Who’d have thought that a game about butterflies heading north across America would make such an interesting game?
Of course, when the designer has already created a smash hit with WINGSPAN, maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Each turn in MARIPOSAS, players play one of their two travel cards to dictate how many butterflies they can move, and how far they’ll go.
You land and take a flower token that matches the hex you’re on. These flowers are used to hatch more butterflies when you get to specfic locataions scattered around the board.
And each of the three seasons you play through has a randomly selected goal to gain more points.
It’s quite thinky when you only have a finite amount of turns, and you can’t rely on what movement cards you’ll have throughout the round.
You have to try and maximize every move of every butterfly, scooping up flowers and gaining Waystation rewards, but remembering to hatch more of your colour. Because at the end of the season, you’ll lose some.
MARIPOSAS has a distinct look with its hex map America. The black colouring of the box, board, and cards, mixed with the bright colours elsewhere, makes it a bold addition to the table. And the little butterflies tokens are cute.
I’ve found that the limitations on the player means you have to plan early on. It’s difficult to suddenly try another tactic part way through as you get more butterfiles that eat up your movement.
And the one thing we’ve found is that returning to Michoacan is difficult, and almost pointless. The scores at the bottom tease you that you can get a handful of butterflies back across the boarder.
It may be possible, but you won’t have seen as much of North America as your opponents, and it’ll make for a boring game.
MARIPOSAS is a colourful, easy to teach game, that gives you tough decisions and challenges you to do as much as you can with limit resourses.
Always Play Blue 