Big Hunter is a dynamic physics game that hunts gigantic primeval animals with spear, axe and boomerang. Become the world's best hunter with a variety of weapons! Big Hunter Features: - Easy control with addictive touch of hitting - Hunting game based on dynamic physics - Simple but outstanding graphic design - Rhythmical game sounds. Cabela's hunting games free download. Big Hunter Online is a fun hunting game that transports you back to the prehistoric age where huge animals roam the land. You are a simple nomad and you must hunt down these immense animals to survive and to provide food and sustenance for your tribe. Big Hunter is a dynamic physics game that hunts gigantic primeval animals with spear, axe and boomerang. Become the world's best hunter with a variety of weapons!

,Quinns: Everybody, stand up from your chairs! Best racerback tank. Pull up your pants. Spit out that gum.

Founding a Town has three benefits: 1. Immediately get a number of Victory points as indicated by the chosen Town tile. Immediately and only once, collect the rewards depicted on the chosen Town tile (either +1 space on each of the Cult tracks, 1 Priest, 2 Workers, 6 Coins, or 8 Power, etc). Each Town provides a key.

An esteemed classic has returned.We reviewed fantasy town-building game back in 2013 and found ourselves submerged in strategic nirvana. Today 28,000 people have rated it on BoardGameGeek, awarding it in an average of 8.3 out of 10. That’s shockingly high considering just how complicated and odd Terra Mystica is, with its challenging puzzle squished in between ugly mermaids and magic bowls. But there you have it! It’s just that enjoyable.This week we’re looking at the sequel, which is a big deal in more ways than one. As well as swapping Terra Mystica’s musty fantasy for a sci-fi backdrop, it’s more expensive, more complicated and demands significantly more table space.

All set up, you’re looking at an asteroid belt of iconography.After playing Gaia Project we actually went back and played Terra Mystica as part of this review. The good news is, Terra Mystica is still a ton of fun! The bad news is, while Gaia Project is a perfectly fine game, I can’t see a single reason why I’d buy it over the original.About 90% of the Terra Mystica’s rules make it over to the sequel intact, so an explanation of how Gaia Project works sounds a bit like I’m describing an alternate reality. It’s like meet.In Gaia Project each player picks a different species, each one with their own rule-breaking power, and tries to spread their property across the galaxy like so much interstellar nutella.The problem is that constructing mineshafts and terraforming planets costs ore (which comes from mineshafts) and money (which comes when you upgrade your mineshafts into markets). You can also upgrade mineshafts into research bases (costing more ore and money), which gives you knowledge, which you can use to advance up the multifaceted research tracks seen below, unlocking fabulous rewards and discounts that would make building your empire so much easier if you could just find the time to do it.There’s also the option of upgrading a marketplace into an expensive “planetary institute”, thereby unlocking your race’s superpower!

But will the benefits outweigh the setback to your economy? Because here’s the twist in Terra Mys– I mean, Gaia Project. Whenever you upgrade a building you put the old miniature back on your player board, so you no longer get the income from it. Oh, and don’t forget to build clusters of buildings close together so that you can link them into federations for bonus victory points!For a more detailed explanation of how Gaia Project works you can literally watch our old video on Terra Mystica. There’s hardly an area of the design that hasn’t been tweaked, but the experience of playing is the same- Gaia Project is a rewarding test of how best to invest and re-invest your resources into growing your holdings but with all sorts of pesky variables to consider. Set-up of the game is randomised (much moreso in Gaia Project), your race demands a special playstyle, and your friends will always get in the way of your plans.Sitting back and researching technology is great, unless your friends are snatching up all the planets around you like tasty Skittles, erasing your plans for future expansion.

Likewise, being the only person learning the secret of transforming the wibbly purple “Transdim planets” into habitable worlds is excellent, but less so if everyone’s learning it. From turn to turn, the question’s always the same: Do you push out and take the territory you want now, or do you have time to turn your economy inward and unlock some tremendous new power?Where Gaia Project differs from Terra Mystica is that there’s just more of it. Where before there was one map, now there’s a broad jumble of randomised hexes. Where before developing your terraforming and your ability to reach new hexes couldn’t be simpler, now “research” is a giant board depicting a brawl of iconography. Where Terra Mystica had 9 “spells”, Gaia Project has 17.All of which inarguably makes Gaia Project the more complicated game. It’s harder to learn and harder to master (and, of course, harder to teach).

To the fraction of Terra Mystica fans who played that game forty times and are looking for a tougher challenge, Gaia Project will feel like a boxer who’s put on 30lbs.But here’s the thing. I don’t think those 30lbs are muscle, but fat. In places, Gaia Project is so irritatingly obtuse that it had me and my friends laughing at the manual. “A planet with a Gaiaformer does not count as colonized by the faction owning that Gaiaformer; therefore, that planet cannot be used as a “starting point” to access another planet (Transdim or otherwise).”Wasn’t this game hard enough to learn before the designers started inventing words? A game’s “theme” is more than just quaint set-dressing. Familiar imagery helps us to internalise rules.

In Terra Mystica, it’s easy enough to remember that mermaids travel down rivers. In Gaia Project, the Taklons get a brainstone and the B’al T’aks can move a Gaiaformer to their Gaia Area to gain one Quantum Intelligence Cube, and they’ve removed the lore from the manual that tells you why anything is how it is.Why would you make the game the game that much trickier? Ooh, I’m getting worked up.

Let’s take a trip back to 2013Terra Mystica has a variety of features that earned it the love of the community. There’s the marvellously cramped board which means everyone cares when anyone builds anywhere. Likewise, your resource collection is so finely balanced that choosing to replace one building with another is always rewarding and agonising. A hurried construction makes you feel clever as often as it makes you feel you just threw your wallet into a river, and the decision of when to sacrifice victory points (or even power itself!) for access to a magic spell always feels like a tough call.Yes, Gaia Project adds all sorts of new features, but since not a one of them is as entertaining as those refined choices in the original game, it feels like it’s diluting that magic. Most importantly, by increasing the size of the board Gaia Project loses that exciting tautness of Terra Mystica, so much so that a 2 player game of Terra Mystica feels more cramped than a 4 player game of Gaia project.

And by adding knowledge as a means of gaining resources in addition to buildings and power bowls, the systems that make Terra Mystica unique feel that much less important. Did you build the wrong thing? Not to worry. In this haze of rules you’ll probably find a way to make up for it, somewhereSimply put, yes, Gaia Project is the more complicated game, but it’s more work for less fun. You have more options to learn and consider, but selecting the right action for your turn feels a shade more underwhelming.And now I’ve been a good boy and talked about the game for 900 words, can I please talk about what they’ve done to its look!?I might not have called Terra Mystica a pretty game, but especially returning to it in 2018 it seems classy and confident. The wood feels nice under your fingertips, and watching the three-dimensional board emerge over the course of two hours, complete with little bridges and towns of like-coloured pieces, is charming. Even Dennis Lohausen’s wonky illustrations kind of work, as if you were leafing through a fantasy novel from the 1970s.Putting the games side by side, Gaia Project’s aesthetics are kind of a disaster?

The plastic feels cheap and the sci-fi re-theming is miserable to me. Lohausen primarily illustrates historical games (most recently the charming ) and I don’t think he’s put to good use in a sci-fi setting. The futuristic iconography that you rely on as a player is neither stylish nor readable, there’s no ‘life’ in watching the board fill up with plastic and even the planets printed on the map look out of place. Though that’s ok, because once you’ve put buildings down you can hardly see them.Maybe if Gaia Project wasn’t more expensive than Terra Mystica, or maybe if it didn’t lower the maximum playercount from 2-5 to 1-4, or if it was at least a better-looking game I’d be able to be a shade more cheerful about it. Instead, I’m going to have to take my positivity where I can get itHere’s a photo Matt doesn’t know I took. See how he’s smiling? There’s freezing rain outside, it’s nice and cosy in my house and he’s playing Terra Mystica for the first time and loving it.

Absolute bliss.Don’t think of this as a review telling you not to buy Gaia Project. Think of it like our hero fending off the latest contender.

Shut Up & Sit Down still absolutely recommends Terra Mystica. If you really want to spend some money this month, why not pick up the Terra Mystica expansion,?In fact, I think I’m going to do that right now Categories Tags, Post navigation.

Flair icons are BoardGameGeek microbadges and are used with permission. WelcomeWelcome to!

The #1 reddit source for news, information, and discussion about modern board games. Join our community and discuss Codenames, Eldritch Horror, Terra Mystica, or your favorite game!

RulesPlease see the for a full explanation of the rules. All user posts and comments are expected to follow.

Basically, be nice. We're all friends here. Posts should be discussion-oriented and related to the boardgaming hobby. Posts and low effort/meme/image macro posts may be removed. Use the thread for game recs. Stand-alone threads may be removed if they don't follow.

Limit your promotional posts. This is a community, not an audience. See the for more details on this.

Selling/buying/trading/pricing posts must be done in the thread. Comments or posts made elsewhere will be removed. Threads with spoilers in the link or post text must be marked as such. Comments with spoilers must hide the comment using spoiler tags: !Spoiler here! I've played TM twice now, and I adore the hell out of the game, but I've come dead last both times, and it's frustrating. Another game set for tomorrow, and I want to at least be second to last!First game was a learning game, which doesn't matter, but first place was the Halfling player with 120ish, and I barely scraped over 70 as Mermaids. Oh well, learning game, whatever.Yesterday I played as Engineers, and while I did admittedly screw myself in the first round by changing strategies twice, I just didn't have any real direction for the rest of the game.

I managed to have 2 rounds with 2 bridges and 2 rounds with 3, for a solid 30 points, but I had little else to score with. One town, (largest controlled area of 5 when everyone else had 9-10, so no points for that), lead on one cult track, and that was about it.

I ended up just hitting 90, with the Swarmlings player at 135 and Darklings roughly 8 behind.It seems I'm just not doing something right. My problem for most of the game was I couldn't afford to expand - all the spaces near my areas took 3 shovels to terraform, and Engineers have barely any workers. I was first player to pass for all but two turns in the game because I just didn't have a workforce to carry out any actions.So, TM masters, what are your favourite races, and how do you use them to their best potential?. Some races are easier to play than others. Halflings and Swarmlings are the easiest, while Engineers and Giants are the hardest. A few things to keep in mind:. Don't try to grow or build settlements without a plan.

Unlike Catan, for example, building stuff doesn't inherently give you points. Try to time your builds for the rounds where they give you points. Don't underestimate the scroll tiles that give you bonus points. Consider passing early to get ones that give you more points. Likewise, the favor tiles that give you more points are great as well. This is just me, but I try to avoid using workers for spades as much as possible unless you've upgraded your digging power. Abuse the power digging and the digging tile as much as possible.

Don't be shy burning power if you need it immediately.For the engineers, their worker income is abysmal, but they get a lot of power, especially from the second temple. You're meant to supplement your worker income through other means-since everything is cheaper, the extra cubes from power actions and favor tiles, for example, do a lot for you than for anyone else.Also, you can practice by playing against AI. After posting I saw elsewhere that Engineers were considered hard, so I felt less bad about 90 points in my second game.

Someone on BGG posted about his 13th game, scoring 40 with Engineers. My friend had Giants at over 120 the other day, so the harder races are definitely workable, although apparently in that game Nomads and Halflings couldn't have been playing worse if they were trying to lose.Would that I actually had a copy of the game so I could play against the AI. I should look at the code and figure out how the AI plays though, maybe I'll find some good general tips and build orders there. I'm not a TM master at all, but I think picking the most appropriate race is at least as important as playing the race well.

Before selecting a race,. take a look at the race(s) your opponent(s) have already chosen. Typically, the further a race is from previously selected races on the terraforming wheel, the most appealing they are, because you won't have to compete as much for terrain. For example, if the Chaos Magicians and Auren are in the game, you probably don't want to take a gray race, since they'll be eating into your mountains. take a look at the turn bonuses available this game. The availability, or lack thereof, of particular bonuses can make races stronger or weaker. For example, the one priest bonus tile being out of the game might make the Darklings stronger, since they might face less competition for the cult tracks.

take a look at the scoring bonuses and when they are in effect. This is possibly the most important because, obviously, it translates directly into points.

Pick a race whose strengths and playstyle best match the order of the bonuses. For example, if the first or second bonus tile is 4 points per stronghold/sanctuary, it might make sense to pick a race with a stronghold that you want or need to get out early (like the Witches or the Swarmlings). If the terraforming for points tile is out later in the game, a good choice might be a race like the Swarmlings that can generate a ton of workers to terraform the shit out of the land.It's all about minimizing competition and ensuring that, for the most part, you're getting points for doing things that you'd do with that race anyways.Edit: I was poking around the Terra Mystica page on BGG, and apparently the crazy-pants amount of terraforming for points near the end game is considered an exploit by the designers. To remedy this, an additional rule should be used in setup: 'Shuffle the Scoring tiles and place them face-up on these spaces one after another, beginning with space 6. If you draw the Scoring tile with a Spade on its left side for spaces 5 or 6, put it aside and draw another one instead. Then shuffle it back in.' It seems I'm just not doing something right.

My problem for most of the game was I couldn't afford to expand - all the spaces near my areas took 3 shovels to terraform, and Engineers have barely any workers. I was first player to pass for all but two turns in the game because I just didn't have a workforce to carry out any actions.When placing your starting settlements, you should really aim to place on terrain that is next to a bunch of terrain that is 1 spade away from your home terrain, so your future expansions are easier.Also, there is a fun opening play specifically for mermaids. If the +1 shipping bonus tile is available, you can take that tile, sacrifice power to use the power-priest action, then upgrade your shipping. It turns out there is a network of 6 water hexes that are 3 or fewer spaces apart by river, and getting the early 3 shipping means you can build a whole bunch of dwellings first turn without needing to terraform at all, as long as you started on one of the six linked water hexes. Yeah; being Engineers I tried to start on places that would be good for bridges later. I placed one settlement on the single gray spot that had another one directly across the river, and another across the board that had a red spot across from it. It did let me get all three bridges out, but I was limited in terraforming otherwise, so it kind of canceled out.That's awesome about the Mermaids.

I know the key to them has to be expansion along the rivers, but it really didn't look that easy to do. In the learning game, I nearly got largest area through their power, until stupid Halflings upgraded their ships twice on the last turn and stole it. They were really good in that first game - his first couple of rounds were basically 'obtain priests, upgrade shovels', and then every round he would terraform the spaces that were the furthest from his preferred type. 3 points per space, plus in one round of course there was an extra 2 points for every shovel used, so I think he probably got 18 points in just from terraforming in that one round.His next game though he had a 40-point turn with Giants. So Halflings aren't the only race with potential for big scores. That was part of how the Swarmling player did so well.He played his second settlement at the start well away from anyone, expanded out, then used his special ability to upgrade it all to trading posts without having to pay the extra gold for not being next to people. It was ridiculously good, especially combined with the favour that granted 3 points for placing them, the round tile where you get 3 points for placing them, and the power tile that gives points for passing with them on the board.But he also managed to bump his shipping up far enough that it connected it to the rest of his stuff and gave him largest area, and took first on two cult tracks - a lot of his points came from just being really well-rounded.

Funny, I played my first game last night and was Engineers. I only had one round with 2 bridges and one with 3. I had a single, six-building town that scored me 0 points. I had the lead on only one cult track, and I ended with 82 points.I won, beating the guy who took first in the other three cult tracks by 1 point.Now, we were playing with 5, not 3. I don't know that I would have gotten a lot more points if there were fewer players in the game. I wasn't really constrained much by what the others were doing.What I can tell you about my game: I built a temple on the first turn so that I could upgrade my digging on the second and my shipping on the third, and I took the temple power that gave me extra workers. In fact, just about every power I took during the game gave me workers.

I used shipping, not bridges, to expand. When I started building bridges, it was only between buildings I owned, and I only spent workers on bridges once (the other times I spent power). I was never the first person to pass. We've never had a winning score under 115 so far, and the lowest was tonight's second game (Swarmlings, 118 in a 3-player game - low-scoring game because the 6 gold tile wasn't in the mix).I did manage to improve somewhat - my first game tonight was a respectable 125-130ish with Swarmlings (which seem to be very powerful), but that only got me second to a 140-145 point Alchemist, but then I regressed and scored a little over 90 with Nomads, despite largest area and placing 3-1-1-2 on the cult tracks. Just wasn't able to build the bonus stuff when I needed to, and they're honestly a little average I think. Swarmlings are amazing.