REEF (2018)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
2-4	30-45 mins	Emerson Matsuuchi	Next Move Games

In this 2-4 player abstract strategy game you’ll be using cards to gather and place coral on your 4×4 board and scoring the arrangement of the four different colours of pieces.

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What is interesting about REEF is that while you’re stacking up the pieces into mini towers on your board, most of the scoring is done from an over head view.

This means that once you’ve scored a card, those pieces can easily be covered up on future turns to score your next card.

However, sometimes the height of certain stacks matter two, with scoring cards requiring a certain pattern but each piece can be no higher than three pieces high.

Within the contained 4×4 board you have in front of you it places a nice contained limitation on what you’ll be able to do. You can’t spread out too far, so being as efficient as possible while going vertical is key.

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The game has a pretty small footprint with just a shared market of cards in the centre of the table and everyone having these small boards in front of them.

The components are really nice with beautiful colouring across the board and cards, and some really nice plastic coral pieces that stack very well.

And as your boards grow, with every player’s looking very different, it gains a really beautiful table presence.

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REEF is a simple game overall. The player actions are reminiscent of something like TICKET TO RIDE where each turn you’re deciding between grabbing a card that’ll serve you well, or scoring a card from your hand now that you have everything in place for it.

It plays at quite a relaxing pace overall, with a little tension coming when the game end closes in.

Overall REEF is one of those ‘nice’ games in the collection. It has a little thinky with its placement puzzle, but it’s also easy to teach and quite chill when you want that kind of thing for new players or non-gamers.