Rebirth Board Game Review
Rebirth was a game I wasn’t initially interested in when I first saw it available on crowdfunding platforms. The idea seemed easy enough to follow, but I questioned how fun the overall gameplay would feel. I honestly thought there was going to be too much luck in the tiles you selected each round, and while that can be the case from time-to-time, the overall game has a lot less luck than I expected.
In Rebirth, players will be placing tiles down onto a central board, competing for spaces and trying to score points. Tiles are drawn one at a time from a player’s personal supply, and the tile they choose will have either a lightning bolt (energy farm), leaf (food farm), or 1-4 settlement icons. Tiles can only be placed in specific spots, like image to image, except for blank spaces which can hold either an energy farm or a food farm. Ideally, players will be creating groupings of tiles to score points; farms score based on the number of like farms in the same group, and settlements score based on the size and the size (compared to other players) they are.
There is another catch, though. Players are also trying to secure control of castles, and build next to cathedrals to get end-game scoring cards. These cards will also help dictate your strategy: some might ask you to control specific castles at the end of the game, so you will need to prioritize placing farms around those locations. The more you play it, the deeper you realize the strategy is.
Don’t get me wrong, Rebirth is by definition a casual game for casual game players. It sets up in minutes, can be taught in less than 10 minutes, and won’t require constant moments looking at the rules to answer player questions. Draft a tile, play a tile, score points if applicable. Rinse and repeat. It’s simple, but the perfect filler game on board game night if you still want something that will take 45 minutes to an hour to play.
I love that the game comes with a two sided board: the Scotland side offers a simpler, more streamlined version of the game, while playing on the Ireland board adds a few wrinkles for players to contend with. It’s not ground breaking, nor does it take the game outside of the casual, entry friendly experience. But it adds enough to provide a different kind of challenge, outside of a different gameboard layout.
I was worried that games of Rebirth would all fell the same, and in some ways they do. That said, you strategy will be different each and every game as you are the mercy of the tile you draw. Some call this luck – you might need a specific tile to beat someone ot a good spot, and they draw it before you – but over the course of an entire game, and with all players pulling tiles in the same way, we found it worked out in the end that all players felt as lucky and unlucky as everyone else. That said, there is also a strategy to develop around this blind drawing of tiles. You’ll need to balance your settlement tiles with 1-4 icons on them. Placing two 4’s on a 2-hex settlement is probably a really dumb idea, so you’ll have to think about where these tiles go, especially if you draw them early.
Rebirth is an easy recommendation for us, especially if your gaming group tends to gravitate toward games like Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride. This provides a similar rules depth experience but offers up some gameplay mechanics you don’t find in those other two game giants. But we also recommend this for more experienced groups as well. A good group of board game players can easily knock this out in just over 30 minutes, so it makes a good filler game great!
Article By Adam
