Fight a mob – reveal 3 weapon tokens from hand. If the number of hearts shown is equal to or greater than those shown by the creature, you win. Be careful though, some of your starting weapon tiles are potatoes. During your turn you must choose and perform two different actions. You cannot perform the same action twice. Once you have taken your actions, play proceeds to the left. Bow: During a fight, whenever you reveal a bow, you may immediately reveal 1 additional weapon token. If you own more than one bow, you have a chance to reveal 4, 5, or even 6 tokens during a fight! So the question I know you’re dying to hear the answer to is, “Does Minecraft Builders and Biomes play like the video game?” No, not at all. For example: Trent has 3 bridge type structures adjacent to one another which are worth 6 points each for a total of 18 points. Way to go Trent!

Building is limited to what is printed on the available tiles. A creative strategy based upon building increasingly complex treehouses, for example, is just not possible. Move 0-2 spaces and reveal tiles: A space is defined as the intersection between 4 tiles. The player will move their figurine up to 2 spaces and then reveal every tile around their figurine.

Actions

A mob tile with an experience counter and icon are to be kept until the end of the game, in which they will gain the player additional experience points for all spaces with matching characteristics (e.g. mob tiles with an experience counter of two and a forest biome gain the player two experience points for each forest space on the player board). Outside of families with kids, this might be a little basic for gamers that have played even medium-weight games. When seeing a walkthrough for Builders & Biomes, I hoped it would feel like an adventure game, where I could build structures or fight baddies, kind of like what most people get from 2018 release Vindication. In many aspects, it feels less like an adventure game and more a Eurogame with “contracts” to complete and actions to select. And that is ok if you understand what Builders & Biomes is before buying/playing it. Final Thoughts:

Once scoring is completed, players continue taking turns until the second level of the mining cube is completely taken at which time scoring round “B” happens.

Components

Final Score: 3 Stars – An easy game to teach with a breezy feel, but not enough meat on the bones to keep gamers playing it regularly. Parents with kids that love Minecraft might give this a look.

Set up is straight forward, with building tiles arranged in a 4x4 grid with smaller weapons tiles around the outside. Each player grabs a player mat, a character standee, personal weapon tiles and an experience marker. The player gains two additional actions that they may use during their turn if they turn in a defeated mob; the player may also execute actions that they have executed earlier in the same turn. The final step of how to play Minecraft Builders and Biomes before getting into gameplay is to put out the overview cards. These are the cardboard tiles that tell you how the scoring works each turn and it shows the actions you can take on a turn.

I’m no expert, however, I’m reliably informed (by my kids) that there are two basic modes: Survival and Creative.

Each building card lists its characteristics as icons in its left margin: The top icon shows the biome (scoring A), followed by material in the middle (scoring B) and type on the bottom (scoring C). When adding the Farmers Market Expansion, players add the new building tiles to the main set before shuffling and creating the 4×4 grid. Many hours have been spent creating worlds, adventuring to find treasure, and fighting the steady stream of monsters placed in our way. Your biggest groups are two dwellings or two animal houses. The animal houses are more valuable (see scoring card), so you select that group and gain 2x5 = 10 experience points. After each player scores, the overview cards for that scoring round are returned to the game box, and play proceeds to the left of the player who initiated scoring.The Farmers Market is a must addition to the game. It not only adds more choices and cool player powers, it also comes with new “skins” for players to choose from. I know what you’re thinking, not very exciting, but my boys love it.