Faraway is a very quick game with very few rules, but it’s a real brain-twister in the way that you score your eight Region cards – after eight rounds, you turn all those cards face-down, then reveal and score them one by one in reverse order. Because most cards score based on what else is face up at the time they’re scored, the cards you played last are usually worth the least, and the ones you play first may not be worth anything if you don’t get and play the right cards later.
Faraway comes from designer Johannes Goupy, who has burst on the scene with a flurry of new games in the last two years, including the lovely small-box game Pixies (due out in September in the U.S.), Rauha, Orichalcum, the brand-new heavy game From the Moon, and others; of his games, the only one I haven’t cared for was Nautilus Island, which seemed a bit underbaked, which is definitely not the case with his other titles. His forte seems to be coming up with simple games that pack a lot of strategy into them for their size and weight, at least based on the small sample so far.
In Faraway, all players work from a deck of numbered Region cards, 1 through 68, each of which has at least one of these three elements: fixed or variable point scoring, element symbols, and/or required elements. The point-scoring may be unconditional, but for the most part they only score if you have the required elements on cards that are already face-up when the card is revealed. There are three elements in the game – animal, mineral, and plant – and cards may require two or more of these symbols, the same ones or any combination. Many cards also show one or two symbols in the upper right that are then available to fulfill requirements for cards that appear later. Some Region cards are also “night” cards, with their card number surrounded by a white circle, which can also factor into scoring for some cards. Some Region cards show a map symbol next to the card number, which I’ll get to in a moment.
You start the game with three Region cards, and you will play one of them face-down. All players reveal their played Region cards at the same time. The player with the lowest played Region card gets first draft from the market, which has one more card than the player count and is visible before you choose what to play in the current round, so you can factor that into your decision of what to play. This process continues for eight rounds, although in the final round you skip the market phase.
You play your cards left to right in a line in front of you, and the order matters in two ways. The first is that if you play a card with a higher number than the one you played right before it, you get one or more Sanctuary cards. These can either offer additional points, provide additional elements, add another night symbol, or even have a different card color to qualify for certain Region cards that score based on the colors of cards you have. If you have any cards in your row with map symbols, when you get Sanctuary cards, you get one extra one for every map symbol you have showing, and then you choose one Sanctuary card to keep.
When the eighth round is complete, players all turn all eight of their Region cards face down, but keep their Sanctuary cards face up. You then begin scoring by turning over your rightmost (last played) Region card, scoring it if possible; then you move to the left and turn over the next card, scoring that if possible, and so on. That last played/first scored card will only meet its requirements if you have those elements showing on Sanctuary cards. When you get to your first played/last scored card, however, all eight of your Region cards will be face up, and you will have everything available. That means that one fairly basic strategy is to play a high-point card with a lot of required elements in the first or second round, and then playing the rest of your cards to try to fill those requirements. I won a two-player game on BGA against a much higher-rated opponent where I only scored three of my Region cards, including zero of the last four I played. Those cards were worth 24, 13, and 12 (3*4) points, and I tacked on 17 more from Sanctuary cards to dance to victory.
There is a good bit of luck involved here in the card draws, and you can end up behind the eight-ball if you’re getting cards that don’t fit your plans but are also high-numbered enough to keep you from drafting first in subsequent rounds. I think that’s just baked into the game; you have to cope with some randomness and just plan around it as best you can.
There is a whole lore behind the game’s theme and artwork that didn’t do a whole lot for me, other than that I appreciated the bold color choices on the cards (with patterns on a horizontal line in each color’s design to allow color-blind players to distinguish them). I didn’t expect to like it because of the silly art, but it’s more of an abstract game with a theme that’s sort of pasted on. I’ve learned not to judge a board game by its cover, at least, and the art here doesn’t get in the way of the game at all. Pandasaurus has brought this one over to the U.S., along with Goupy’s game Pixies; another great small-box game, Knarr; and another in my review queue, Courtisans. Faraway is my favorite of the batch so far.