🌍 NEW EARTH
⭐3/10
Players: 1–5
Playtime: approx. 45–60 minutes
Difficulty: Light / Medium
Game type: Family / Strategy / Engine Building
Mechanics: card management, engine building, action optimization, light interaction
New Earth makes a fantastic first impression. The board is beautiful, the colors are easy on the eyes, and the theme of rebuilding the world after a catastrophe sounds exactly like my kind of game. That’s why it stings a little more to say that… it didn’t work for me at all.
After several plays, I know it wasn’t bad luck or the wrong group. This game is heavily built around negative interaction — and that’s simply not what I’m looking for at the table.
🎯 What is this game about?
In New Earth, players take on the roles of clan leaders rebuilding a ruined Scotland (or Ireland in the alternate map). You place tiles representing farms, power plants, and settlements, fight for control of castles and cathedrals, complete missions, and score points.
On paper, everything looks elegant: development, spatial planning, area control, and multiple paths to scoring. In practice, I quickly felt that instead of building something of my own, I was stuck in a constant race and tug-of-war over key spaces.
🃏 How does a turn work?
Each turn is simple and fast. You place one tile on the board according to its terrain rules. You immediately score points for groups of farms, power plants, or settlements, and if you place a tile next to a castle or cathedral, you trigger additional effects. Then you draw a new tile and pass the turn.
Mechanically, everything runs smoothly and is very easy to read. The rulebook is short, logical, and genuinely well written. The issue isn’t the rules themselves — it’s the kind of behavior those rules encourage at the table.
🧩 What do I like about this game?
🌍 Visual presentation – the board is genuinely beautiful, clear, with well-chosen colors and solid, aesthetic components
🧠 Landscape-building concept – grouping farms, power plants, and settlements is satisfying and has that classic Knizia-style mathematical elegance
📐 Clean design – the rules are clear, logical, and easy to explain to new players
📄 No rules bloat – the game isn’t drowning in exceptions or micro-rules; everything feels tightly designed
💀 What didn’t I like?
⚔️ Negative interaction is central – disrupting other players isn’t optional, it’s essential
🏰 Castle takeovers – adding more tiles lets you remove an opponent’s castle from the board; mechanically sound, emotionally exhausting
⛪ Cathedrals = missions – cathedrals are practically the only way to get mission cards; being blocked means losing access to a major scoring path
😓 Pressure over satisfaction – instead of developing my own strategy, I was constantly watching who was about to take something away
🌱 Not my style – as someone who loves calm engine-building and optimization, I mostly felt stress and frustration instead of joy
🏆 How do you win New Earth?
The game ends once all players have placed all their tiles. From that moment, only one thing matters: who scored the most points during the game and at the end.
You score points in several ways:
immediately, by adding farm and power plant tiles to your own groups (the larger the group, the more points)
for settlements once they are fully completed — points go to the player with the most houses
for ports, if you build settlements next to them (small but frequent points)
for castles you control at the end of the game (5 points per castle)
for cathedrals, which allow you to draw mission cards
for mission cards, which score additional points at the end (often for specific board layouts)
The player with the most points wins.
In case of a tie:
on the Scotland map, the player controlling the Edinburgh castle wins
if still tied, control of the Stirling castle decides
In practice, this is a game about controlling key locations, timing your tile placement well, and being in the right place at the right time — often at the expense of someone else’s plans.
☕ Final thoughts
New Earth is a very pretty game, mechanically solid, and… completely not my style. Instead of enjoyable competition, I felt constant pressure and the need to play “against” others rather than for myself. I simply prefer board games that reward good decisions instead of forcing me to guard every space from other players. If I were to play it again, I’d need to be in a very different mood.
🎯 Final score: 3/10
🌍 NEW EARTH — visually stunning, but for me too sharp, too aggressive, and not satisfying enough. For fans of direct confrontation — absolutely. For me? Definitely not.
What about you? Do you enjoy mechanics that allow taking over areas and castles, or do you prefer a bit more board game peace of mind? 🌿
