By Adam Roffel
I love when board game designers take a few different mechanics, mix them together, and put out something that is pretty unique and interesting to play. In board games, there really is no unique idea anymore. But from time to time, a solid experience comes out that makes you feel like you're playing something brand new. Enter Pond, a deck-building area-control game that is not only fun to play, but packs a ton of strategic decision-making as well.
Frogs, Cards, and Control of the Pond
Pond is played over a series of turns, where players compete for room in the pond and places on lilypads. Players have two types of frogs. Long Fwooogs serve as deployment points for regular frogs. Those regular frogs move around the pond, attack, and hold areas for points.
Players start with a 10-card deck and draw five cards into their hand for each turn. These cards can be played out for a variety of actions. Some might let you deploy more frogs, while others let you March (move) and Attack. Still others allow you to earn berries so you can purchase more cards.
As you add new cards to your deck, more and more opportunities become available to you. There are cards that let you move enemy frogs back to their main pond or take frogs off the board. There's so much more, too much to discuss here. Rest assured, there is a really nice variety of cards that will make a variety of strategies work well.
After playing cards and taking actions, players will use any berries they have to purchase new cards, after which everything used and bought is put into a discard pile. Then a new hand of cards is drawn. If the deck runs out, players must first Hibernate a card from their discard pile or play area. Then they reshuffle and draw back up to five.
Hibernated Cards Unlock Hero Frogs
Hibernation is almost like “trashing” in other deck-building games, but these hibernated cards actually have a purpose. Very powerful, permanent cards that are always in play can be purchased using cards you have hibernated. The other nice thing about these cards is that even when hibernated, their point values are still added to your total at the end of the game.
When a turn is complete, players check how many ponds and lilypads they control. They control a pond if they have more pieces there than other players. They earn one point for each, taking those points from the point pool. When the last point token is taken, the game ends. The player with the most victory points after final scoring wins.
Traditional Deck Building Meets Simple Area Control
Outside of buying Hero Frog cards with hibernated cards, Pond follows a deck-building game almost to the T. You draw five cards and purchase new ones that go into your discard pile. Turn by turn, you can improve your hand. Nothing here is too different from what deck-building fans are used to, and I think that's a really good thing. It makes teaching Pond really easy, and that is something I appreciate.
The area control aspect of Pond is also pretty traditional. If you have more than someone else, you have control. It's a different approach from Citadels Duel, where control of the council and city districts plays such an important role. Should you want to fight, you roll up to three dice, depending on how many frogs are attacking, and resolve the results. There is nothing convoluted here or really anything that doesn't make sense. X's are misses, swords are hits, and bombs damage both sides.
Simplicity is not a bad thing, especially here. In fact, I love how easy this game is to teach. Easy to teach, though, doesn't mean easy to play. I would argue that Pond takes a good number of plays before you really understand how to best use your actions. And that is what I love to see in my board games: easy entry, high-end strategy.
Four Frog Factions With Different Powers
Each of the four factions included in the game has its own unique powers and slightly different starting decks. Cowboy Frogs like to fight and can reroll one die per combat encounter. Pumpkin Frogs love to populate the board, allowing players to deploy an extra frog each turn. The Wizard Frogs and Banana Frogs also have their own powers. Banana Frogs can move enemy frogs along with their own. The Wizards can remove a frog from the board to draw two cards and then discard one.
These different player powers and starting cards do provide players a bit of a strategy to begin with. Cowboy Frogs, for example, want to fight, so stacking your deck with combat-heavy cards might be a great option. The Wizard Frogs are all about deck cycling. This means they'll need a lot of frogs on the board, and will have the chance to hibernate more cards than other players because of how fast they will go through their deck.
It's another layer of strategy that makes this game so compelling. I've played a few times now, and I cannot wait to play more.
Accessibility Is King in Pond
I say this often: accessibility is king. The more people I can teach a game to, the more likely it is to get played. While I love heavier multi-hour-long experiences, they don't happen as often because it takes a special type of board game player to pull it off. Pond is something I can teach to almost anyone, board game fan or not. I felt the same way about King of Tokyo: Godzilla, another game that's easy to teach but still gives you plenty to think about.
And because of that, I'll be playing this a lot more in the future. The fact that the game is cute-as-hell and has fantastic components only helps!
Pond Review Summary
Liked
- Easy to teach, with plenty of strategy to discover over multiple plays
- Deck building, area control, and Hibernation work well together
- Four frog factions encourage different strategies
- Cute theme and fantastic components
Didn't Like
- No specific criticisms noted
Adam Roffel
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