The Wolves Review

The lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

The Wolves from Pandasaurus Games has players controlling a pack of wolves attempting to build the strongest packs. On your turn, you'll do two actions by flipping the corresponding terrain tiles and doing the action. Depending on what action you want to do, you'll flip more tiles but they must all match. If you flip a single tile, you can move your wolves up to as many spaces as you have movement for. Flipping two tiles will let you build dens or upgrade them to lairs. These will give you more control over the regions. You also can howl with two tiles. This allows you to add more wolves to your pack by converting lone wolf tokens into pack wolves. Flipping three tiles lets you dominate. If you dominate, you'll convert another players wolf into your pack. When you take something off of your player board, you'll be able to score more points at the end of the game as well as unlocking stronger basic abilities to make your pack stronger. Any time you remove something from the board you'll move it to the calendar track. The calendar has different moon phases that will correspond to scoring phases. Your objective is to have the most control over the map tile with that moon type. Each type of piece counts for different values of control. Once the last moon is scored, the game ends and players will tally their points based on their player boards and what they've earned during the game.

The Good: I loved the way that the game funnels you into a single area while also forcing you to explore the map and try to strengthen your pack. You have the choice to forego some of the early scoring areas to try and collect lone wolves and prey for later game points. The upgradeable player board is a really nice feature. It was really great to see your progress on your board and the map at the same time. This is also a game that was intended for higher player counts but there's a really great two player mode built in.

The Okay: From the very first turn I pretty much didn't know what I wanted to do. There's a lot of choices you'll need to make from the start of the game. This is also dependent on your terrain tiles. The action selection system is fantastic but if you don't have what you need you are somewhat limited to fulfill your plans. When you've unlocked some stuff you'll get wild tokens to help supplement this but early on it can be a struggle.

The Not So Good: You can have more turns than you may like to have where nothing really happens. This may be because you're planning ahead but you may not always have productive turns and plans constantly change because of other players with the same ideas. One other minor gripe and it's understandable why they opted against this but because your components are sitting on your player board and it's not dual layered, any bump means there's going to be wolves all over the place.

Final Thoughts: I had a lot of interest in The Wolves when it was first announced and it absolutely delivered. It's a game that's going to stretch your brain more than you may plan for but when you get into the flow of it, it's extremely satisfying. Plus there's wolf meeples which are a thing I didn't know I needed in my life but apparently I did. If you are looking for an area control game with a constantly moving world, I couldn't recommend this enough.

Thanks to Pandasaurus for providing me with a review copy.