My favorite game that Mason and I played at Dice Tower West was Life of the Amazonia. This game has been branded by some as the game to replace Cascadia, and I completely agree. After playing Cascadia last summer, I was hooked! I loved laying the tiles, building habitats to meet the end game goals, and the theme. Cascadia was quickly added to my wishlist, and I was eager to introduce this game to my friends and family. Then Mason told me about Life of the Amazonia and that gamers were playing this in place of Cascadia. This intrigued me, and Life of the Amazonia was added to our games to play at Dice Tower West list.
Since Life of the Amazonia is such a hot game, I was nervous that we might not get to check it out from the library or the play-to-win games or get a table in the Hot Games room. Fortunately, on our first day of the convention we found it on the play-to-win rack and promptly checked it out. Following a moderately long set-up and rules teach, we were ready to play. (Fun Fact: This was one of the first games that I learned the rules and taught to Mason. Overall, I think it went quite well!)
In Life of the Amazonia you are building a jungle to place animals according to the base animal cards with end game scoring goals. There are eight main actions to take each turn until you run out of resources, from placing tiles, to purchasing more resources, and placing animals in your jungle. There is a three-tiered waterfall in the game with four tracks on it that you move along to gain items, storage, and victory points. The game ends when all meeples of five different base animals have been depleted, then end game scoring begins based on the goal cards and waterfall tracks. The player with the most victory points wins.
In the midst of our first play, Mason asked if I liked Life of the Amazonia more than Cascadia and my response was a resounding yes! This game is amazing! Life of the Amazonia is a beautiful game with a nature theme that I am generally drawn to and enjoy. Building the jungle and figuring out how to get the most points from each goal card, as well as building up my resources to maximize my actions on each turn, made for thinky and engaging gameplay. Moving up the waterfall tracks to gain resources and, ultimately, gain victory points is a neat mechanism and so fun to play. The components are good quality and I highly recommend getting the upgraded chits, trees, and water lilies. Mason was so sweet and surprised me with the upgraded version of the game for my birthday, and the components are absolutely amazing and worth it, in my opinion.
We have played this game a few times and each time it ran about two hours long. I believe that we will be able to shave time off of our game play once we are more familiar with the rules, strategy, and cards. I have one criticism of the deck B base animal cards; the game recommends learning the game with these complete, pre-made decks but I disagree with playing with the complete B deck. Each of the end game goals in this deck deal with groupings of each of the animal types. It was far too much grouping and did not provide much variety in the end game goals. I had a hard time figuring out where to start with all of the groupings and it took a bit to settle into my strategy.
Other than those few things, this is a great game that I highly recommend especially if you enjoy Cascadia. Life of the Amazonia is engaging, beautiful, strategic, and super fun. I look forward to playing this with our game group, playing with the other base decks and unique animals, and future expansions.
