Jeremy’s Gaming Gratons: HOW TO SAVE A WORLD and EMBERLEAF

Board Game Gumbo is pleased to present another game night recap with Jeremy Dobler. This time, we have a two-fer! Jeremy looks at HOW TO SAVE A WORLD from Yuval Grinspun and publisher Burnt Island Games and EMBERLEAF from The City of Games and designers James Tomblin and Frank West.

HOW TO SAVE A WORLD! What an interesting mix of other game mechanisms in a simpler package. It borrows:

• the worker placement mechanism from On Mars, namely transporting from orbit to planet and vice versa;
• the minimum thresholds for resources on each round reset from The Sixth Realm (RIP) or Space Base;
• the tag system from Terraforming Mars or Ark Nova (though to different effect, because in this iteration you purely have to have, and discard the cards displaying the tag to take advantage of them; and
• the color coded theming and resource tracks from Dinosaur Island with an almost 80s aesthetic.

But HOW TO SAVE A WORLD has a few other interesting things going on. For one, it’s a semi-cooperative game as we are working together to fend off the asteroid, but ultimately there can only be one winner.

I really enjoy the bit in the game that involves the bag building. Each time we work on a progress track, we add a matching colored cube to the bag. Then, at the end of the round, we draw a number of cubes based on the threat level of the impending asteroid. We use the cubes to fill up the appropriate project, which could potentially trigger the end game.

Burnt Island has made another fantastic medium weight game.

I am also happy to report that EMBERLEAF is awesome! The Card Dancing Mechanism is really unique, as deciding where to play a card and when for its stats (tags in the upper left), special when-played, when-slid, drop-off, ongoing, or charged abilities is crucial to successfully sequencing cards for the most VP.

Sure it shares a few similar elements with another famous woodland creature game, like moving between clearings to construct different types of building, and fight off dangerous enemies, but EMBERLEAF is much more approachable.

Your choice for what to do on your turn is fairly straightforward: Play a card for its when-played ability, or slide all cards starting with the left most column, top to bottom and making your way across all cards sliding them to the left activating any slide abilities.

Should any of the left most two cards fall off, and have a drop-off ability, you can also activate that before returning it to your hand to potentially play it again on a future turn. Ultimately you want to get the rat, owl, rabbit, and frogs critters off your board, into the clearings on buildings you’ve contracted to score points. Along the way you may gain Promise Cards which sometimes have powerful mid-game abilities, but score few end-game points, or vice versa where it has a conditional requirement that should you achieve it by end game, will net you hefty points.

Overall we loved the game at three players, and I can’t wait to get EMBERLEAF back to the table again with my full game group at five players. Excellent job Frank and James!

Just a little something to chew on — Jeremy

Jeremy is an omni-gamer from Lafayette, Louisiana, who games at home with his wife and young son, but also can be frequently hosting or visiting game nights with friends all over Acadiana. Jeremy loves games about nature, IP games involving turtles and batmen, and games appropriate to play with his young son, but expect lots of different games discussed here each time.