Ganesha Review: Valuable Gems!
Intent: Inspire you to try playing Ganesha
Are you looking for a new abstract puzzle experience? Do you have the wit and timing to win over a deity’s favour? Collecting various gems and knowing the right time to place them will make you victorious. Ganesha designed by Maxim Istomin, illustrated by Andrei Osinin published by CrowD Games is competitive gem drafting game for 2-4 players in which you compete to score the most points by placing gems on the mandala. Are you a strategic or a sporadic gem collector?
Overview
You decide to visit Ganesha’s temple and get introduced to an “ancient game.” Whoever does the best will obtain a special favor from Ganesha. This game is a gem drafting game, with options to score after each round. There are twelve rounds for two players and nine for three and four, the game ends when the last round is over. The player with the most points at the end wins!
Each round is composed of three actions, you’ll first take one or two gems from the Altar, then place the gems in your treasury or destiny slots, and optionally move all the gems of one color from your Treasury onto the Mandala to score victory points. Sounds pretty simple? Well there’s a few important things to note. When taking gems, you may take any one but if you have a gem in your destiny slots of the same color, you may take an adjacent gem as well. Taking two gems certainly gives you an advantage so plan those destiny slots accordingly.
Placing gems earlier will give players generally more points, so in essence there is a waiting game on how many gems can I collect before I go all in and place them, if you do place a gem you have to sacrifice one of the same colour or a yellow one to do so to gain points.
Each player will get to start the turn three times (with the exception of the fourth player), so once the round is over the round marker is turned to indicate that it is the next round and the starting player gets a point.
After the last round of the game, players shift all their gems from their destiny slots down and clockwise take turns placing gems one by one, scoring points as they go. The player with the most points at the end, wins and obtains Ganesha’s favor.
First Game Impression
Unboxing this game and seeing the wonderful artwork and presentation was wonderful. This game also has one of the best inserts I’ve seen produced, everything has a spot and the way it’s stored makes it so that even if the box gets turned or flipped in any way, everything stays in place. The concept and mechanics are quite inviting and the gems definitely have some weight to them, which is nice.
The rulebook was a bit confusing at first, we did have to read through quite a few times as some wording didn’t fully make sense. All did get cleared up when we played the first game. Our first experience was a three player game, and we had a wonderful time. The timing certainly caught my eye, especially knowing the right time to place gems in the mandala. We competed for the color of gems that was worth more points and had an extremely close game, all of us within three points of each other. Although the numbers and many elements seemed random before we played the game, after the first play through we saw the great design behind the game and how strategic the number placements really are.
Thoughts After Five Games
I definitely enjoy the mechanics of this game, each game we’ve played has been extremely close, and we never quite knew who’s going to win until the very last moment. I think I like this game best with three players as with two we definitely didn’t compete as much for gems and just took the colors we were going for, as taking one that we don’t have would slow our game down by only letting us take one gem. The end of the game where everyone places gems is super interesting, especially when many individuals have a variety of colours. It’s a puzzle in itself.
What really draws me in is the beautiful production and artwork, the animeeples, the colorful illustrations, and the gems. Everything has such a fine quality to it and genuinely makes me happy to play this game. The game also plays very quickly as well so it’s easy to start another round or move onto another game. Playing this game is plenty of fun, and I can definitely see ourselves using this game to start off a game night or introduce various folks to games in the future.
It is a bit odd that with a fourth player, the last player doesn’t get to ever be the first player to go or get extra points, but I assume they would kick off the process of putting gems down at the end, and there’s definitely an advantage to going last each round as you can see where everyone’s sitting and make the decision to place gems and get ahead if necessary.
Overall, excited to play more and discover different strategies in this game.
MERIT Report Card
Overall Letter Grade: B
Strengths: Quick to play and easy to grasp. The components are high quality and the artwork is a delight. The mechanics are great and the scoring is definitely well thought out. Really enjoy how the game ends, it almost introduces another game in a game.
Areas of Improvement: The round tracker being passed each turn rather than every three turns would make more sense to me, I don’t fully understand that decision and how it impacts the game. It’s also odd that the first person to go scores an extra point and not the last, which is often present in many games.
Memorability: B
How often do I think about the game? At first quite a bit, the scoring on the mandala is certainly interesting and as there’s so many different ways to approach this game, it’s fun to think of strategies. The components and the game are just so inviting as well, who wouldn’t want to hold a bag of gems?
How often is the game brought up by the individuals I play with? We’ve unfortunately only been able to introduce this game once as COVID-19 restrictions have heightened and we are prioritizing safety. It was an enjoyable experience, we played a few times. Got a thumbs up from everyone who’s played with us.
How many memories can be built from this game? Some, but definitely not many. The best part I’ve found so far is how close each game can be, in almost every game we’ve played I either won or lost by one point, which is certainly always exciting! It’s also fun to pass players on the track, it’s almost a race!
Education : B
The first educational element that speaks volumes to me is the teaching players to act with right timing. You’re going to be collecting gems throughout the game, but when to score them is the ultimate decision. Many will wait until near the end so they can get more points by not sacrificing gems to score, but often it’s worthwhile to sacrifice to score earlier to get some of those higher point spaces. Not only that but timing at the very end of the game to force your opponents to take lower point spaces so you can take the higher point spaces is another important educational value.
Knowing the right time to act. In a more subconscious ways, this game teaches people to be comfortable with making a decision that isn’t necessary right or wrong. We’re encountered with many decisions in our day to day lives. We decide when we should set our alarm for, when to take our breaks throughout the day or even when to relax and do nothing on our time off. This game allows you to make those decisions in a fun environment, which later will translate into your day to day life without you even noticing it. The ease and comfort to make decisions.
I do wish there was a bit more educational elements about Ganesha. As someone who isn’t really familiar with the deity, I spent some time researching Ganesha on the web prior to writing this review, which hey is an educational benefit already. There are just so many facts and educational background that would have been lovely to see in this game as an add-on. It definitely would have made the experience much better and enhanced that education piece I truly love about games!
Replayability: B-
The replayability is definitely there, as the gem positioning is different and there’s many ways to approach scoring points, I can see playing this game many times.
There also are optional spice tokens that enhance the variability as well, making for an even more dynamic game experience. This game is certainly more replayable with a larger player count. I definitely don’t enjoy it as much with just the two of us as we both know each others strategy now and are just hoping for the best.
Will have to keep playing to see how this holds up!
Imagination: B-
The illustration and artwork in this game is wonderous, the experience is absolutely pleasant and helps paint a picture of an exquisite temple, I can imagine learning this ancient game and competing to win over Ganesha’s favour.
However, at the end of the day, this is an abstract drafting game. During the game the whole theme is definitely lost and we are there to compete to get the most points out of the mandala by placing gems. This isn’t necessary a bad thing as many wonderful abstract games lack strong theme integration. It’s just something I love seeing and want every game to push a little bit more on.
Having said that, integrating Ganesha more into the gameplay somehow would have gone a long way, so that there’s a presence throughout the entire game rather than just to kick it off.
Target: B
This game has great presentation. It’s a truly beautiful game. The explanation on the back of the box is clear but from the description it definitely sounds like there would be more theme present, when in fact it’s primarily an abstract gem drafting game.
Overall this game certainly caters to all sorts of audience and definitely fulfills the goal of inspiring more folks to play games as that is certainly what we look for in every game. If you give this a shot I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
Tylor’s Stars ⭐⭐⭐
This game is interesting, I really enjoy the theme and the components are very eye catching. I especially love the way the gems are put together. I am only giving it 3 stars though because it is not a game I put above a lot of other games we have; I would rather play a different game. I will say that it is a good starting game to warm up for an evening of games or a good game to end the night with.
Overall, it is a fun game! I am not entirely set on the strategy but it seems rather repetitive so it will be played every now and then as a throwback or a change of pace game. Definitely still worthy of a spot on our shelf!
Final Thoughts: The artwork, mechanics and components make for a pretty great game. Super easy to get to the table with the great organized insert and a fantastic game to play. I do wish there was more integration of Ganesha into the actual gameplay.
MERIT Report Card Letter Grade: B