Woodcraft — A Crime Against Elegance

Last night (in addition to Stationfall), I had the “pleasure” of learning Woodcraft, the most inelegant game of recent memory. Resources you can gain include immediate Money and VP, recurring Money and VP, three types of cubes (saws, glue and spare lumber), three colors of dice, a variety of tools and cards. A mosaic of tile placement (your ‘attic’) for bonus resources (all types), some ‘first to the post’ bonus VP races.

“VP Multiplier times number of orders fulfilled?” Check!

“Tokens that let you take an extra action or ignore the action on the rondel you selected?” Check! (If one of your resources lets you ignore the core mechanism that differentiates your game, is that a good thing?)

(“A different ‘Bonus action token’ that lets you re-use a once-per-season free-action token?”) Check!

Do any of these mechanisms interact in interesting ways, you ask, already knowing the answer? Pshaw.

This led me to ponder “Why is it so difficult to define elegance?” I suppose we could just say “when there is nothing left to remove, it is elegant.” Or perhaps “When the theme fits the mechanisms,” sort of a “well-ordered” definition. Who knows?

Not me. But I certainly know enough to feel its absence.

Rating — Avoid

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