Sequoia

Sequoia arrived in a box together with GPS and Mountain Goats from Board Game Tables.com. From the moment I saw the mini boxes and the art, I was already sold for those three small games. But when we opened them up, we saw that all three of those games were also completely different with also a different theme. Sequoia and GPS only last ten minutes while Mountain Goats lasts twenty minutes of gameplay. This is what we think of Sequoia!

How to Play.

For the set up, simply place the forest cards in a circle from numbers two to twelve. Next, randomly assign a first and second token to each forest card. Then each player chooses a color and takes the trees and dices. This is all that you need to do to start playing.

The rules couldn’t be simpler. Each turn, every player rolls their die in the same time in secret. Then, make two pairs and leave one die aside. You reveal all the die simultaneously with the other players. Then, you place one tree token in a forest tile, that matches the number you made of you dice pair. If you combine a three and five die for example and create a pair, you can place a tree token on card eight. If you roll the same number on all of your dices, yell ‘Sequoia!’ and then you may choose to place your dice however you want them.

The game ends when there are no more trees left to place on the tiles. The first place token on every card, will go to the player who has the most trees on the card. The second place token on every card, will go to the player with the second most trees on the card. If there is a tie, score the first or second tokens that have no ties as normal on every card, and take away all player tokens who are not involved in ties.
The player involved in ties will play another turn until all remaining ties are resolved and point tokens are divided.
The player with the most points, wins the game.

Playthrough of the game.

Sequoia really does lasts about ten minutes or even less with two players. We think it’s an awesome small game, but we did change some rules. Instead of playing other turns until all ties were resolved, with two players, we decided to roll all of our dice simultaneously. The player with the highest roll, gets the first point token. We found this easier since a tie in this way is immediately resolved. We didn’t like to roll and make pairs over and over until all ties were resolved since it also makes the game longer. And ties do tend to happen with tiles who have higher point tokens, even with two players only.

We also made up a different variant to play. We simply placed all the tokens facedown so you don’t know what card has higher or lower points. This was a really fun way to play to since you stop focusing on higher point cards, but instead you try to conquer as many tiles as possible. This did resolve in more ties, but with our house rule, this was not a problem at all.

Final thougts.

Sequoia is a fun small light game that you can take everywhere since the box is very small. The set up takes about two minutes and the rules are so simple that learning this game takes almost no time at all. This is a great gateway game that you can play up to five players which will last about ten minutes per game. The art of this game is simple but elegant and it gets even better once all the trees start growing on the cards. We do miss a small screen since you throw the dices in secret, but then again, I don’t think that would fit in such a small box and it’s just as easy to hide it behind your hand.