Meadow

My number 5 favorite game of all time is: Meadow.

Thematically, Meadow is about taking a walk and enjoying nature. This is something that I am very good at doing, when it doesn't actually involve leaving the house. This makes Meadow the perfect game for me. Mechanically, Meadow is all about collecting and combining sets of cards, and what beautiful cards they are!

Every card in Meadow is a unique watercolor painting. Playing the game is relaxing and joyful. The cards themselves have symbols that represent what the card requires to be placed. This creates a kind of ecosystem that makes sense. Birds need to live in trees. Predators need prey. Things like this.

Creating sets in front of you gets you points, and points wins you the game. Adding cards to your hand involves selecting cards from a grid. Every player has little pointy card board bits representing pickets - as in the slats that make up a picket fence, and places them to point at the card that they want.

The pickets have numbers on them (1-4 and there's one wild.) When you place your picket pointing into a row or column, you count a number of cards into the row or column equal to the number on the picket and add that card to your hand. You then have the option to play one card from your hand to the table in front of you if you want to. This is usually a good idea, assuming you have a good place to fit the card into your ecosystem.

In addition all pickets play double duty. You can shove the flat side of your picket into the ground at the campsite (a separate board) to take a special action. These actions allow you to play extra cards, take extra cards, or add new areas where you can play special landscape oriented cards.

Planning for the placing of cards is essential and the action economy of the game is tight. All together Meadow is a very satisfying experience. It's beautiful, it's relaxing, it's fun ... it's perfect. That makes Meadow my number 5 favorite game of all time!