Gatsby Board Game Review
Gatsby is one beautiful game, and it was a game a lot of folks were really excited for heading into GenCon 2025. We were able to take a copy of the game home for review, and after playing it for about a month, we’ve decided it’s good enough to keep around. While we feel this won’t be for everyone, there is a lot of compelling gameplay here to keep me entertained for a while.
In Gatsby, 2 players will be placing down pieces and attempting to end the game in a few different ways. Gameplay will take place across three different areas: the cabaret, the finance centre, and the racetrack. That could be collecting three characters of the same color, getting one of each colored character (5), or by having the most stars when the game actually ends (if no one achieves the previous two game ending conditions).
This is an action selection game, and players will use their little people discs to take actions on the board. Each action space allows a player to place two people discs on the board, in the cabaret and racetrack areas we mentioned earlier. Where you choose to place your discs will be based on the tiles you are trying to earn, or a strategy that you’ve decided upon as the game unfolds. Taking an action in the finance centre allows you to move your token up a track, earning various benefits along the way.
In the cabaret and the racetrack, the catch is that a disc must always be placed next to another disc, whether your own or the other players. This creates a fun strategic element of deciding where to place discs. There are a variety of instant bonuses you can get when placing a disc, but taking a bonus could open up another, potentially better bonus for your opponent. Deciding where to go isn’t always an easy decision, but it most definitely is a rewarding one.
There are a lot of other unique things happening here, and with a lot of places to go, you need to be on your toes. There are tiles that allow discs to be swapped, and the interesting thing is that the discs don’t have to be in the same location. So you could swap a disc to the racetrack from the cabaret, or vice versa.
To that end, Gatsby is a bit of a “mean” game as two-player games often are. I found myself taking as many turns that were considered “good for me” as turns that I would consider “bad for my opponent.” Sometimes I advanced my own game, sometimes I ruined my opponents strategy, which I suppose indirectly is also good for my game.
Deciding between advancing yourself or hindering an opponent is immensely satisfying. Doing the right thing at the right time feels incredibly satisfying, and equally, the wrong thing at the wrong time feels so punishing. That said, for the most part in Gatsby, you can somewhat control your own destiny – there isn’t a lot of luck here at all.
The push and pull for the various tiles in the game is a lot of fun, and I’m really glad to have this 2-Player game in my collection. While there are other two player games I might want to play more often than this, Gatsby is one that will come out from time-to-time, and that is a good enough reason to keep it around.
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Article By Adam Roffel
