In case you didn’t know, beehaw.org decided to defederate both lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. You can read about it here. Essentially it means beehaw.org users can no longer see my posts/comments, it’s like they shadow banned my entire server. Thanks to @donio@feddit.de for messaging me about it. I have created this account on feddit.de just to post these reviews, hopefully it reaches our fellow boardgamers in all servers.
Today’s game is an underrated gem: Menara
TL;DR
Score: 8.5
Positives
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Very easy to teach
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Cooperative
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Fun for both casual & experienced players
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Sliding difficulty is well ballanced
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Everyone wants to take a picture at the end of the game
Negatives
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Table bumps can prematurely end the end, it’s always sad
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Can be frustrating if one person wants to play “mission impossible” on every turn
The review
Menara is one of my most successful gateway games and I definitely recommend it to everyone who enjoys dexterity games.
At the start of the game you randomly draw 3 odd-shapped tiles, called Temple Floors, to create level 0. The Temple Floors have small colored circles on them. During the course of the game you will be placing pillars on these circles. Red pillar goes on red circle, and so on. The objective of the game is to end the game with 4 levels of temple floors, excluding level 0.
Every player has 4 colored columns (depends on number of players and difficulty) and there is a community camp which hosts 6 columns. At the beginning of your turn you can swap your columns with the community camp as you wish. It’s important to coordinate with your team and try to distribute the colors among everyone else. Then, you draw a card from the easy, medium or hard pile and perform the corresponding action. The most common action is fairly simple: place a column. All you have to do is place one of your columns in a base with the same color. Easy, right? Well, I’ll let you discover the tricky ones by yourself :) If all the circles of your temple floor are occupied you stop your turn and place a new Temple Floor on top of whatever columns you want. Hopefully you added a new level and you’re closer to the goal!
At this point you’re probably thinking this game is super easy. I assure you, it is not. The game does not end after you made it to level 4. Oh, no. During the course of the game you’ll find that you draw a card and the action is impossible to perform. Maybe it asks you to put 2 columns but unfortunately you don’t have circles matching your column’s colors. Then, the target goal increases by one level. Now you need to make it to level 5. The game only ends when you’re either: out of cards, out of columns or out of temple floors. You lose the game if any floor falls.
This game is currently ranked #783 but I think it’s one of the best dexterity games out there. It’s very easy to teach, very intuitive. You draw a card and place a couple of columns. Easy. What sets it appart from the competition is the cooperative aspect of the game. It REALLY makes everyone very engaged with the game. No one wants to see the whole structure fall and everyone is trying their best. Quarterback/alpha gaming is basically not a thing. People can throw you hints on how do balance the floors or something but you’re the one who’s gonna have to do it, no one can play for you. The game get increasingly tense with time as the strugle starts to wiggle, everyone starts like controling their breathing to prevent anything from falling. It feels great to succeed in this game and at the end of the game everyone is gonna take a picture of what you built!
Context Information
I only log games with scores so unfortunately I don’t have any logs for Menara
Suggested player count: 2-3 players is best, 4 players is also great but you wait longer
Win-rate: Well below 50%
Honorable mentions
- I’d really like to try Crokinole, seems like something I’d enjoy. Unfortunately it’s super expensive :(
I skimmed the review looking for the answer of “but why this over Crokinole” and then got to the end and laughed.
Crokinole is our favorite dexterity game, and my recommendation is to go to a convention and play it and see if it’s worth it to you. I know at Origins and Gen Con in the US that you find some nice boards available for use and people to teach. I think the Mayday boards are acceptable for learning and futzing around, but not for competitive play because of how they are finished and setup (IIRC, they sand, apply poly, and then paint the lines on, you should be doing it the other way around). If I was on a budget and could get a cheap Mayday board, I’d be willing to do it and then look up how to work on the board’s glide.
I’ll keep an eye out for Menara now though, thanks for the heads up.
We have a boardgame convention here in Lisbon but I never attended. It’s not that big but who knows, maybe someone brings a board.
Last time I checked we have a couple of local sellers who sell nice boards, but it’s over 200 euros. I almost prefer to hate the game xD
Great writeup! Have you played it with kids? Very tempted to add it to the Christmas stack for my 7yo, he’s good at Rhino Hero and Animal upon Animal
We moved to Menara after Rhino Hero Super battle. It’s significantly harder, but it shouldn’t be to difficult to tweak it if needed
That’s what I was thinking, I usually find a way to adjust the difficulty, so that sounds good
I haven’t tried with kids. The game feels really tense when you get closer to the end game, not sure if kids would appreciate it…
I think he’ll enjoy it, and if not, it’ll add some nice variety to my game nights. It’s on its way. Thanks!
Let us know how your thoughts on it!! :D
Haven’t tried Menara but will check it out thanks to your review! I personally have Klask and Junk Art as my go-to dexterity games.
I own Junk Art as well. I like it but it doesn’t have the same tension!
Oh my, what an impressive tower! I never really got into dexterity games besides some of these old classics. Fells like games like that work best with a bottle of wine for some bonus fun :D
Dexterity games are usually not our thing. I tried a bunch of them but Menara was the first one that really clicked. I always enjoyed stacking things, tho :P
We recently got Teeter Tower which is a smaller game that has some similarities. Doesn’t look quite as amazing on the table but stacking the dice is fun. Might be a good option if anybody is looking for a smaller box alternative. I still want to try Menara sometime though.
Menara is what we graduated to after Rhino Hero Super Battle. It’s always impressive to see on yhr table.
Have you looked at the expansion at all?
I do own the expansion, we have mixed feelings about it. I think I bought it for like 20 euros, which is a decent price. The expansion consists on several modules that you can mix, match and swap at any time.
Things I like:
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It has a deck of cards with the temple floors. Instead of “shuffling” the temple floors, you shuffle the deck of cards which makes it much more practical and less ambiguous to find which is the next temple floor to use. There’s also a variant we use where we keep the top 3 temple floors cards visible and you pick whichever one you prefer
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2 golden columns - These columns can be placed by any player in any color. The trade-off is that these columns are shorter in height, meaning you can’t stack anything on them. They also cannot be moved ever. I find these are really nice for those momments where you really need a specific color but the bag is being stingy about it
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New temple floors - There are a couple of really nice temple floors
Things I do not like:
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Adding the new temple floors to the pool is a pain. Whenever you add a new temple you also need to add a couple of colored columns and easy/medium/hard construction cards. There’s a table telling you exactly what colors and construction cards to add for each new temple floor. This means that if you want to try different floors you’ll have to keep messing with the number of columns and cards. If you accidently lose track of which setup of columns/floors you have in the bag… Boy that’s gonna be a boring setup. We found the floors we like, shuffled the construction cards and keep it that way.
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New construction plan cards. I don’t think they’re particularly great but they do add variety. My problem is that you’re supposed to mix & match them before each game, which is a setup step I don’t particularly enjoy
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Blue/Red crystal stones variant; There are some crystals placed in the temple floors and you can discard columns to collect them. It’s not harmful, just didn’t find it enjoyable. At least it doesn’t add any work in the game setup
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Rituals variant; At the start of the game you can randomly draw one of the 13 rituals in the game. The ritual is something that will change one of the game rules. Example: you can ONLY select the light side of a temple floor. I find the game already hard enough as it is but these might be useful for those looking for an extra challenge.
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