Wayfinders

3rd December 2019

It's Tuesday at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking with the board game club.

This means board games! And tonight we played 'Wayfinders'.

'Those magnificent men, in their flying machines.'
'They go up tiddly up up.'
'They go down tiddly down down.'

That's enough of that!

Wayfinders is a colourful little game about flying and exploration.
It's also a fairly light worker placement and resource management game.

What's in a game?
Wayfinders is played over a 5x5 grid of tiles:

• Home tile: This is the starting tile for all players and sits in the middle of the 5x5 grid.
• Island tiles: These represent islands that players may explore during the game. There are 3 different types of tile, resource effect, permanent effect and scoring effect tiles. There are 15 of each type for a total of 45. 24 tiles will be used in a single game. Island tiles show what benefit they give, how much it costs to build a hangar and how much it costs to travel to the tile. Finally they show the order in which hangars are built on a tile.
• Hangar board: This board contains 8 different hangars. Above each hanger is a sort of 'raised groove' that holds resources and below each hanger is a space to place worker meeples.
• Resources: There are some quite chunky coloured plastic 5 tokens to represent the 5 types of types of resource: Fuel (Red.), headphones (Blue.), parachute (Green.), propeller (Black.) and tyre (Yellow.). There 12 of each type, so 60 in total.
• Bag: Generally all the resources are kept in this bag and blindly drawn when required.
• Planes: Each player is given a seaplane meeple.
• Hangars: Each player is given 10 hangar meeples.

• Workers: Each player is given 5 standard looking worker meeples. However  some of them that came with the game had a small, but very very irritating  issue! On the foot of these meeples is what I can only describe as a bit flash! An error that occurred during manufacturing?

Yes, I know it's the very definition of a 1st world problem. But it tasks me so!

Apart from the aforementioned worker meeple issue, all the components are solidly made and bright and colourful.

On the island tiles. All the resources are delineated by both colour and symbol except for the resource in the bottom right corner, which is represented only by colour.

However the resource tokens appear to have their symbols printed on them and they may wear off over time and use.

---

Tokens in the 'grooves' on the hangar board.

All 3 planes on the home tile at the start of play.

Hangar board and bag of tokens.

A seaplane!

---

How's it play?
Setup.

• Randomly take 24 island tiles from the 3 types available and shuffle them. Then along with the home tile create a 5x5 grid (With the home tile as the centre tile.).
• Populate the hangar board with resources blindly drawn from the bag. The number of hangars used in a game is equal to the number of players doubled. Each hangar holds 3 resources.
• Give each player the hangers, plane and meeples in their selected colour
• Determine the starting player. Then each player (In turn order.) places a hanger on the home tile. Each player also places their seaplane on the home tile.

So now on to the game.
In Wayfinders, there are only 2 main actions, although the 2nd action has a number of sub actions that can be performed.

1st action, place a worker:

• A player must place a worker on the space beneath one of the available hangars.
• A single player can place up to 3 workers on a hangar space.
• Any number of players can place up to 3 workers on a single hangar space.
• The order in which workers are placed on a hangar does not matter.

The 2nd action has 4 sub actions, carried out in order. First is taking back workers and collecting resources.

• When taking back workers, all workers must be taken back from all hangars that they've been placed on.
• For every worker taken back from a hangar, the active player also gets to take a resource from that hangar.
• If the active player has 3 workers on a hangar, they take all 3 resources. If they have 1 or 2 workers, then they 1 or 2 resources respectively, starting from the top and working down. Then any remaining resources below are slid up the 'groove' to fill the space(s) above.

Now we go on to the 2nd sub action, which is move seaplane and build hangar(s).

• A plane can be moved orthogonally. When a plane enters a tile, the active player must pay the cost (Return the relevant resource back to the bag.) shown in the bottom right corner of the tile.
• If the active player moves on to a tile that has a hangar already on it (From any player.), then the active player does not have to pay the cost.
• The active player can move on to or through as many tiles as they want provided they can pay the cost or they don't need to pay the cost.
• The active player can choose to build a hangar, they can do this before, after, or during their move. Furthermore, they can build multiple hangars during their move. Players can only build 1 hangar per tile.
• When the active player builds a hangar, they must pay the displayed cost. If the active player is the first player to build a hangar on a tile, the resources are paid back to the bank (Go back into the bag.). If they are not the first player to build a hangar on a particular tile, then they must pay the resources to the player that built the first hangar!
• There 3 types of island tile. When a hangar is built by any player (Regardless of order.) then there will be an effect.  A resources effect allows the player to blindly draw a varying number of resources from the bag. A permanent effect grants the player some sort of special ability that is always in effect, such being able to enter certain tiles without paying etc. A scoring effect is bonus way to earn points, that are scored during the end game.

The 3rd and 4th sub actions are just clean up really:

• The 3rd sub action is (If required.) to discard down to 3 resources. Excess resources are returned to the bag.
• The 4th sub action is to refill the spaces in the hangar(s) that become emptied. Since resources slide up the hanger to fill gaps, it's always the lower spaces that gain new resources. This is a variant on the 'conveyor belt' mechanic.

Those are most of the rules, more or less. It's actually quite a straightforward game.
Acquire resources.
Travel.
Build hangars.

​Endgame
The endgame is triggered when a player has 2 or less hangars remaining in their supply.
The current round is completed and scoring commences.
Resource and Permanent effect tiles have a static score.
But scoring tiles tend to have scores dependent on what the player as achieved in the game. For example: A scoring tile might score 3 points for each tile in the same vertical line as itself that the player has put a hangar on to.
Unused resources and workers on the hangar board in the endgame also score.
Final scores are tallied, highest score wins.

---

---

Overall
Wayfinders is a pretty simple game, but there's a couple of interesting things going on in this game.

Acquiring resources is an unusual blend of worker placement and drafting with a dash of push your luck.
Players will probably find themselves competing over certain resources, particularly if that resource is scarce in the hangars.
This can lead to some tricky decisions. A player can keep putting down workers so that when they are returned, the player will get the maximum resources. But if that player needs a certain resource, this delay can lead to them losing that resource to another player.
Or perhaps a player needs a resource that is 3rd in line at the hanger. Do they try and play 3 workers to get at it? Or do they place a single worker and hope that someone takes a resource ahead if it.
Watching where other players put their workers can be insightful.

Whilst there is little direct interaction in Wayfinders, particularly on the tiles. Another reason to watch what other players do, is that when they place a hangar in a tile, that tile becomes accessible to other players for free. This can make it easier to reach tile beyond it and will open up the playing area and also open up more choices and strategies.

Conversely, getting to a tile that may prove popular with other players and putting a hangar on there first is a great way to earn resources as other players must pay to you instead of the bank.
This is a lot more useful than it sounds. After moving a plane and placing hangars, a player can only retain 3 resources. So even if that player maximizes the placement of their workers, they can only start a move and build action with a maximum of 8 resources.
However if during a round other players have to pay out to you to put their hangars down, it's possible to start with a lot more resources.
This can be a great advantage, as being able to put down 2 or 3 hangars in a turn really lays pressure on other players as they'll be forced to play catch up.

Remember, players start with 10 hangars, but 1 goes on the home tile, so in reality everyone starts with 9 hangars. And the endgame is triggered when any player reaches 2 or less hangars left. So a player only needs to place 7 hangars to trigger the endgame.

As well as being a fairly easy game to learn, Wayfinder is a quite short game and playing speeds up over the course of a game as the board inevitably opens up.

Optimizing your actions and taking advantage of circumstances are key to winning. A canny player can end the game abruptly, leaving their competitors in the lurch.

The only criticism I have is that it's a little too long for a filler game, but a little short for a main game.

But that criticism aside, Wayfinders is a easy to learn and fairly fun game to play.