Seasons boardgame.

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The boardgame Seasons is a hybrid of two of the most popular subgenres in gaming right now – deckbuilding and complex strategy games – but adds a high degree of interactivity to the game that makes it feel less complicated to play. As in most games in those two subgenres, there’s a significant benefit to knowing the cards in the deck, so first-timers are at a huge disadvantage and the learning curve is fairly steep. However, the cards themselves are seldom complicated, with each individual card’s actions playing out quite simply; it’s the interactions between cards that define the game’s strategy and thus how complex you want the game to become.

In Seasons, each player starts the game with nine cards, which s/he divides into three triplets that become that player’s hand for each of the three rounds of the game. Each round comprises specific turns where a token moves somewhat randomly around a board of 12 spaces covering four seasons, with each change season shifting the values of the four “energy tokens” (the game’s primary currency) to reflect each element’s scarcity in that season. To begin each round, players roll a number of special dice equal to one more than the number of players, then each player chooses a die that grants benefits like energy tokens, crystals (victory points), or the ability to play more cards (summoning power) or exchange energy tokens for crystals (transmuting). After dice selection, players can take several actions, most importantly playing cards, which involves spending energy tokens and occasionally crystals to place the cards on the table in front of him/her, some with immediate benefits, others with recurring effects, and still more with one-time gains later in the game.

A typical turn in Seasons starts with dice selection, after which each player receives the benefits shown on the die s/he chose and then may take any number of actions:

* Spending energy tokens and/or crystals to “summon” (place on the table) a power card from his hand.

* Activating certain effects of cards on the table in front of him. Some of those effects can be used once per turn; others require “sacrificing” (trashing) the card.

* Taking a penalty of five or more points (to be assessed at game-end) to use a bonus action, such as increasing the player’s summoning power – that is, how many cards s/he may have on the table in front of him/her at one time. The maximum is 15.

* Transmuting energy tokens into crystals (points). The value of each energy type varies by season; in each season, one of the four types is worth three crystals per token when transmuted, one is worth two points, and two types are worth one. These change so that each energy type has one season where its value is at the maximum of three points.

The effects of the cards are easy to follow, thanks to the text on the cards and the relatively small number of symbols you need to know to understand the game. Some examples of cards are the Hourglass of Time, which gives you a bonus energy token every time the season changes; the Dice of Malice, which costs nothing to play and lets you reroll your die once each round while giving you a two-point bonus; and Kairn the Destroyer, which allows you to pay (trash, in essence) one energy token each turn to make each of your opponents lose four crystals. There are also one-time use cards like the Amulet of Fire, which increases your summoning power by two, and there are cards that must be sacrificed to be used, like the Potion of Power, which lets you draw and immediately place a new power card while increasing your summoning power by one.

The strategic element comes into play at the beginning of the game, when you get to select which nine cards go into your starting deck, a process during which you need to pay attention to certain card combinations that bring exponential benefits. For example, if you have the Wondrous Chest card, which gives you a bonus every time the season changes if you have four or more energy tokens in your hand, you’ll want to look for cards that help you rack up more energy tokens (e.g., Hourglass of Time), or a card like Bespelled Grimoire, which allows you to keep ten tokens rather than seven in your hand – so it’s easier to spend tokens on cards without depleting your supply. Executing these strategies involves knowing the cards reasonably well, including cards that you might draw as the game progresses; understanding or being able to work out how they interact over the course of the game; and keeping track of everything you have and are supposed to do (e.g., activating Kairn every turn) while the game goes on. And if you happen to choose incorrectly at the start of the game, either picking the wrong cards or organizing them suboptimally into your three three-card decks, you may be sunk before the ship has even launched.

Perhaps that’s what prevents me from giving Seasons my highest recommendation – it’s a very good game, with an incredibly thoughtful design that maintains its balance despite all of the possible permutations of cards and die rolls, but it’s nearly impossible to explain its mechanics in a succinct fashion. Our first play through the game was a rarity in that we got the rules right, but saw none of the game’s “point” of how to rack up bigger point totals, in part because there was no guidance anywhere on how to sort your initial nine cards (we used the suggested starter sets) into three piles. A typical winning score in a two-player game can run into the 200s, and in a three-player game in the 150-200 range, but in our first game neither of us cracked 100 because we didn’t grasp any of the strategic aspects – and until I tried a few games online Boardgame Arena I didn’t get a feel for how the game was supposed to be played.

Once you have the gist, however, Seasons is addictive, and posseses a great blend of individual achievement (trying to reach higher scores, or just to know you played a better game) and competitive play through cards that allow you to play off your opponents or even screw with them. You just have to wear it for a bout or two while you figure it out and learn the deck and the back-and-forth flow of energy tokens and crystals that powers the game.