Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? I sure do. And I also love Gods Love Dinosaurs. In addition to the very nice animal meeples in the game, Gods Love Dinosaurs does something very unique for me. It manages to make an...

Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? I sure do. And I also love Gods Love Dinosaurs. In addition to the very nice animal meeples in the game, Gods Love Dinosaurs does something very unique for me. It manages to make an abstract game feel very thematic. 

I know it sounds a little strange. How can an abstract game feel thematic, wouldn’t it then not be an abstract game at all? Allow me to explain. 
In Gods Love Dinosaurs you spend your turns drafting tiles, with either prey or predator animals on them. At certain points in the game, certain animal types activate and they each have their own simple rules for how to move. The smaller prey animals (rats, frogs and rabbits) all expand to any adjacent territory tile that is their favourite type,  if there is room. The predators (wolves and eagles) move to eat as many prey animals as they can, and by doing so more predators appear. So you want to expand the prey animals so there is food for the predators. What good are the predators, you might be thinking? Let me tell you.

It’s all about dinosaurs!

As the name of the game implies it’s all about dinosaurs, and in fact, dinosaurs are the only way you score points in the game (1 for each dinosaur and dinosaur egg at the end of the game). This simple scoring makes it easy to identify that you need as many dinosaurs as possible. You start with only 1 and a couple of dinosaur eggs you can hatch if you have mountain tiles. A few times during the game you get to activate your dinosaurs, and these are the critical points. You want to move your dinosaurs to eat as many predators as possible because for each predator it eats you get another dinosaur egg. So timing and setup are very important, but you are playing with other players, so you are not in complete control over when this happens.

Easy, fun, lovely

Gods Love Dinosaurs is simple to teach and not a long game to play. It’s light enough for casual gamers to get into, but has enough depth of strategy and timing to keep gamers interested. It has charm and appeal with the cute meeples, and would make a great family game. I, for one, was very impressed by my plays, and it’s a keeper for me to bring out as a gateway game and to play with my wife. In short. I love it.

Facts about Gods Love Dinosaurs

A review copy of Gods Love Dinosaurs was supplied by Pandasaurus Games

The post First Impressions: Gods Love Dinosaurs appeared first on Tabletop Together.

View Entire Post