by W. Eric Martin

I come to Feya's Swamp with a disadvantage as I've never played Kaivai, the 2005 game from Helge and Anselm Ostertag from which Feya's Swamp originated. What's more, I've never played Terra Mystica or Gaia Project, the two games for which Helge Ostertag is best known.

I hadn't even intended to play Feya's Swamp, but Chilean publisher Fractal Juegos sent me a review copy along with its other SPIEL Essen 25 releases, so I figured I'd give it a go before I pass it along to Candice Harris. Why not? Candice and I often differ in our game tastes, but here's a chance for us to play the same game, then talk about it at some point.

After playing Feya's Swamp twice, once each with two and three players, I'm somewhat disappointed to pass it along to Candice as I've barely had time to scratch its algae-covered surface, yet I also have an obligation to constantly write (and create videos) about new games, so I'm passing it along anyway since I told her I would and I have other new releases to sample.

In the game, you play a clan of swamp creatures that want to establish yourself in said swamp, demonstrate your devotion to the spirits, visit temples presumably established by earlier clans of swamp creatures, and rack up a bazillion points to prove yourself the best clan of swamp creatures. To do this, you'll spend much of your time collecting fish, earning money with them, and building settlements.

The swamp starts with a scattering of spirit spaces on it, along with five temples around its perimeter. You and your fellow clans have twenty settlements ready to establish in the swamp, three of which will start the game on the board, giving you two boats with which to sail the swamp. You have three critters on hand with which to take actions, with two more and a third boat that can be unlocked during play when you place the associated settlement tile.

A starting player board with four tracks of five settlement tiles; you place the three tiles on the darker spaces during set-up
The core game actions in Feya's Swamp are fairly straightforward. You place a critter on an available space — sometimes earning a bonus, more frequently paying a cost — then take the action associated with the space, with spaces being divided into boat and ground actions:

▪️ Fish: For each boat, move it up to your maximum sailing distance, then if the boat is on a fish symbol matching the fish available this round, collect one fish for each worm symbol open on your player board. (You start with one worm.)

▪️ Trade: For each boat, move it up to your maximum sailing distance, then place fish from your supply onto adjacent settlements, earning $2-4 per fish from the bank if the settlement is owned by an opponent.

▪️ Build Settlement: For each boat, move it up to your maximum sailing distance, then pay the building cost to place the leftmost settlement tile from one of your four tracks onto an adjacent space that expands an existing island, but won't connect islands.

Importantly, if you can't take an action with a boat because you lack building money, fish, or a matching fishing spot, you can't move that boat. Thus, you need to look ahead constantly: I'll trade at that spot now so that I can reach and build there next, which will set me up for fishing there in the next round once pink fish can be caught. One critter action equals 2-3 boat actions, so you want to make the most of them.

▪️ Sail: For each boat, move it up to your maximum sailing distance, then do nothing — or if you have docked at a temple, collect the topmost temple tile, which is worth fewer points if you show up after others. After all, the first to show devotion reaps the most rewards.

Grabbing temples in the first turn in a three-player game
▪️ Improve your sailing: Move your sailing modifier one space, which will net you an increasing number of points the farther you go, but which (ironically) won't necessarily increase your actual sailing distance.

▪️ Add spirit worship: Take a spirit tile from the reserve, add it to an island without the totem, then place the totem on that island.

▪️ Celebrate: Choose an island, then score 1 point per settlement with fish on it and 3 points if the totem is on it. Each player then scores 1 point per fish on their settlement tiles on this island, then removes all the fish from these tiles.

As with many games, these actions feel like you're barely making progress: a settlement tile here, a few fish there, and a sailing improvement that was only half of what you needed for +3 sailing instead of +2. I'm a teenager again, with my parents trying to stress the importance of compound interest and me just seeing money go into a savings account at the bank instead of being spent for fun things.

Final state of a three-player game
But as with that wily compound interest, every action accumulates your growth over time. You place a settlement tile to unlock a third boat that allows more trading and building, place another settlement to unlock a worm symbol to boost fishing, place more settlements to unlock additional critters to take more actions. To take certain actions, you need to pay mana gems, and you can earn more of those each round by unlocking mana income spaces. You can even trade a critter action for mana, if needed, or if you're overflowing with mana, you can trade two for an additional action.

The initially sparse economy becomes a fountain of opportunities, with the only impediments to growth being your opponents as they act where you wanted to act, build where you wanted to build, and celebrate while you were still hanging streamers.

Why are you undertaking all of this activity? The aforementioned desire to rack up a bazillion points, with those points coming from a short list of fixed methods and longer list of variables.

The short list includes the standard "table sweeper" methods meant to keep you from feeling bad for actions not fully realized or left over at game's end: 1 point for each mana gem and each 10 bucks unspent, and 1 point for each fish still on your settlement tiles. Yes, ideally you would have celebrated those fish away or converted those gems and bucks into physical structures, but you didn't, so here are a few points in compensation for dreams unrealized.

The short list concludes with this spotlight item: For each island, score points equal to the product of the number of your settlement tiles on it and the number of spirit spaces on it. Yes, the ol' multiplication factor is at play here. If you have four settlement tiles on an island, each spirit tile you add equals four more points for you, and the same is true should an island have four spirit spaces. Ideal spot for a new settlement, yes?

However, your growth is complicated on each prong of this scoring fork. When adding settlement tiles to an island, your cost is based on your guide for the round, ranging from $1-7, along with $3 per spirit tile already in the island. Thus, the more profitable in points an island will be, the more costly it is to add to it. Ideally you could plunk lots of settlement tiles on one island, then add spirit tiles to it, but at most two spirit tiles enter the game each round: one that's placed by whoever passes last in the round, and a second based on a single action space (see "Add spirit worship" above) that will likely be claimed by whoever goes first since it also comes with a 5-point bonus.

Thankfully, points abound through three variable methods:


▪️ Race cards, with three of eight in play each game. As with temple tiles, whoever achieves the listed condition first claims the top point space, with points diminishing for those who come later.


▪️ Score cards, with two of six in play each game. At game's end, you resolve each card, some of which benefit each player, e.g., score 5 points per settlement next to a temple or score the square of your largest group of settlement tiles, and some of which don't, e.g. score 4 points per settlement tile on the largest island(s). Sure, the game might end up with two large islands of the same size, but at least one player is going to try to keep that from happening.


▪️ Guide cards, with seven of ten in play each game. Guides aren't strictly for scoring, but they impact everything you do in a round, in addition to providing unique scoring opportunities. Clockwise from upper left, your guide determines:

• Turn order: The lower the number, the earlier you go in turn order, but if you're drafting first in the round, you don't know whether guide #5 will have you going first, fourth, or somewhere in between.

• Sailing distance: If you're earlier in turn order, you can sail farther, giving you more options for fishing, trading, and temple visiting, but...

• Building cost: If you're earlier in turn order, your building cost is higher, so you can sail where you want to, but you're unlikely to afford too much building. You could grab a high-numbered guide so that building is vastly cheaper, but then you're stuck building locally unless you've pumped the sailing modifier on your player board.

• Special action: Some benefits are obvious — bump up your sailing modifier, have a private "build settlement" action, get money or mana or an extra worm to boost fishing or two neutral workers to place when you wish. Other benefits are more situational, such as reserving an action for yourself, scoring 3 points per temple tile at round's end, or scoring 3 points per island where you have the most tiles (with ties being friendly).

During set-up, each player chooses a guide to determine player order and your personal abilities for the first round; place a fish on each unchosen guide to make them more appealing next time...then try to imagine a reality dating show using the same approach. Fun!

When you pass in a round, select a new guide, then return your previous one. Thus, you have the dance found in other games of wanting to pass early in order to take the guide you want (or desperately need), while also wanting to ensure you don't waste actions you could have taken — not to mention getting the spirit tile for going last — while also possibly holding out for someone else to first return the guide you want (or desperately need).

Another incentive driving the predilection for passing are the bonuses available at the end of a round:


When you pass, you choose a bonus tile for that round, so passing early gives you the best choice. Tiles in the first round give you a discount or bonus on a future action; in the second round, you get a tile you can spend to take the depicted action without spending a critter; in the third round, you get a conversion token for future use; and in the fourth round you get points because the game is over for you from that moment on.

Feya's Swamp is a luck-free game that uses variability to drive differences in gameplay. Sure, you're scoring spirits x settlements in every game, but which race and score cards are in play? In my first game, one of the race cards rewarded players based on unlocking their extra two settlers, so I chose the #10 guide, which slows boats to a putt-putt, but which makes building as cheap as possible. I built quickly to unlock my settlers before anyone else, while also setting myself up to score 15 points courtesy of my guide, with me having the most settlements or being tied for the most on five islands.

In my second game, that race card wasn't in the game, and neither was the #10 guide. I also tried to forgo the basic worker-placement game strategy of gaining extra workers as quickly as possible, instead opening a second mana gem income space and a second worm...then I realized that was dumb, so I got my extra settlers next, then kept going. An aside:

Aside from the race, score, and guide variability, you have minor variability with the fishing options, laying out four of six cards during set-up, and with the spirit tiles themselves, placing two of ten on semi-random spaces during set-up. (Do the specifics of spirit tile set-up matter? Will you need a dozen games before you can tell how to approach a 1-2 spirit tile set-up compared to a 1-5 set-up? Is this variability for the sake of variability instead of a meaningful difference?)

On top of this, each player board is double-sided, giving you the option of playing with identical boards or leaning into asymmetry:


The image above shows two of the asymmetrical player boards, although I'll confess that the asymmetry seems somewhat mild to my untrained eye. The blue player, for example, can unlock a sixth critter, so they kind of have a tool that can unlock anything on the action spaces, whereas the yellow player has five tiles that they can add to their board as they wish, which also gives them the ability to adapt to the current board situation. Green can earn far more mana income than anyone else, and two mana = one neutral worker = a bonus action, which is kind of on par with blue and yellow, although you might also need the mana to pay action costs that others can't afford.

The red player bumps up their fishing ability more quickly than anyone else — although it's more the case that everyone else now gains a worm more slowly — and it can earn sail improvement as income instead of as a one-shot ability.

With two players, you can barely fit everything on a small folding table;also, in a 2p game, you use a third color during set-up to provide more trading options
And this wraps my preview of the currently fourth-most-thumbed item on BGG's SPIEL Essen 25 Preview. More plays would have been ideal, but ideally you get a sense of the game's nature and how actions mesh together.

As I said before, you'll spend much of your time collecting fish, earning money with them, and building settlements. That's the game core, with you rarely having enough money to build what you want, and with trading being the primary way to earn money, and with fish being the only thing you can trade.

This makes it sound like each player is doing their own thing, and that's somewhat true, but you will be racing opponents to claim temple tiles and race cards; you'll compete for spirit tiles on their own and for majorities on spirit-rich islands; you're elbowing one another out of action spaces and guide cards, and you're building to take spaces an opponent might want or to make their sailing paths longer. Through skillful building, you can choke an island, forcing growth in certain directions since islands can never join. All of the info is open, so if you want, you can calculate every spot an opponent can reach and try to anticipate their plans.

Maybe you'll have to grab your remaining critters early to compete, but we've yet to have someone open the game by completing the top-right track and opening up $20 income in the next three rounds. Perhaps that would remove the need to trade, allowing you to build more often, while also bumping your sailing ability to the max, which nets you 39 points on its own with the basic player boards. Maybe Candice can give that a try and report back...