Setup - First Play!

6th August 2023

It's a Sunday and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming fun.

Time to set things up in Setup, an abstract tile-laying, set-collecting game

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Caveat: We  have only ever played this game digitally.

​What's in a game?
Board: Setup features a board within an almost Octagonal shape and which contains 12 interconnected square spaces. At each of the 4 orthogonal edges of the board are 2 spaces which are both 'coloured' in 1 of the 4 player colours. Thus, each player 'controls' the 2 spaces in their player colour.

• Scoring track: Running around the board's perimeter is a scoring track that has 3 different 'finishing' spaces dependant on player count.

Notice the 4 pairs of outermost spaces in player colours. This can be important for scoring.

Card tiles: Setup makes use of tiles which are a bit like cards; hence the name!
Unlike a normal deck of cards, there's an extra suit here - Star.
Additionally, each suit goes from 1-10 with no 'picture' tiles. With one of each tile, there's a total of 50 tiles.

Bag: In the physical game, there's a bag that comes with the game.

Meeples: There's one each of these in the player colours
​Tile racks: Also only in the physical version are tile racks again in all player colours which players use to hold and hide their hand of card tiles.
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Setup is a pretty abstract game and there's no conventional artwork to speak of. It's a fairly colourful though with cheerfully ​bright compnents.

There's also little to be said about the iconography - if you understand a deck of cards, you'll understand this. Nothing here would prove a problem to understand.

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How's it play?
Setup
Time for the setup for Setup!
Card tiles: Put all the card tiles into the bag and give it a good shake!
Board: Put the board into the central playing area, blindly draw 4 cards tiles and place them into the 4 central most spaces on the board.
Common hand: Draw another 4 tiles and place them face-up in a row adjacent to the board. This is the common tiles, more on that later.
Players: Each player should select a colour from one of the board edges (Ideally the edge closest to the them.) and take the meeple and tile rack in the matching colour.

• Meeple: Place the meeple on the starting space on the scoring track.
• Tiles: Each player should blindly draw 4 tiles and keep them hidden on their tile rack.

First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Setup is essentially a set collecting game, although technically, player don't collect sets just score them. This is done by playing tiles to create sets which can be 2-of-a-kind, 3-of-a-kind etc or runs, e.g., 3-4-5-6 and so on.
Setup uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play progresses to the player on their left.
​During their turn, the active player will have 1 of 2 basic options open to them.

Play tiles: The active player may play any number of tiles from their hand and also from the common hand on to the board provided the tiles played create at least 1 set.
When placing tiles on the board, the active player may place one on top of an existing tile if they so wish.

• Sets: A set consists of at least 2 connected tiles (Tiles can be connected in potentially 8 directions.) and sets can include tiles that are already on the board.
  There are 2 types of set. 
  Runs: A run consists of numerical sequence of connected card tiles with the same suit. Thus, 2-of-clubs, 3-of-clubs and 4-of-clubs would be a set of 3 tiles.
  Same number: 2 or more tiles of the same numerical value but different suits can be a set. The 7-of-diamonds, 7-of-hearts and 7-of-spades would be a set of 3.
• Scoring: Once the card tiles have been placed, scoring can occur. 1 victory point (VP) is scored for each tile in the set, this is regardless of who played it.
  E.g., if a previous player had placed 2 ones and the active player connects another one, then the active player would score all 3 ones!
  Additional sets: It is possible (and probably likely) to create more than 1 set when placing card tiles and in this case, all sets are scored! However, a card tile can only ever be scored once per round regardless of how many sets it is a part of.
  Bonus points: If the active player creates a set that uses a card tile in any spaces controlled by other players, then those other players score 1VP per space they control that was used.
  Advance meeple: Players now advance their meeple by 1 space on the score tracker per VP earned.
• Refresh hands: The active player draws card tiles from the bag to take their hand size back up to 4. The same is done for the common hand.

Exchange tiles: The other main action the active player can choose is to swap out any of their current card tiles instead of placing. Players will generally only do this if they can't play any tiles but may also do it if they are looking to create an opportunity to make a bigger set later.
They remove any number of tiles from their hand and draw replacements from the bag. their discarded tiles are returned to the bag.
End of turn: Once the active player has completed their action, play then progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
Whichever player crosses the finishing line on the score tracker first, wins!
Depending on the player count, the finishing line could be 23-31 spaces along the tracker.

2v2 game: I should note add there is a 2v2 team variant of the game that plays almost identically if a team based game interests you.

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Overall
As far as theme goes, Setup is clearly an abstract game and doesn't have or need a theme.

Setup is pretty straightforward and it's core mechanic will be familiar to many players; collecting sets of matched values or numerical runs - it's a mechanic that's often been employed.
Players will looking to both play their own tiles with maximum efficiency and also exploit card tiles played by their opponents but without giving them bonus points if possible.
It will mean players will need to keep an eye out on the potential to score multiple sets as a time.
Being able to play a card tile on top of another tile adds a interesting dynamic as it can change things up a bit.
Finally, players may also want to consider exchanging tiles or not. It may be possible to create bigger sets by holding off but then there's also the risk of losing access to useful tiles on the board if they get covered.
Otherwise I think that's pretty much it for mechanics and strategy

This is a lightweight game that has a quick-ish play time and could be a good introductory crossover game or one for younger players except for the scoring.
Yes, tiles which are played can be scored multiple times as part of multiple sets and also trigger bonus scoring but also can only be scored once per turn.
It's not particularly demanding to track all of this but it's a just little fiddly for what the game delivers.

While the mechanics employed are tried and tested and provides meaningful decisions to make, it's also quite unremarkable with bare bones gameplay. There's nothing wrong here but I just can't find a reason to recommend it other than to someone that might want a basic set collecting game if they didn't already got one.