Last year I went down an epic rabbit hole of board games that I would have loved to try from a number of publishers. Thanks to Allplay, I got a chance to try two more of them this year! Both Chomp (Clarence Simpson) and Pollen (Reiner Knizia and Beth Sobel) have incredible art and graphic design by Anca Gavril and are part of Allplay‘s small box and fun for everyone lines respectively. Both games involve laying cards or tiles, so it made sense to do a dual review!
In Chomp, 1 to 4 players try to score the most points by feeding dinos, stopping the carnivores from eating the herbivores, and stopping all dinosaurs from going extinct. Each game goes quick and as a small box, is very easy to transport. Pollen comes in a slightly larger box. 2 to 4 players place tiles with flowers to attract pollinators. When flowers are in the right spots to be pollinated, players attract scoring meeples. Scoring is not about who has the most meeples total, so this is a much more strategic game.
Chomp
Chomp comes with 1 dry erase marker and a dry erase score sheet, 36 double-sided cards with dinos on one side and goals on another, 12 egg tokens, and 36 extinct dino tokens. The upgrade for the game is chonky wooden tokens, making the game that more tactile.
Each player starts by randomly selecting 9 cards and shuffling them goal-side up to form a shared deck. Players take turns selecting cards from a layout of 3 goal-side up and 3 land-side up cards. If a player chooses a goal-side up card, they keep it visible to score later and replace it with a new card from the deck. If they take a land-side up card, they expand their land by following placement rules: cards must be placed adjacent to or overlapping existing cards in a quarter-card grid pattern, and large carnivores or herbivores cannot be split.
Players may also place eggs on nests in their land, but the nest must already exist for an egg to be placed. Herds of the same dinosaur type are formed when adjacent, all of which will “eat” or go extinct together. Mountain ranges separate card sections and prevent adjacency between sections.
Once all cards have been played, players determine which dinosaurs go extinct. First, any herds (dinos of the same time not separated by a mountain range) next to a tar pit go extinct. Then, carnivores are fed by adjacent meat; if they aren’t fed, they will eat adjacent herbivore herds of the same size or smaller, marking them with extinct tokens. If a carnivore can’t feed or eat, it goes extinct itself. Finally, herbivore herds that are not adjacent to plants are marked with extinct tokens, while those adjacent to plants are fed and survive. Plants, meat, and herbivores can feed multiple herds at once, and the extinction process ensures that all unfed or uneaten dinosaurs are marked with extinction tokens.
At the end, all living dinosaurs score points based on their size. Small gain 1 point, medium get 2, large dinos score 3, egg tokens gain 2 points. Players score everything on their goal cards, and the winner is the player with the most points!
Chomp is a super quick and fun game. There’s a lot of ways to strategize for points, whether by focusing on goal cards, or just trying to get a large herd of large dinosaurs. Tar pits are a huge pain of course, so you have to be careful about those, and it’s really easy to lose track of what’s going to die when if you don’t pay attention. I love how portable the game is and the upgrade tokens are fun, but the flat tokens are great too!
Pollen
Pollen comes with a bag to hold the 44 pollinator tokens, 15 with one insect, 27 with 2, and 2 with all three, 48 scoring meeples (which are shiny!), and 60 garden cards (15 for each player), with butterflies, bees, and junebugs.
The objective is to create a lush garden of beautiful blooms in order to attract the pollinators to flowers.
Each player begins by taking a set of 15 garden cards, shuffling them, and drawing 5 cards to form their hand. Pollinator tokens are placed in the bag, one token is placed in the center of the play area, and another token, the “next up” token is placed near the bag. Scoring meeples are arranged in three piles.
Each turn, players plant, pollinate, and attract. To PLANT, players place a garden card from their hand face-up on the table, ensuring a corner touches a pollinator token, and making room for four cards to surround each token. During the POLLINATE phase, pollinator tokens surrounded by garden cards and award scoring meeples based on the highest number of matching adjacent icons; ties result in no meeples awarded for that insect. STAR icons are wild and count for all insect types. Afterward, players ATTRACT by filling any empty pollinator token spots adjacent to at least two garden cards from different players, using the “next up” token. If a token is placed in a spot already surrounded, it is scored immediately.
The game ends when any of the following occur: the last scoring meeple of a type is awarded, the last pollinator token is placed, or all players have used their garden cards. At the end of the game, players are ranked based on their scoring meeples. The player who leads in two or three insect types wins. If no player leads in any insect types, the player with the most total meeples wins. If there’s a tie, the player with the most total meeples wins, or the tied players share the victory if they have the same number.
Pollen also has an upgrade option with glass insect tiles, but like Chomp, they aren’t necessary to enjoy the game. The base boxes for both are beautifully designed and fun to play! I loved trying to think ahead on which insects I wanted to try to score within the context of the randomness due to drawing from the bag, and since this game is also quick and easy to take and teach, I foresee it getting a lot of play in the future.
You can get a copy of Chomp and Pollen directly from Allplay, or your FLGS!
Images and review copy courtesy of Allplay
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