Newton & Great Discoveries

A great game let down slightly by a setting and theme that really could have done with a little more work. If you can get past how abstract things feel then you’ll find Newton to be an excellent, snappy and satisfying optimisation puzzle with varied and enjoyable strategic objectives. A relatively ‘easy’ game to learn but a tricky one to master - expect more than a few ‘Eureka’ moments along the way.

Newton
Designer: Simone Luciani, Nestore Mangone
Publisher: Cranio Creations
2022

How to Play:

(This review is of Cranio Creations most recent printing of Newton which comes bundled with the mini expansion Great Discoveries).

I’m going to have a good old moan later about the setting and theme in this otherwise excellent game but for now, imagine yourself as a ‘young scholar’ following in the footsteps of Newton – doing some work to get money, travelling around Europe, studying and making inventions and erm, putting books on the shelves of your library…

Newton, designed by Nestore Mangone and Simone Luciani, is played over six rounds with five turns in each round. Grab your starting hand of cards: each card will have a unique symbol on it representing one of the games five main actions (as well as perhaps showing a one-time bonus to take each time that card is played or alternatively showing books of a certain colour - more on those coloured books later).

Play a card onto your player board and take its action:

• Work: Move along a ‘work’ track, collecting coins as you go and perhaps even collecting other bonuses the further you move along the track.

• Travel: Move around a map of Europe visiting cities and Universities – placing a cube from your player board every time you visit a place. Clear enough cubes from your board and you will get some juicy VP at the end of the game. Careful though, you are going to have to pay coins of differing amounts as you move from place to place - but there will also be other bonuses along the way for your troubles!

• Technology: Move your scholar along a branching tree. Which path will you choose? Which bonuses do they offer? Maybe you might pick up more scholars as the game progresses and be able to take multiple paths. Either way, reach the end of an individual path to reach a strategic objective that will reward you with end game VP depending on how well you have performed during the game in relation to that particular objective. Again, bonuses aplenty for the taking as you traverse the tracks.

• Lessons: Gain a new card into your hand from the display. Perhaps there will be some powerful one time bonuses on it to claim each time you play the card (have I mentioned that there are lots of bonuses in this game?!?!!).

• Study: Your player board not only holds the cubes that you will use when taking that Travel action, not only doubles as you ‘desk’ where you slap down your cards to take your action but it also represents ‘bookshelves in your library’. Use this Study action to take ‘book’ tiles to cover up a library space on your board. You’re aiming to complete rows and columns of books to then be rewarded with VP at the end of each round and not just at the end of each game. You can only cover a space on your bookshelf though if you have visited the corresponding space on the main map during your ‘travel action’ or instead have the corresponding number of coloured books showing on the cards that you have played so far that round (remember I said that your action cards could have a onetime bonus or be showing coloured books on them).

• Joker: A wild action. Choose any of the actions already mentioned and do it again!

Play a card, take its action. 5 cards later it’s the end of the round. 6 rounds later it’s the end of the game. Well, other than….

• Tasty Twist #1: At the end of each round you have to take one of the cards you have played and remove it permanently out of your hand, tucking it under your player board so that its action symbol still peaks out from the bottom. You better believe that you are now going be needing to get new cards each round using that Study action as you will soon run out of cards to use if you have to keep burning them like this! Which card to give up though? Touch choices to be had!

• Tasty Twist #2: “Why not just discard those cards completely from the game at the end of each round and pop them back in the box?” I hear you cry! “Why tuck them under the player board so that the symbol of their action is still showing?” Well, each time you play a card on your turn the ‘power’ of that card = the number of times that symbol is showing anywhere on your desk – either from cards you may have previously tucked under your desk, other cards that you may have already played that round, or even the unique starting symbol that each individual player board has printed on it to give you a bit of a kickstart. So for example if I play a Travel card and its ends up being the only travel symbol showing on my desk, then I can travel one space on the map. If however I already have two other travel symbols showing as well as the one I am currently playing this turn then I am able to move three spaces on the map. Same with the Work and Technology tracks – move as many spaces as there are matching symbols on your player board. When placing Books in your Library the rows of you shelves are numbered 1, 2 & 3 and you’ve guessed it – you can only place books in the 2nd and 3rd rows if you have two or three 3 Study symbols showing on your player board – only being able to place in the lowly first row otherwise. Similarly when grabbing cards from the main display - grab a level 1,2 or 3 card depending on how powerful your current action is. You get the idea.

Play five cards per round, take their actions, discard one of those cards at the end of each round, grab new / different cards as you go, maybe specialise in one or more area in order to reach the end of individual tracks and reap their endgame VP rewards in addition to any other general VP that you accrued along the way as you pick up bonuses or successfully complete rows and columns of your bookshelves.

If there are a few other wrinkles that I have neglected to mention then there aren’t that many. This is a very clean and straightforward game. But as I will no doubt discuss, it's also splendidly interwoven with great depth.

Great Discoveries:

Originally available as a separate standalone mini-expansion, later printings of the Newton base game saw this Great Discoveries expansion included as standard. No major changes to the base game to report:

• New cards to add into the main deck for you to obtain during the game. Some show ‘double’ symbols meaning that when they are played or tucked into your player board they are going to be twice as strong. Some other new cards when discarded and tucked at the end of each round don’t display a symbol but instead have a distinct action / bonus that you can take each time you play a card in the same slot as that tucked card.

• Great Discovery tiles: As a free action at any time I can buy a serendipitously titled ‘Great Discovery’ tile of my choosing. It’s going to give me an ongoing bonus to use from that point forth as long as it remains face up. Tasty Twist #3: I can turn that same tile face down at any point to claim a chunky amount of VP determined by something that I haven’t yet done in the game (eg – gain 1VP for each travel cube you haven’t yet placed or ‘receive 1VP for each University you haven’t yet visited’). Do I keep the ongoing bonus going and going, or do I flip the tile over and gain immediate VP before that same VP starts vanishing as I go about my usual Newton business. Choices, choices!

Both modules can be added easily in and either exploited to their fullest or widely ignored. Do as you see fit! Neither feel essential but equally neither feel conspicuous by their presence.

Solo Headlines:

No separate solo rules. Yup, you heard me: no additional solo hurdles to clear once you have learned the same rules as everyone else. A nice bit of respite from having to learn two sets of rules which is so often the curse of the solo player! Here it’s just a case of playing Newton one handed - You against The Game.

Now any regular readers of my reviews might be keen to remind me that I quite often moan about solo modes that don’t replicate the competition for spaces and resources that a multiplayer game offers – robbing me of the exciting tactical pivots that another player ‘messing with my plans’ might bring. The thing is though, a picture of Newton would accompany the dictionary definition of ‘Multiplayer Solitaire’: if you were playing this with other players there might be some negligible claiming of a small bonus tile here and there, or perhaps some grabs of a card from the market that you had your eye on but in reality there is minimal to zero player interaction – you would simply just be sat in a group doing very much your own thing and seeing who managed to squeeze out the most points by the end.

…and ‘squeezing out the most points’ is absolutely the name of the game here (well Newton is the actual name of the game but you know what I mean). You’d certainly also find a picture of Newton alongside the dictionary definition of the phrase ‘Optimisation Puzzle’. Each time you play, the main board finds itself randomly set up with plenty and differing places, bonuses and strategic goals. Grab your player board and let’s see how well you can do.

…and by ‘how well you can do’ I mean of course how high you can score. This is a beat your own score game. Before those that don’t like BYOS solo modes run for the exit, I have to say that it works really well here. One of the comments over on my Instagram feed said “this game is really easy to play but really difficult to score well at” and they were not wrong. As with lots of other BYOS games, Newton gives you some arbitrary thresholds to try and reach but trust me, it’s going to take you a good long while to figure out how to reach 100 +points let alone the top goal of 120+. Newton is a game that is all about ‘figuring it out’ – wanting to play again and again to see if you can come close to those target scores.

The game itself feels really satisfying as a solo experience. The sheer simplicity of the available actions coupled with no artificial opponent to manage means that your turns zing by keeping you in a constant state of puzzle!

….don’t however mistake the easy(ish) rules and the shorter 30 - 45 minute play time as somehow meaning things are ‘light’. It might be straightforward to learn and quick to play – free from being complex for complex sake - but Newton has some genuine depth to it is decision making.

General Headlines:

Let’s get my main gripe out of the way before I talk about how much I enjoyed this game – and it’s a pretty big gripe albeit not about the actual mechanics. But we need to talk about the theme here, or more appropriately the lack of theme. Indeed the theme isn’t just lacking here - it feels in places like it has been totally abandoned. The game is called Newton which might lull you into thinking it’s got something to do with erm, Newton. But nope – a glance through the solitary eight lines of flavour text at the start of the rulebook tells you that you are a ‘young scholar’ following in the steps of Newton and that you will be do some travelling, learning some stuff, inventing some things and working hard (ok I am paraphrasing a little). I can sort of see on the map part of the board that I’m travelling around Europe and visiting places, can sort of see me building a library by putting books on a shelf, stretching my imagination somewhat by seeing me edging up a money track as somehow doing ‘work’ but I still remain baffled and confused by the big leafy tree that I am climbing to invent stuff. Maybe an apple tree, something to do with gravity? Hmmmm. I don’t think a huge amount would have been needed to lift the setting and theme here: Don’t make me a ‘young scholar’. Make me Sir Isaac Newton. Pepper the rulebook with historical facts about his life to pique my interest. If he wasn’t particularly well travelled maybe show his influence and reputation spreading out across Europe. Put some light flavour text on Invention tiles to name some of his most famous discoveries rather than just solely telling me that I get 2VP on an otherwise brown tile. It just needed a little more flavour to mask the abstract nature of the game. If Newton had been even a fraction less good to play then the lack of a coherent theme might have a been a deal breaker. But crikey - theme aside, this game is mechanically superb…

Some games I marvel and delight in the complexity of all the many, heavy moving parts. Other games I applaud the clean, simple effectiveness of its gameplay. Newton falls fully into the clean and simple (but devilishly addictive) category and wow is the card play / action selection in this game smooth and snappy. Play a card and take its action. Full Stop. No rules exceptions, no flicking through the rule book, no flow charts, no confusion. Just five simple actions – either move along the work track and gain coins, grab a new card into your hand, move along the study track to gain bonuses, travels around the map, or place books on your shelf. Play the card, take the action. So, so simple.

I say simple, but the devilish part of having to sacrifice one of your played cards at the end of every round and tuck it under your player board for you to take advantage of its symbol when powering up your actions on future turns is excellent. “I really don’t want to lose any of the cards in my hand but I have no choice. So which one to lose?! If I don’t have any other cards of that type in my hand and I get rid of it then I wont be able to take that action again unless I grab a new card in future. And I really liked the bonus action on that card and I don’t want to lose it. But I suppose at least its not totally gone and might help me power up a future turn.”

The balance of trying to create a scenario whereby each time you play a card you can multiply its power because of the careful relinquishing of cards in previous rounds is excellent. But there is no point in simply trying to spam one action over and over as everything in Newton feels interconnected. There is zero point in me just gaining more and more coins on a work track if I am not also looking at ways to spend them. I can’t just travel around freely, I am going to need those coins to do that. When I do travel I need to pay attention to where I am travelling too as if I was thinking about placing books on my shelves then where I am able to place them links directly to the places I have visited on the main map. Climbing the tree at the bottom of the board seems great but I only have one scholar who can move about – how can I get more? Of course - from doing the other stuff on the board. Each of Newton's specific areas of focus also have one or more strategic goals to try reach which are going to get me a chunk of end game VP. I’m not going to be able to reach them all but I definitely need to try and do as many as possible in order to score well – each one pulling on the other and creating those tasty “but I can’t do that yet because I haven’t done that other thing” moments. Every decision feels like it is impacting on something else that you might be able to do elsewhere. Everything feels interwoven.

I like a game that has a couple of free actions that can be used at any time and Newton has some up its sleeve. Those ‘Eureka’ moments (pun wasn’t intended but I am claiming it) where you have sat staring at the board longing to find a way to pull off a move, not being able to see how and suddenly realising that you can (for example) take three of the potions in your stash at any time and swap them for the thing that lets you get the other thing that you were needing. It always feels good - like I have gotten ‘one up’ on the game when it thought it had me beaten. But I also like just having to keep half an eye on those free actions – something else to have to juggle. Newton isn’t a game of combos. Don’t expect turns to explode into one giant turn of mini turns. Play a card, take an action. That’s it. But I have used the word bonus plenty in this review and I mention it again as they are everywhere and firstly they are just really satisfying - bonus for bonus sake. But more often than not, that bonus also lets you then do something on a later turn that you may otherwise not have been able to do. Those two coins now let you travel a space further that you may have previously thought. That extra scholar lets you now start on another track. The bonuses are everywhere, they are inherently satisfying and more often than not they are inherently useful.

Once you have set Newton up on the table and before taking a single turn or moving a single bit of wood you are going to be staring at the board for a good five minutes - your eyes flitting over every tile, every path, every goal, plotting and planning and figuring out a grand masterplan. Newton is about as strategic a game as it gets – deciding right from the off the two or three things that you are going to try and achieve by the end of the game, the track you want to max out, how you plan to max them out, which route you plan on taking on the map. Whether you are going to be able to make all the cogs move at the same time in order to achieve your plan is another question but that laser sharp strategic clarity before a single action has been taken is something I love in Euro games and Newton has it by the bucket load. Variability game to game feels excellent too. Each player board is very slightly different – having a different starting symbol on the board to kickstart one of your actions and possibly funnel you into approaching the game a little differently. The strategic goals are plentiful and randomly placed on the main board each game, the places to visit on the map again are randomly placed so that you doing get used to treading the same old trail time and time again. The bonus tiles that litter the boards change every game too. Its like you shake up a big giant Newton snow globe of game pieces, see how they land and then try to beat the game. Didn’t do so well? Shake it up and go again.

The spatial puzzle of placing books on your player board’s ‘library / bookshelves’ is also superb and a mini game of itself. This isn’t a case of ‘gain a book, place it anywhere on your board and the more you place the more points you get’. Instead you are attempting to complete rows or columns which then allow you to gain VP at the end of each round (a nice little VP engine to try and establish as early as possible) but you can only place a book in a space that matches a place that you have visited on the main map – and you better believe that the different places that you need to visit on the map in order to complete a row or column aren’t going to be close together. Groan. Not only that but being restricted on which row (1, 2 or 3) you can place in depending on the power of your current action adds even more to chew over. What a splendid jigsaw / crossword puzzle.

The Great Discoveries expansion doesn’t particularly change things up dramatically (and that’s a good thing). I liked the Great Discovery tiles a lot – purchasing them, gaining their ongoing bonus but most of all having to make the call on when to flip them for their VP as I start to eat into the VP by performing the actions that the tile is rewarding me not to do. A very simple but effective focus on timings. While I shuffled in all of the expansions cards into the main deck and I am happy to use them, I did mourn the loss of the base game's simple ‘here are 5 actions to use and nothing else, see how you fare’. The expansion's cards bring a couple of fun choices and new things to think about and they aren’t at all bad. But boy, did I particularly like how clean the base game was without them.

As a fan of heavier Euro games its often the case that by the time I get back around to playing a game that has lingered on the shelf for a good while that I am more likely than not to have forgotten the majority, if not all of its rules and face the prospect of a full relearn. Groan. With Newton however I feel that I have a game on the shelf that I can pull down at any time, have a quick cursory glance at the rulebook and then be up and running and playing quickly – the simplicity of its ruleset and action selection making it accessible yet satisfyingly deep at the same time. Learning the game? I’d probably put this right on the nose at medium weight. Playing it well? That’s a whole different question!

At a Glance:

+ Simple, straightforward and intuitive action selection – should be simple to get this one down off the shelf with ease after long periods away.

+ Particularly good solo if you don’t mind Beat your Own Score games.

+ The very definition of an optimisation puzzle, with some excellent strategic goal chasing.

+ Bonuses everywhere which feel inherently fun, but also inherently useful

+ Good variability game to game with the main board feeling different each play.

+ Snappy, satisfying turns and a quick play time of around 30 – 45 minutes.

+ Each area of the board feels interconnected with something else.

- The setting and theme here is more than a little abstract and really could have done with a little more work. It feels like a missed opportunity which does detract from an otherwise superb game.

Final Score:

8.5 out of 10 (this could easily have been a 9 out 10 if just a little more attention had been given to the setting and theme).

Reviewed after 9 plays.