Biomos is a game about selection, movement, some transformation and then potential scoring based on the available biome cards in play. Biome cards come in two types, a basic card that will score you between three and five points, and a giant biome card, which has a larger stipulation for the order for the terrain tokens. You'll take a terrain token on your turn and then either place that token in one of the two fixed places on the ring around your planet, or on the larger open track. You can slide previously placed tokens so you can decide where the new token is placed, but you can't lift and change the order of previously placed tokens.
Now I like this a lot, because Biomos is a real life visual planning game where you then spend your time moving your tokens based on the selection of Biome cards that you can score against, but the scoring on the smaller cards is never normally more than three terrain tokens. Even if some pesky rat takes the token you were after out of the choice of five for that round, there's always possibilities around the corner instead.
I mentioned transformation above, and this takes place after the tile selection where you can switch a tile based on some basic rules. So if you have a desert next to an ocean, you can replace that desert with a forest. Or you can break a glacier and replace that with a random tile from the bag. It helps to mitigate those times where you opponents have beat you to the chase and taken the scoring card you were after for that particular round. Even if that is the case, the removal and scoring of one biome card means the arrival of another, and this helps to minimise frustration and making you feel like you have no viable options for that round.
Floating over all of that is your choice of moon, where you place one of your terrain tiles and it acts as bonus multiplier for all of the matching terrain tiles on your planet. As well as that, forests give you bonus points, and the base type of planet will give points. With so many point options Biomos appears to teeter towards being a point salad game with no real direction, its saving grace being that the above happens through the choices that you make, and there are so many choices for scoring that it is feasible that by shooting for the moon result might impede your overall planet score. It also opens up the chance for your to experiment with how you score to find the tactic that works be for you. Personally I found the Larger Biome cards to provide too much planning for the reward that hey offer, preferring to take bite sized chunks using the smaller cards.
For those who find the multi-layered scoring a bit too much at the beginning, there is a simpler family side to consider useful for those new to the game, or for those wanting a basic version to bring to the table. There's also the firm shut off point which I appreciate. No one decides when final scoring takes place, rather being based on when the orbit of each planet is filled up with glorious Biomes. Once that happens the various point calculations are made, which can sometimes feel like a bit too many, and then the winner is declared, which in this case is casual boardgaming. The entire game has this rather wonderful illustrated semi abstract presence of icons and illustrations that sit well within the theme and don't try to claim that they're anything more than understandable beauty. I would have liked to see a crib sheet or summary card in the collection as I think it warrants it for the biomes transformation.
Biomos is going to sit well with those who like the opportunity kind of game, the one where you do the best with what you have. while there are strategies that do allow changes to the biomes you select, a lot of the time you're taking lovely looking tokens and placing them around your lovely looking planet. There's no real heavy thinking, it's not going to feel like it overstays its welcome, and there's enough on in terms of routes to victory that you'll want to play again just to experiment. Rather delightful this one.
Designer - Gricha German
Artist - Baptiste Perez
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