by Poins

Moving Wild from Oink Games is a small-box card drafting and set collection game designed by Chris Priscott where the 1-6 players are scoring points for the animals they have in appropriate habitats. It's a reworking of Zuuli, which was published by Unhinged and Popcorn Games in 2022.

Over three rounds of drafting, players will each be building their own tableau of habitat and animal cards. The cards in the game show one or more of the three habitat types, an animal or an 'improvement' that can be placed on a habitat to modify it. In the case of animals, there'll be information on the habitat that the animal requires, the animal's relative size (ie: how much of a habitat's space they take up on a habitat card) and whether or not it can share a habitat with another animal. The animal cards also show what they will score, tho' that will be subject to multipliers on the habitat cards.

Tableaus are scored at the end of each round, with penalty points for any habitats that are not fully occupied and for any animals that aren't accommodated. You may on a subsequent round be able to remedy gaps in terrain and house previously unaccommodated animals.

Moving Wild is a game that's easy to play and which makes a good introduction to card drafting for anyone coming new to this board game mechanic. The cards are all self-explanatory, with only very simple icongraphy that requires no decoding, tho' with small cards the text is inevitably small too. This isn't likely to be a problem for cards in your hand or laid out in front of you in your tableau but it's a strain if you feel the need to peruse other players' tableaus before passing on your hand. If you play Moving Wild as a light game where players mostly focus on their own tableaus rather than worrying overly about their neighbours, this isn't going to be an issue.

Full marks again to Oink Games for a quality product that crams a lot of play into the box, including ample scoring tokens as well as the substantial deck of cards charmingly illustrated by Rie Komatsuzaki and Rie Takahashi.

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