The Wolves Review

Awww... "One wolf is weak, but a pack is strength!". In The Wolves you will manage a pack of wolves, capture and control territories, increase your pack, build dens and dominate other types of wolves.

Components

There are a lot of cool quality components in the game box, namely:

1 start board, 10 regions boards, 10 regions scoring tokens(3 types), 5 double-sided player boards, 1 double-sided moonlight board, 30 double-sided terrain tiles, 20 prey tokens, 20 alpha wolf meeples, 40 pack wolf meeples, 60 dens, 20 lairs, 12 bonus terrain tokens, 20 lone wolf tokens, 12 bonus action tokens, 50 vp tokens, 4 region scoring reminder tokens, 5 reference cards.

Gameplay

The starting layout of the game will take time (as there are a lot of components) to prepare and depends on the number of players you are going to play with. The game is designed from 2 to 5 players.

You will have to place a starting board, around which, depending on the number of players, are placed region boards. Next, a lone wolf token is placed on each lone wolf symbol. Then prey tokens are placed. The order of scoring in regions is determined by placing regions scoring tokens in them. Region scoring reminder tokens are placed in the regions where scoring will take place first. Each player then chooses a different type of wolf and takes a set of the appropriate components. Each player will place 2 Alpha wolves and 2 pack wolves on the field, the remaining components are placed on the player's tablet in the appropriate boxes. The players then place their wolves on the field and the game can begin.

Your task is to gain as many victory points as possible by performing only two actions per every turn. Victory points can be gained by controlling regions, increasing your pack, hunting tokens, increasing the strength of your pack by upgrading its parameters. The parameters of your pack are:

- pack spread, determines how many wolves can move with a move action,

- wolf speed, determines how many hexes each wolf can travel through on a move action,

- howl range, determines the range of both howl and dominate action.

Player moves: perform two actions (they can be repeated), you can perform an additional action if you have bonus action tokens, after performing a move check the moonlight board for region scoring, pass the move clockwise to the next player.

The game uses an interesting system of paying for actions by flipping terrain tiles. Each action requires a certain number of terrain tiles, and they must still match the type of terrain on which you want to perform the action. Actions can be as follows:

- Move – move the wolves in your pack around the board by flipping a tile that matches the terrain(hex) you want to travel to, but it based on your pack spread and pack speed attributes. So you may move any number of alpha wolves or pack wolves up to your current pack spread attributes and each wolf may move a number of hexes up to your current wolf speed attributes.

- Build dens – to build a den flip 2 terrain tiles that match the hex you want to build a den on, but the hex must be occupied by or adjacent to one of your alpha wolves. You remove a den marker from an attribute track(pack spread/wolf speed/ howl range) on your player board. Dens helps you gain control of region and makes your wolf packs stronger.

- Upgrade den into lair – to upgrade den into a lair flip 2 terrain tiles that match the hex that your den marker is on, but the den marker you plan to upgrade must be occupied by or adjacent to one of your alpha wolves and adjacent to a water source. Remove the den from the hex and place it the next open date on the moonlight board. Replace the den with the leftmost lair from your player board. The lair removed from your player board provides a bonus terrain token you gain immediately.

- Howl – convert a lone wolf to your pack wolves. To howl at lone wolf you need to flip 2 terrain tiles within howl range from your alpha wolf that match the hex the lone wolf token is occupying. Remove the lone wolf token from the hex to the next open date on the moonlight board. Place the next available wolf in the pack wolves section of your player board on the hex previously occupied by the lone wolf.

- Dominate – allows you replace opponent’s pack wolf or den for one of your colour. To dominate you need to flip 3 terrain tiles that match the hex occupied by an opponent’s pack wolf or den marker within your howl range from your alpha wolf. Remove the opponent’s piece from the board and place the piece on the next open date on the moonlight board. Place the next available wolf in the pack wolves section of your player board on the hex previously occupied by the opponent’s piece.

These are all the actions you can perform during a turn. Next is a special hunting action, which happens automatically and does not require flipping terrain tiles.

For a successful hunt have wolves of your colour on 3 different hexes adjacent to a single prey token. So if do that you take 1 prey token from the top of the stack you've surrounded and put it on your player board on the leftmost open hunting prey tracker space. After that you gain 1 bonus action token for covering a space in your hunting prey track, but you may not claim more than 1 of the same type of prey. Even wolves don't like to eat the same thing =)

The game has a very interestingly designed scoring counter, namely moonlight board. Each time you move a component from the playing field (lone wolf token, den, wolf) you gradually approach the next phase of the moon in which and happens to count the control points in the regions and the distribution of victory points. And it happens as follows:

At the end of the player's turn on the moonlight board in the moon phase cell is a component from the playing field, we count the control points of players in regions with the same region scoring tokens. Control points are determined as follows: any wolf or den will bring you 1 control point, but lairs bring you 3 control points. The player who gains more control points in this region gets regions scoring tokens which will bring him a higher value of victory points indicated on the token, and the player who gets 2nd place in control takes a smaller number of victory points by victory points tokens.

Actually when you get to the last such distribution of control points in the regions, there will be 3 of them for the game, the game ends and you go to the final calculation of victory points. And this is where it gets interesting, because the final tally takes into account not only the collected victory points tokens for control in the regions, but also all the victory points from your player board (pack spread, wolf speed, howl range, lairs, hunting prey, pack wolves). And not always the player with the most control in the regions can be the winner, which is unusual for a game with territory control.