Gamelyn

They Should – Tiny Epic Dinosaurs

I looooooove the Tiny Epic games from Gamelyn Games. Since my first (Tiny Epic Zombies) I’ve picked up three others for myself as well as another three as gifts for friends. The matching, small boxes, packed with tons of great gameplay are always a winner amongst boardgamers. My most recent arrival is the wonderfully vibrant Tiny Epic Dinosaurs.

The box art is fantastic, with its bold, bright colours, outside and in. The contents follows this beautifully with 70+ wooden dinosaurs, food and supply markers for each player (1-4), and a number of ranger meeples.

TED is a worker placement game with a modular board (the four cards can be flipped depending on the number of players to keep things balanced). Your goal is to score points by fulfilling public and private contracts. By buying certain dinosaurs in, you can work towards fulfilling a contract. However, you have to keep each species of dino separate on your tiny player board. Not only that, they’ll need a full enclosure, if your park has no walls, they could just wander off and drink out of some rando’s swimming pool.

The game is played in a number of sections, over multiple rounds. Gain supplies according to what icons are showing on your play mat. Then players take turns to place rangers to gain food, supplies, dinos, fences, items, unique dinos, move fences that are already on the player board, claim the first player token, or complete a contract.

Next you arrange your park, placing down fences and putting dinos in enclosures. This can get a little Tetris and there’s hard decisions to be made. Especially as you can’t move fences that were already placed, during this part of the game.

Once safely in their enclosures, you must feed each dino (failure to feed them leads to them breaking out and potentially eating eachother). And finally breeding any dinos where you have a pair in the same enclosure which also has enough space to house the newborn. This could be a good thing if you need more of that dinosaur, but they will need feeding.

Then you start all over again. Once 6 rounds are over, it’s time to tot up the final scores for the contracts you’ve completed and declare a winner.

While it sounds pretty simple, the limited space on the player boards can often leave you scratching your head as to the best choice of position for fences and dinos. On top of that, there’s the risk that when you take a dino from certain spaces on the main board, that you’ll roll a die and end up with an extra baby for free. This could be great, or a sudden mouth you’ll need to feed that will be more hassle than it’s worth. You must also consider which spaces on your player board that you cover, as this will stop you gaining the benefit of unoccupied squares.

Tiny Epic Dinosaurs is a lot of fun, but it’s a much slower and considered game than a lot of Gamelyn Games other entries.

Pros:

  • So many adorable, wooden pieces.
  • Great artwork throughout.
  • Surprisingly cerebral.

Cons:

  • One or two of my dinos are a little wonky so they don’t stand up, but that’s not the worst thing in a box of over 70.
  • It feels like there is a ‘best’ first move for whoever starts with the first player token.
  • I’m bad at it.

Final Score: 8/10

Big Money, Big Prizes – Tiny Epic Mechs

Big Money, Big Prizes – Tiny Epic Mechs

In the (unlikely for humanity in our current timeline) far off future of 3030 (oops, we’re less than a line in and I’ve already melted the bleak alarm. That’s the third one this week *sigh*) bipedal mechs are a viable method of transportation and combat. This is the world we get to experience Tiny Epic Mechs.

After a successful Kickstarter back in 2018, Gamelyn Games have been shipping copies of their latest (I’m fairly certain) creation. Fitting in the same size box as all of their previous offerings (meaning you can fit even more of them on your shelf before you have to justify the space) and featuring their beloved Itemeeple, TEM is a programming game with lots of cool weapons you can buy and equip (more on that later) and awesome mech suits to arm and pilot.

The game can be played by 1-4 people, with different board layouts, depending on the number of players. Starting with the central point – where the Mighty Mech will be located until it’s claimed – the play area is layed out from a deck of shuffled tiles. Each tile shows a number and either a power or money symbol. Each player then takes their base tile and positions this in one of the locations shown in the manual. Players select one of their mines – numbered 1-4 – and places this, along with their itemeeple on their base. These base tiles (as well as the central tile) show one of each power and money symbol, in addition to a number 2.

With board setup complete, players are dealt two pilot cards and will pick one to play as. Each pilot card shows the character one side and and their power-armoured mode on the reverse. Each pilot has a unique special skill that can be utilised while in character or power armour mode. This could be something like taking extra resources on collection phases or being able to change the direction of your movement (for a small fee). These cards also track the player’s health in each mode.

Players also get a tracker board which shows money and energy reserves, as well as acting as a cheat sheet for what actions you can take, scoring, and building costs; an itemeeple in their colour; 4 mine tokens; three turret tokens; program cards; and a set of basic weapons to select their starting loadout from.

As well as the basic weapons, there’s the advanced weapon deck. These are layed out to form the shop. Each card corresponds to a delightfully dinky weapon which you can attach to your itemeeple, powersuit or the Mighty Mech.

Last up there’s the score and round tracker boards. Players place their two-sided score marker on the appropriate board (this can be flipped once you get to the end of the track to show you’re on your second go around).

Phew, it’s a lot of setup, and can take a while the first time you do so. However, once you’ve got it, it’s pretty straightforward and will be considerably quicker in future.

The program cards each show an arrow as well as the type of action that will be played once the player gets there (if they get there). This could be to place a mine – which costs money, deploy a turret – which costs power, collect resources – one for each tile showing that symbol which you control, to power jump two spaces in one direction, to move diagonally (usually you can only move in one of the cardinal directions), or to purchase something from the shop.

Each round starts with players picking their four actions, laying them out on the table (covered with the remaining cards). Starting with the first player (who rotates each round) everyone reveals their first action. These are played out before moving on to the next player and then on to the second actions. Should any player move into a space which is occupied by another, they will enter combat.

Combat is played out in turns, each player exhausting a weapon and passing to their opponent. Should a player be reduced to 0 health, they respawn back at their base with a minimum of 2 energy and cash and back to full health. However, if a player runs out of weapons before defeating their opponent, they are forced to retreat to an unoccupied, adjacent space.

Each weapon has a type and these types can play off of each other in a rock, paper, scissors style. By chaining off of the last weapon type, you get to use the weapon’s power attack. These attacks will not only do more damage than usual, but most will have an extra ability such as stealing/acquiring resources or removing adjacent turrets.

Once everyone has taken their actions and the dust has settled from any fighting, play moves to the next round. Every other round is a scoring round so it’s a great time to take some extra ground. You’ll be awarded points for each mine and turret, as well as the position you’re holding (based on the number on the tile), as well as points for controlling the Mighty Mech. After 6 rounds, the final scores are tallied as per the previous round and plus extra points for the weapons you’ve acquired throughout the game.

It’s a really fun little game that can be played in around an hour, with nice art, quality components, and it’s just such a joy to load up your powersuits and the Mighty Mech with your itemeeple and weapons. You’ll feel like kind of a badass stomping around the board in a fully tooled up mech.

Pros

  • Fun to play
  • Lovely character art
  • Quality pieces

Cons

  • Can be difficult to recover if you get behind in a two player game

Final Score: 9/10