Angel’s Share refers to the portion of a spirit lost to evaporation as it ages. Set in Scotland, players will be purchasing and storing barrels, trying to time the market for maximum profits.

But throughout the years, the quality of each distillery will change, the supply will fluctuate, and fees will have to be paid. Whisky isn’t immune to the whims of capitalism.

Gameplay Overview:

In Angel’s Share, players will be purchasing barrels of whiskey, aging them, and hoping to sell for a profit. As barrels age, they gain value. But the market can be volatile, and timing your sales is key to maximizing your return.

Each round, players will move their pawn to one of the available distilleries for the round. Each distillery has a card which indicates the action for that round. Actions are either immediate effects or upgrades that can be placed on any distillery that will change how it interacts throughout the game.

After carrying out the action, players can choose to buy a barrel from that distillery. They then replace the card for that distillery from their hand, face down. In addition to having an action, the card also has a quality rating for that distillery’s next round.

Once all players have taken their turns, all face-down cards are flipped up, and the distillery’s quality ratings are compared. The board contains a pricing matrix where the x-axis is ordered by the quality rating. The y-axis is the market track. High market value and high quality—prices go up. Low market demand and low quality—prices go down.

Barrels age to end the round. In some rounds, there may also be storage fees based on how many barrels you are holding on to. At the start of the next round, players can choose to sell any barrels (which causes their market value to go down) before moving their pawn to a different distillery

After the final round, all remaining barrels are aged and sold, and the player with the most money wins.

Game Experience:

Angel’s Share is barely controllable chaos. Each round, you’ll buy a barrel and hope and pray it’ll be worth something in 25 years. As themes go, it makes some sense to me that the market feels dynamic, given the idea that there are 5 years occurring between each round.

As distillery prices increase, the impact of selling their barrels has a greater effect on the market. The y-axis drops very little, or not at all, for low-priced barrels. But if you sell from a premium distillery, the impact is much greater, likely sending it to or near the bottom of the market track. These huge swings in market value can really make the game feel more chaotic than most players will enjoy.

And barrels don’t exclusively get more valuable as they age. Expensive barrels are worth more as they age. But cheap barrels become worthless after a few rounds. If you are holding on to a nice aged whiskey only to see its value drop, it may suddenly be worth nothing.

I appreciate that the competition track is player-controlled, based on the value of the quality cards placed each round. Your hand consists of one card for each distillery, so you’ll have some options to either increase or decrease the relative quality of a distillery. But that also means a distillery can go from the top of the track to the bottom and back again every round.

The biggest issue is that you can only buy a barrel from the distillery you visit, so if your goal is to tank the quality of a distillery for a round, you will have to either buy nothing or buy something you are planning on tanking, which seems less than ideal. You will likely get to go first next round, as the turn order is ordered by the quality of the distillery visited. If your opponents are heavily invested in one company, it certainly could be worth it.

The actions are most often an afterthought and rarely the reason you choose a particular distillery to visit. They may adjust the price immediately, change market position, or upgrade a distillery so its price is more stable. But for the most part, you are choosing a location based on the prices.

When selling barrels, the market drops for every barrel sold. If other players are invested in the same distillery as you, the turn order can be critical in knowing when to sell. If you find yourself having not sold, only to have the next player saturate the market, it can be a bad time. At least you have worthless aged spirits to drink?

Final Thoughts:

On paper, Angel’s Share is right in my wheelhouse. Market-driven games with players in control of the market forces is my board game drug of choice. And I did enjoy my first few plays of the game.

But after a couple plays, it felt more like players are along for the ride in Angel’s Share than in control. Technically, everything that changes is within the control of the players. But you are limited by the cards in your hand, and selling a pricey barrel is likely to send it cratering down in value the very next round.

I want to be able to consider what I could do differently next time, but with Angel’s Share, the strategy doesn’t feel particularly deep, and the chaos keeps you on your toes but not with much to do other than hold on.

Final Score: 2.5 Stars – Solid market game that is just too swingy to revisit often.

Hits:
• Great theme and the length feels right for slightly above medium weight game
• Turn order system rewards strategic thinking around quality ratings

Misses:
• Market swings can be hard to predict and impact before players can react
• Not much to explore for long term strategies