Preview: Springsign

The village of Springsign is a rough and tumble little settlement. Winters are difficult and theres only fish to eat, oh and bandits there are plenty of them coming through town. You are an influential townsperson looking to be elected mayor of Springsign. Springsign is on Kickstarter right now so please check that out. Springsign is a semi-CoOp game of market manipulation.

Springsign Game

Setup

Springsign Game Board

Springsign consists of a main market board and player mats, there are lots of resource tokens and two decks of cards. Springsign is light and setup reflects that or is even a little more involved than the flow of the game. Players build the Inital market with 3 buildings and 6 relics put into their respective markets. Then there are settlers and bandits added to the bottom of the board the amount of settlers will depend on player counts. Below the market board is also where you will place bandits. There are also harvest cards that are used and dependant on player count. The harvest tokens give players a choice of bonus at the end of the turn when they pass or cannot make any more plays that turn.

The player boards have 2 sides one that is the same for each of the players with basic actions and there is an Adept side that has asyncronous actions based on each character. The playerboard has every action a player can take on their turn and how much the actions cost. The playerboards are also where players keep their resource tokens. There is a handy reference card but I found that it really wasnt needed after the first turn. The game was that easy to learn and play is quite intuitive. Depending on turn order depends on how many starting resources are given to each player.

Game Play

The object of the game is to get the most votes after the threshold has been passed (depends on player count). In a two player game the threshold is 5 votes. To get votes you have to be the player with the most popularity at the end of the turn. If you are the player at the end of the turn with the most popularity then you gain a vote. To get votes players need to take actions and interact with the buildings, releics and bandits.

Settler Cards

Each turn is made up of 3 phases. The first and last phase happen once per turn and the middle phase goes on until all players have passed. The first phase is the Replinish Phase, during this phase the settlers and markets get replenished with supply tokens. If the settler is in a players tableau they will then take the tokens and immediately put them onto the player board. This is how the economy keeps going in the game. There is always more goods that enter the market.

The Action phase is the heart of the game this is where all the action happens. The actions include hireling settlers, feeding them, attacking bandits, gaining relics and each charecter has their own set of specialized actions. The feed action allows players to trade fish for other resources that settlers in the city are producing. Attacking the bandits helps players gain popularity. Popoularity is importand because players need to have the most at the end of the turn to get the vote. Having the most votes is the goal of the game. Another great way to gain popularity is through the buildings. There are three buildings in town and they offer special bonuses for performing specific actions during the game. The buildings and relics can be covered up with new ones when aplayer does the explore action. This is how players shift the strategies throughout the game. Finally when a player has done all they want to do during the turn they can "go home". This is a free action that gives the player a choice of bonus harvest tiles. One of these allows the player to grab the first player token.

Will a player sacrifice doing more actions to take that bonus or do they press their luck?

A big part of the strategy is timing when a player will go home. Its important to grab the bonus you want. Will a player sacrifice doing more actions to take that bonus or do they press their luck? Another strategy we saw during our play time were really diging into the asymetric actions, they added a lot of variablity of play and strategy for the players that I really enjoyed. There is also one part that I did not mention yet. This is a semi-CoOp so, players will need to work together to keep the Anarchy down in town. It is possible that the anarchists could win the game (nobody playes them).

The last part of the turn happens after the last player has "gone home". This is the cleanup phase. Settlers that have not been hired and have goods tokens still on them leave and are discarded and the remaining tokens go into the market. Trouble makers now cause the anarchy in town. Bandits are a big source of this and any settler with the anarchy symbol on them and are still in town now boost anarchy's popularity. The vote happens right after this, and the player with the most popularity gains a space on the vote tracker. If its anarchy they gain a vote and this is how they can win over the players. Finally the new settlers arrive and its time to start the next turn.

Player Board

Thoughts

I really enjoyed Springsign. Its theme was cute and the play was cleaver. The theme of voting and elections was right up my alley but it wasnt heavy handed to take away from the excellent design, it all fit together well. There is a solo variant of the game that I did not play through more than once. I belive they are still tweeking that variant at the writting of this. The game was intuitive and the symbols made the player mats easy to read and figure out what each action did. I like the press your luck aspect with getting the harvest tille bonuses at the end of your turn and trying to anticipate when other players would stop their turn. On top of all of that the asynchronous players really made this game pop. The different actions really added some cool depth as we switched them up game to game. There is a lot of replay-ability.

Settlers and Bandits with Player Board

Springsign is being funded through kickstarter and they have a bunch of cool stretch goals like upgraded cards, deluxe markers and color relic cards. This is an easy to learn game that dosnt have a lot of extra things going on to clutter it up. Spring sign would be great for the gamer graduating up from Ticket to Ride and Catan. As a very seasoned gamer I found Springsign refreshing and easy to learn and teach making it an easy addition to game nights. I will definatly be adding this to our traveling game library.

Players: 1-6

Year Published: 2024

Recommended Ages: 13+

Time to Play: 60-120 minutes

A preview copy of Springsign was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for this review by The End Games. This is a prototype copy of the game and the final version may be different than depicted here in this preview.