game out to play. However, I am fully in support of this reduction in plastic and an easy solution is to repurpose a small cloth bag to keep the polyomino pieces together. Or use a spare plastic bag from one of those games that gives you twice as many as you need!

Final Thoughts

I find this game just the right complexity for me. You have to think hard about nearly every turn, but the consequences of what you decide to do are never so convoluted that you give up trying to work out your best option.

Despite the many different ways in which you can score (and these are all clearly detailed on your player mat as a reminder), you can get a feel for how well you are doing during the game, without knowing whether you will actually win. I don’t even especially mind whether I do win – the good feeling you get from a well-planned construction is a reward in itself!

The game is easy to learn. By the second game we played there was no need to consult the rule book more than a couple of times.

In summary, I’m a big fan and will be on the look-out for other games from this designer.

That concludes our thoughts on The Grand Carnival. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy The Grand Carnival today click here!