Renegade Game Studios Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, Fast Paced Card Game Set, 2-4 Players, 30 Min Playing Time, Place Tiles to Adorn The Palace Lake with Floating Lanterns, Earn The Most Honor Before The Festival Begins

Lanterns is an abstract tile-placement game with wide appeal. It's essentially a set-collector in which you trade in combinations of colored cards to score points. (Each color has a unique pattern to assist with color-blind players). You acquire certain colors of cards by placing tiles in a particular orientation, adjacent to other tiles. Sides of adjacent tiles don't have to match, but if they do you receive extra cards. Very easy to learn and play, and you'll finish a game in about 12-15 minutes per player.Easy as it is to play, strategy fans will find enough depth to consider Lanterns a midweight game. Point values for particular sets of cards diminish as the game progresses. For example, the first time a player trades in 4-of-a-kind, they will receive more points than the third player to do it. The market for each type of card is limited. Cards in possession are not hidden from other players. A particular orientation of a tile you place might give you a color you want, but also give another player a card that enables them to complete a set.The art design is pleasant, meant to represent a top-down view onto a lake during an evening fireworks display (the starting tile shows a person in a rowboat). The wooden favor tokens are stamped in red with kanji that I can't read, but probably matches some hipster's inner-arm tattoo. The non-textured cards are average quality, and they are frequently handled. Consider sleeving them if you will play often. Handle the cardboard tiles carefully to avoid tearing the graphics on the back, since unlike the cards, the tiles in your hand are hidden.Another game that I really enjoy which I find similar to Lanterns is Splendor. Both have a small footprint, a limited market that replenishes, shorter length of play, scales well from 2-4 players, very few rules to grok, but with an economy of decisions that subtly affect the final outcome. Personally, I consider these to be two of the best abstract games of recent years, and you can play both in the same amount of time as one game of Settlers of Catan or Ticket To Ride.

While I love complex games, I'm always looking out for games that I can play with my parents who are older and don't have a lot of patience for games with lots of rules. We play to help keep their minds sharp so they still need to think but they don't need something like Android.This game is a simple tile game that lets you strategize to win but doesn't get you mired in rules that can get a player stuck (e.g., Catan). Games take maybe 30-45 minutes. The tiles and cards are pretty and give you a nice tangible experience while points are earned through a simple economy (earn cards from tile placement--including opponent placements--and buy VP that you just tally up at the end). The earned VP have diminishing value so you're rewarded for earning and buying them early but it's still possible to win without owning the highest value VP cards just through volume.Definitely a nice game for players who want simple rules but enough complexity so that it isn't just a cake walk (and boring).

Growing up (70's and early 80's), we are always given a game from another family for Christmas. I have great memories of building a fire in the fireplace and playing a game, and since I started my own family a game has often been on the shopping list. This year, my almost 9 year old is really starting to get into games. He has been playing monopoly, risk, and other classics, but was looking for something new. Lanterns had good reviews and decided to give it a try. It is a bit confusing when you get it out. You have tiles, cards, point cards and tokens. The idea is get points, but collecting colored cards (7 colors), into a set of 4 of one color, three pairs or a full set of one of each 7 colors. Each time you place a tile, you get at least 2 cards, and every other player gets 1, so with 4 players, in one round you are going to get 5 cards (perhaps 6 or if are really lucky could probably get 7). What tile it is, and where it is placed also can get you the tokens, which can be used to exchange one card, from one you have into one you need. As you turn in "sets" you get a piece with a number of points earned. These descend in value, so have to determine if you turn it in quickly and get more points, or try to make a different set to get higher points. And there are a limited number of colored cards, so you may not get all your cards and harder to make sets if someone is holding cards you need.Game play is pretty fast, took about 45 minutes to play once we read the instructions and figured it out. There is a bit of strategy, but you are only looking at your cards and tiles, by the time it gets back around to you, the board will be different, and you will have a lot of cards you might, or might not need. It is a game that you need to watch, if you go to put on dinner when it is your turn it is not rolling a dice and moving, you may have to trade a card, turn in a set, and then have to place 1 of 3 tiles in a way that will help you and not help the other players.This game was easy enough for an almost 9 year old to figure out, but still a lot of fun for the 46 year old parents and will certainly be one of the games we pull out when we have an extra 45 minutes and want to play a game.