Reef
No Great Barrier to entry
Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi | Artist: Chris Quilliams
REEF
If there was a board gamer’s guide for new and casual players, Reef would be solidly positioned at the top of the list of recommended games. It looks deceivingly basic yet, after only a few turns, what seems easy and even mundane expands to encompass layers of clever design hidden under simple ingenuity. More importantly, for us players, it is addictive fun.
In Reef, players – predictably – are building a coral reef out of four different Lego-like pieces. The theme is almost irrelevant, except it inspires the wavy shapes of plastic coral that look gorgeous on the board, especially towards the end of the game when the reefs are complete. firoughout the game, players are adding and stacking pieces on their individual boards to score points for particular patterns. Yes, you guessed it: most points wins.