Aspens: Fantastic Forests and Majestic Marvels

Every so often a game comes along from an unheralded publisher that makes you stop and look. It might be incredible table presence, it might be gorgeous artwork, it could be two people bouncing between intense focus and laughter.

Or it could be all three. That happens to be the case with Aspens from Ludivore Games. Aspens is a snappy two-player area control game created by Neil Edwards and Luke Roberts. Two gamers, age 10 and up, can play a game of Aspens in around half an hour.

Setup

One of the first visually arresting components in this game is the large central game board made of seven pieces. Assemble the board to make up the fertile forest ground. Remember your cardinal directions! (Never Eat Shredded Wheat!) Place the three water tiles as directed by the game instructions. There are additional start configurations in the back of the rulebook to vary future plays.

Then, each player takes a bag of trees: aspens or pines. Choose a first player, who places one of their trees on an empty space adjacent to a water tile. The second player follows suit on a tile of their choice, then you repeat the process two more times. Each player must have a tree at each water tile.

Finally, each player takes four more trees from their bag. Beginning again with the first player, place these trees as well. These trees must be used to grow up existing spaces. At this stage, you cannot make your forest larger by putting more trees on empty spaces. That comes later.

Gameplay

Aspens is snappy because each turn has four quick steps.

First you’ll roll the sun and wind dice. The sun die tells you how many trees you’ll grow this round. The wind die tells you which directions you can plant your new trees.

Take one tree from your bag for each space where you have at least as many trees as the number on the sun die. Then, take one more. Your opponent does the same with their own trees, but no bonus tree for them.

Next, plant your trees. You can either put more trees in a space that already has your trees, or plant in an empty space. Putting another tree in a space with trees already makes it more likely that space will produce “seeds” when someone rolls the sun die on a later turn.

However, this is an area control game, and you can’t control an area unless you grow your influence. So, a lot of the time you’ll want to place your new trees on empty spaces. This is where the wind die comes in.

When placing a tree on a new location, you may only place it in the cardinal direction on the die or on the two diagonally adjacent directions, relative to your existing trees.

So, for example, if a you roll E(ast) on the die, you can place a new tree one space southeast, east, or northeast of a tree you already have planted. You can continue doing this, though, so you can create a line by planting subsequent trees.

You may plant all of the trees you’ve gained during your opponent’s last turn and yours. However, you can keep up to five trees behind (though we recommend placing them all, usually).

Once you’ve finished growing your forest up and out, see if you’ve closed any areas off from your opponent. If it’s completely captured by you, go ahead and fill it with trees from your bag.

Once every space is filled, it’s time to end the game and score. Count up the spaces each player controls. Whoever has the most spaces wins!

Majestic Marvels

Ludivore generously provided us their first mini-expansion in addition to the Aspens base game. Majestic Marvels is a card-based expansion that changes Aspens from a generic to a specific area control game. I mentioned the seven-piece board during the setup component of this review.

With Majestic Marvels, each board section becomes its own unique area to control (except the center). Shuffle the scoring cards and deal them randomly to each board section. While playing the game, you’ll be essentially playing six mini-area control games in one.

Nothing else changes about the mechanics or scoring of Aspens, but this impacts gameplay strategy immensely. It also speeds up the game, since it’s not worth placing trees into an area that’s already been claimed. We definitely recommend giving it a shot.

Anitra beats me with regularity at the base game but she hasn’t bested me in Marvels quite yet… Maybe we’ll always play that way going forward!

Impressions

When I first saw Aspens at a trade show I was admittedly nervous. It’s the only game Ludivore makes, and sometimes that’s not the best sign. But I was intrigued. Did this game really run this quickly? Was it really so beautiful, or was it just the fancy booth dressing that made it seem that way?

Aspens has absolutely made me a believer. The table presence is fantastic. The organic-looking board and gorgeous tapestry of yellows and oranges and greens create a beautiful forest. They also nailed it by giving the aspens and the pines three color and size variations. This makes the completed board an even more beautiful carpet of colors.

On top of this, turns are quick and don’t require deep thought to understand mechanically. That means conversation can be healthy and engaging, even over the top of an active game. This makes Aspens a fantastic date game, whether with your special someone or your special little someone.

Speaking of – although the box rates Aspens for ages 10+, we think age eight will work if that kiddo plays board games. The concepts are mechanically simple and there are relatively few actual decisions players need to make on their turn.

Final Thoughts

But that leads me to one of my last thoughts. Although the decisions seem simple, the true min-maxxers out there can agonize about what strategy works best. Do you invest deeply in a few key hexes to get your tree count up fast, or do you spread out quickly, defending as much territory as possible? Either strategy can work, but it depends on whether the dice roll in your favor.

And that’s the one piece of this game that may lead you in a different place than me. Aspens is pretty luck-based and depends on the roll of the sun and wind dice. Anitra and I have had games that were incredibly frustrating because I really needed a certain cardinal direction and didn’t get anything close enough for multiple turns, while watching Anitra march across the board and shut me out. If you’re the kind of gamer that absolutely cannot abide this kind of bad luck, it’s the strongest reason I could give you to give Aspens a pass.

But for me and my house, we will plant the trees! Although there is plenty of luck involved, we’re okay with it. We talked on episode 421 about how luck can level the playing field between uneven skill levels, and that’s exactly what we see here. This is the kind of game where that luck can make the difference for a ten-year-old who just needs a little bit of fate to beat mom or dad.

So we’re out here planting, and you’re welcome to join us by picking up a copy directly from Ludivore, or by asking for it at your friendly local game store.

---

Ludivore Games provided The Family Gamers with a promotional copy of Aspens and Majestic Marvels for this review.