FAR Review

The setup is pretty straightforward here, and so are the rules! You start by placing the two castle cards in the centre of the table, and giving each person a King and Queen card in their player colour. Crucially for this game, each player has to take up a particular point of view of the table. For a two player game you’ll sit opposite each other, and for three or four you’ll take up one of the other ‘compass points’ so you have a different view of the map as it’s built up. Finally shuffle the 20 standard map cards, reveal two from the deck and leave the rest facedown in a draw pile.

Get building

On your turn in FAR, you have one of two options:

1. Take one of the two face-up cards and add it to the shared map or

2. Play either of your royalty cards into the map

When playing a card, you must add it to the map without overlapping any part of any card already in play, and at least one element on your chosen card must line up to an existing terrain type. There are four distinct types – Ocean, Forest, Brick and Meadow – and the cards have small markers to help line them up properly.

Those rules apply whether you’re playing a card from the two available or when playing your King or Queen card.

Scoring

I think the skill in this game comes from the two main restrictions on how you can place the cards to build the map.

You score based on the number of contiguous cards in each terrain type you can see from your vantage point. Looking at the map from your seat at the table you can only score a group of cards if you have an unobstructed line of sight to one part of that group.

All cards block each other if placed in front, so you always have to make sure you can ‘see’ each terrain, and ideally see the largest group of those cards from your perspective too.

The second restriction is that you can only score a group of cards that total five cards or fewer. If you’re playing a friendlier game, that means you can be confident in the control you have over the areas you’re building. If you’re playing a less friendly game, it gives you the chance to sabotage your opponents by adding a sixth card and forcing them to change their approach mid-game.

Your King and Queen score slightly differently in that you don’t need to be able to ‘see’ the areas they are in to bank the points. That means you can be a little more strategic in how you place those cards, though the rule around a maximum of five cards in a group still applies.

You also score an extra point for each of your regions that contain any King or Queen – yours or an opponents.

The game ends when the draw cards have all been played and every player has placed both of their royalty cards.

Final thoughts

FAR reminds me a little of Kingdomino, with its distinct types of terrain and the drive to create the maximum scoring groups from them – I think the color palette helps with that as well (and obviously the King being present too…).

I think the perception of simplicity can throw you off as it’s quite a strategic game, and there’s definitely some options to scupper your opponents and force them to play a more fluid game.

I’m not sure if the limit of five cards per area tends to drive quite close scores or not. I think it has the potential to have that effect at times, but there’s so much variability with which cards are drawn and when, that it’s rare there’s ever an odd point in the final totals.

It’s a neat implementation of this kind of puzzle, and I’d say it’s possibly up at the top of the Pack O Games titles I’ve played so far. I think it’s good value for money as well and well worth taking a look if you’re after a game that can be played over a quick coffee.