The Wolves

Very well made game. The pieces are very sturdy. I wasn’t a huge fan of the game itself because it feels quite luck based sometimes. However, my husband really liked it! It’s definitely NOT a bad game, I’m just picky. 😂 The quality is great, and I love the designs and art.

A territory control game in excellent design, execution and setting. A unique game about the life of wolves. If you play with a teenager, you can discuss the nature of wolves and the features of the promise. Otherwise, the game is balanced, perfectly executed and very exciting

El juego es muy bonito, los meeples son espectaculares, me gusta mucho la mecánica de dar vuelta losetas para realizar acciones, veo gran estrategia a mediano plazo en esta mecánica, la duración de la partida es adecuada, no se hace largo ni pesado, hay una dependencia del idioma menor, se encuentra manual en español en BGG

Pretty entertaining game with interesting and fun mechanics. The instructions made it seem more daunting than it actually was once gameplay actually started.

Great game.

This is a good game. Played it with my family of 4, my 6 year old teamed up with my wife for about an hour then lost interest. Played this with my 10 year old as well. The concept of this game, it is a territory control game with some interesting elements. We play a lot of board games in our house, lots, my 10 year old has a great strategy for his age and understands concepts and remembers rules better then me often. This game has 3 phases of control, well at least for 3 play game. The concept is you flip over the cards you have over your player board, when doing so it allows you to do certain things. The name of the game is to dominate territory and collect victory points to win before the end of moon cycles. The meeples are great, nice shape and color. really like the look and feel, they are wood. The player boards are great art and love the colors for each of the wolves. Each wolf will has a extra territory card of its own type. There is 1 action that is a dominance that takes 3 of one card type. So it can pay out. You also can consume animals scattered through out the board, the animals give you points. There are ways to convert opponents wolves to your color, there are way to capture dens. The Alpha wolf is not able to be captured nor a lair the evolved form of the den. You earn victory points, you can also earn 1 use territory wild cards, and extra action tokens. These can be valuable to stack moves or dominate your opponents wolves. The board is great and the layout is a bit unique with the normal hex style layout but the boards are like a cluster of them. Each time you take den, wolf, or other actions they move over to the moon board, when you hit each moon phase you the point out for the tiles that are in the land area that holds the matching moon phase tokens. The direction are laid out pretty well, we had a little confusion on whether you flip the cards to what you need or you flip the cards to show the tiles you need, the answer was clear in the book, we watched a video and it had a few rules wrong which caused confusion. The directions are pretty straight forward and this was a over all fun game. Not sure how much I will actually play it, but it will definitely come out a couple more times. The game took quite a bit to set up and understand, so reading through the rules took about an hour+, but that is with kids asking questions before I had answers. I would say first time play through plan a solid 2-3 hours. I think this game has a lot of potential and would be of good value to put on any shelf. For my house not quite there for us, due to 1 is 6 and not quite old enough my 10 year old enjoyed it. My wife does not like games with to many directions, this got to be a bit much for her, as you need to not just plan for the current phase, but also need to be planning the other phases coming up. You are able to get more VP each phase has greater value, but also more limited resources. Good game overall would recommend.

The Wolves is a quick game that looks easy to play, but it sure is not that. The basic mechanic of the game is to manipulate your terrain tiles to perform actions, each of which can influence how fast the game accelerates, and how you manage to score points. Everything is controlled by these terrain tiles, and so you might choose a move actions specifically so that you can flip a tile that will allow you to use a Howl action. Or you may be lucky enough to flip three matches to Dominate an opponent's wolf, but that would require a lot of luck...or is it skill? I would compare this game to 5 Tribes. None of the mechanics are similar in any way, but if you've played 5 Tribes, you might know that on your turn, you can likely identify ten different moves you could do, but it's mathematically impossible to always choose the correct action. In this game, you have a similar conundrum. What is the best move? Is it to howl at a wolf to put an extra marker on the board, or build a den that helps me establish area majority? There are turns where you legitimately have to decide between 5 different, equally powerful moves you can make, and then live with those consequences. I do have one problem with the game, though, and that is that there are a lot of little rules to remember. Two pieces per space, you cannot be moved if you share a spot with a den, you have to re-move if someone "pushes" your pack wolves with an alpha, and alphas are the only ones who can howl. Dens can be upgraded to lairs if your den is next to water, but some spaces have rivers on them that look like water sources, but they aren't. Also, alphas have to be on the space to build a den, but can be adjacent to upgrade it. You get a reference card for some of this, and some is on the board, but it can be tricky to remember all of the specific placement rules for each different action. This game is a lot thinkier than you might expect, and so it won't be for everyone. Everyone will want to play it though - the production quality of the game, from the art to the unique wolf meeples, is really quite excellent, and the game is rife with possibilities for expansions. The box insert is well-designed, and the maps are modular, which is great for replayability. Overall, our heavy gaming family liked our two plays of the game, and will come back to it often, because not too many games of this depth can be played this quickly.

its an expensive board game. i got broken puzzle pieces. i was hoping they can check before packing the games.

Prima

Un juego con una mecánica interesante, los materiales son de buena calidad y vistosos, le doy 4 estrellas por que el color de los tokens hace que se pierdan con los gráficos del tablero que son exactamente del mismo color, se mimetizan y te pierdes al tratar de ubicar o encontrar tus tokens, esto si limita un poco la experiencia, pero entre todos se pueden buscar y encontrar jajaja

Gioco divertente, coloratissimo e di grande impatto estetico, unica pecca è la mancanza di più bustine per dividere con comodità i pezzi una volta defustellati. Per il resto tutto perfetto.

Ich bin großer Fan von Gesellschaftsspielen und eigentlich auch Vielspieler. Als solcher möchte ich an dieser Stelle einmal auf "Die Wölfe" (wobei der deutsche Markt mal wieder nicht mit den Produktionsketten nachkommt, habe insofern eine englischsprachige Ausgabe) eingehen - ein Spiel, was sich immer mehr in meine Top10 hineingeschlichen hat. Wir spielen ein Rudel Wölfe in der Wildnis, welches am Ende eines bestimmten Mondzyklus das mächtigste der Region sein möchte. Unser Spielfeld besteht aus mehreren Geländeboards, die zu einer Wildnislandschaft zusammengesetzt werden. Jedes dieser Boards wird im Verlauf Teil einer Zwischenwertung und die Wolfsrudel müssen sich entscheiden, in welchem Bereich sie sich dominierend ausbreiten wollen. Sie können dabei ihr Rudel durch frei zugängliche Wölfe oder Gegnerwölfe vergrößern (jede Figur zählt bestimmte Stärkepunkte für die Wertungen), sich mit Bauten und Höhlen entwickeln oder Beute jagen, die dem Rudel Vorteile bringen (mehr zu laufende Felder auf dem Plan, Extraaktionen, mehr zu bewegende Wolfsminiaturen). Die Grundmechanik basiert bei allem auf einer sechsstelligen Reihe von Geländeplättchen am eigenen Spielerboard, die für Kostenausgaben gewendet werden müssen - es braucht also keine Würfel oder Karten, man plant seine Aktionen mit geschicktem Bespielen der Wendeplättchen. Am Ende von drei Wertungsphasen, in denen stets zwei Geländeboards mit Wolfsanzahl, Bauten und Höhlen parallel gewertet werden, endet das Spiel und man zählt seine Gesamtzahl an Punkten zusammen, welche man durch gute Dominanz in einer Region bekommt oder durch eine gute Rudelentwicklung auf seinem Spielerboard (Einsatz von Bauten und Höhlen, eingesetzte Wölfe oder erlegte Beute). Das Design des Spiels ist wirklich schön! Man kann zwischen verschiedenen Wolfsvarianten wählen (grüne Waldwölfe, hellblaue Tundrawölfe, braune Bergwölfe, etc.), welche zwei verschiedene Arten von Holzminiaturen mitbringen. Auch das Spielerboard ist kompakt und übersichtlich gestaltet. Die Mechanik mit dem Wenden von Terrainplättchen war für mich neu und ist sehr cool umgesetzt. Ebenso auch das Thema "Wolf", das gut in das Prinzip der Area Control eingebettet wurde. Rudel konkurrieren miteinander, ohne dass man sie direkt kämpfen lassen muss. Alleine ein Verdrängen aus einer Region, Erlegen von Beute oder das Akquirieren von anderen Wölfen ist antagonistisch. Ich kann das Spiel "Die Wölfe" von Pandasaurus nur allen Leuten empfehlen, die entweder das Tierthema als Motiv begrüßen oder ein Kennerspiel mit einer eher neuen Mechanik spielen möchten, das einen Spieler taktisch nachdenken lässt, aber dabei nicht so komplex ist wie z.B. Terraforming Mars, Kemet oder Scythe. (PS: Im Netz kursieren auch deutsche Anleitungen, sah ich jetzt, sodass man auch zur englischen Variante greifen kann, wenn man nicht ausreichend gut Englisch beherrscht.)

Really happy with this game, great rules, great theme, great quality!