One of the most talked about titles recently released is Elastium, the duo's family game Oren Shainin and Yaniv Kahana for 2 - 4 players. The reason why, at its release, the images of this new board game were so popular is soon said (and also guessed from its name): the three-dimensional board on which small colored rubber bands are positioned to play, certainly a nice glance at the table. In recent weeks, we too have had the opportunity to try Elastium. If you haven't heard of it yet or are curious to know more, here's what we think.
We learn to manipulate the Elastium
Although fundamentally it is a game abstract, we find at the beginning of the regulation a hint of the setting: we have just discovered a substance, theElastium precisely, with which to manipulate time and space. By doing this we will then have the opportunity to explore various worlds and our aim will be to accumulate, during our travels, as many treasures / victory points as possible. L'Elastium it is physically represented by small rubber bands, to be placed on a three-dimensional board equipped with pins, on which the various maps can be affixed according to the type of game we want to play and the number of players at the table.
Components, materials and graphics
La plastic board, cards, gems and meeple scoreboards I'm definitely from good quality, as well as the perforated maps to be affixed to the board according to the game; also good bands that have held up well for several games without getting damaged (however there are spare bands to use in case someone breaks - never happened until now). The only negative is the scoreboard, made of very thin cardboard that is loaded a lot and is almost impossible to fit well around the dashboard, above all because to position the rubber bands you tend to move it often. It is not essential to play, but it is a pity that it is so impractical as the rest of the materials are of good quality. Beautiful illustrations and clear graphics.
The game mechanics
Let's now take a look at the game mechanics of Elastium. The game is very simple, a family game / filler, excellent as an introduction. You choose the game map and place it on the plastic board with the pins, taking care to put it on the side for the correct number of players. Each player will have a certain number of cards (depending on the order of play varies), a set of rubber bands of their color and a small meeple scoreboard.
In turn, starting with the first player, everyone can perform two actions to be chosen from:
- draw two cards (from the deck or among those available visible)
- place a rubber band on the dashboard discarding cards from your hand
The mechanism is very reminiscent Ticket to ride, although perhaps in an even simpler version. In fact, the cards have five different colors and in order to position the rubber bands, the cards corresponding to the color of each pin touched must be discarded. The rubber bands must be placed from time to time in order to close areas of the map containing treasures (victory points) and gems (three gems allow you to perform additional actions during your turn). There are positioning rules that vary from map to map. It is possible to place rubber bands using pins already occupied by opponents, but to do so it will be necessary to give a card of the color corresponding to the pin used to the opponent already present.
Depending on the map chosen, a turn-counter board will also be used and therefore the game will have a predefined duration, or it will simply end when a player has reached a certain score.
As anticipated above, there are eight different scenarios with relative maps for each number of players. Each map brings more or less significant variations to the standard rules, making the game very varied and more or less difficult.
Considerations
Elastium it's a family game very easy to explain and understand. The duration of the matches varies from 20 to 40 minutes (as written on the box), which makes it perfect as an end-of-night filler or an introductory one to play with a group of newbies. Surely the element that aroused curiosity and interest the most, that is the presence of the rubber bands, is a nice novelty and fortunately the material is tough enough to take on numerous matches with confidence. The core mechanics are probably not particularly original since they are very reminiscent of Ticket to Ride, but the game still turns out pleasant and varied. Scalability is good since each scenario has a different map depending on the number of players; the same goes for longevity, due precisely to the fact that each scenario makes changes to the rules, thus making it possible to modulate the difficulty of the game (however, even in the most complex scenarios the game remains simple).
If you are looking for a good family game Elastium is definitely worth trying.
