Base price: $24.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Switchbacks was provided by Allplay.
Another Monday, another pair of reviews! This week we’re largely diving into some quicker games, though that’s been the case on and off for some time. Unfortunately, it’s currently 90+ degrees in my photography space, so it’s been a little difficult for me to get new photos done. It’s being addressed in its own time and season, mostly by waiting for it to get dark (challenging during the Seattle summer) or waiting for it to get cool (challenging considering it’s getting warmer a lot of places on the West Coast). Neither are great options, but we’re doers. So here’s another game I reviewed: Switchbacks! For y’all outdoorsy types.
Switchbacks is a game of hikes and trails! Players are charting a course through a complex terrain where the elevation can change wildly to try and find safe and fun paths to hike. Ideally, you’d find yourself on a gradually sloping upwards or downwards trail. Too significant of an elevation change and you’re suddenly all over the place, falling down a hillside. Naturally, that’s not ideal. Just be careful! Where other players are concerned, those elevation changes can be a bit steeper than you thought…
Contents
Setup
Make the board, first:
Shuffle the elevation tiles, turing one face-up and placing it in the center of the board:
Each player gets one face-down tile to set aside that only they get to look at. In a two-player game, each player gets two tiles. Either way, then you get a certain number of hikers, based on player count:
- 2 players: 16 hikers each
- 3 players: 11 hikers each
- 4 players: 8 hikers each
Don’t stack them; just spread them out. Deal each player three tiles to form their starting hand, then choose a player to go first; you’re ready to start!
Gameplay
This one’s pretty easy. Each turn, you have to place a tile! You can place a tile anywhere, but your goal is to try and make paths of at least four consecutive numbers.
Either way, once you’ve placed a tile, you can either Buddy Up two of your hikers (stacking them on top of each other) or place a hiker (or a buddied-up pair) on the tile you just placed. Note that you can’t buddy up three or more hikers into one bundle; three+ is a crowd. You can have more than one buddied-up pair at a time, though.
Once you’ve done that, draw another tile and then the next player takes their turn. This continues until all the tiles have been played. Now to scoring!
To score, first remove all non-scoring hikers. These are any and all hikers that are placed on tiles that aren’t consecutive sets of at least four tiles. All other hikers then score! Total up (one point per hiker) and the player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
A lot in this one! Two players is fundamentally zero-sum, in a lot of ways. You can play it cooperatively, but at a certain point, that will stop making sense. You can’t really both play to tie every time and still call this a competitive game, and also, your opponent may know things you don’t, and that might affect how you play. That said, if you play to completely screw each other, you’ll end up finding that a lot of the game comes down to who draws the tiles that they need to make a four-consecutive tile set on their own. That’s interesting, but not necessarily fun. Sometimes games are like that. I find that with more players, there’s a pseudo-cooperative thing happening where it actually benefits you to play nice with other people, provided they’re playing nice with you. If you work together with everyone, you might be able to score all of your hikers! Just, you know, any tile set that you’re not a part of doesn’t deserve to be scored. So you’re either scoring or scorning. It’s nice. I tend to prefer Switchbacks with more players as a result.
Strategy
- You can play somewhat defensively by placing tiles in spots that are pretty open (hard to block). When a tile has at least four open spots next to it, there’s not a lot your opponent can do to prevent you from connecting to that on a later turn. When you have two tiles that only have one adjacent space between them that you need to connect to score, that’s where you’re going to get blocked.
- Naturally, blocking your opponent is a thing you can do with your tiles, but also focus on scoring points. In a two-player game, these things are functionally equivalent, but with more players, you might not want to bother picking on one person in lieu of actually scoring. The other players will outpace you.
- Buddying up is a great way to pass a bad turn, but eventually you’re going to have to pay the piper and place those hikers. You can’t stall forever. That said, if you have a better lay of the land later in the game, stalling might have been worth it.
- At higher player counts, participating in groups is a great way to score points. You want to be everyone’s friend. You always want to be scoring, so help every player score their own hikers. There’s some tension that will result from some tiles being out of the game or used for other things, so try to let that resolve naturally. Either way, if all of your hikers are scoring, you’re golden.
- You also want to block groups that you’re not a part of. Significantly better than just going after one player’s tiles. Hating on other players en masse isn’t inherently bad, either. You’re just trying to make sure if there’s a group of the other three players in a four-player game, it’s extremely to your benefit that all of them don’t score a hiker at least once. Try to make that one happen.
- You have access to secret information which may or may not be relevant. Try to make it as relevant as you can. Sometimes it’s extremely useful, like if you see players building towards a 7 and a 9 but you know the 8 is out of play. You can sometimes let players set themselves up for a fall if you’re lucky.
- If you’ve already got a viable chain of tiles, place as many of your hikers on it as possible until someone stops you. Why not? It’s basically free points, at that point, for anyone who wants to join. If other players are helping you, it’s even easier.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- Anca Garvil clearly had a hand in the art for this game; it’s fantastic. It’s very fun for a bunch of tiles and the board looks great. The hikers look great too, though I have the deluxe upgrade, so that also helps.
- Not just the art, either; the color work for this game is phenomenal. A pleasure to photograph. It’s really nice to see a lot of the colors in a game, personally, but it also worked really well for photography. I love a game with a full range of color and it all really pops. Looks fantastic.
- I think there are many players who will enjoy the cutthroat nature of this game, especially given how quick it is. I think there are a lot of players who enjoy short and particularly aggro games. They’re not always … me, to be honest, but I don’t dislike them. I just need to be in the right mindset for all of it.
- Pretty portable and compact, which is always appreciated. I like these small Allplay boxes, to be honest. There’s a lot of game and I appreciate having a lot of small box options at home that I can take with me places.
- Rules-light games are becoming even more my wheelhouse lately (as I lack time to teach longer games), so this is a nice add. Even more important these days than small-box is low-lift games. I don’t always have the mental bandwidth to pick up a heftier game (though I play a lot on BGA, these days), and it’s much easier to get games to the table for a teach or a lunch game if they’re quick.
- Seattle is also fairly hiking-core, so hiking-themed games are a hit in many of my social circles despite not being an outdoorsy person in the slightest, myself. People really like hiking out here! I do not. But I can fake it for a board game, and I’m happy to do that. It’s all about social cohesion, I suppose.
- I appreciate the press-your-luck aspect of buddying up and trying to get a better placement later. It’s a nice way to save yourself from an underwhelming turn, and I appreciate that option.
Mehs
- If you’re not interested in a cutthroat game, you might want to look elsewhere. It can be a little mean! It kind of has to be, given how much blocking is a core driver of the gameplay, but if you don’t know that going into it, well, now you do. A lot of the smaller Allplay titles can be a little mean, to be honest: I feel like that’s a lot more tolerable from a short game than a long one. Long games that are extremely mean require a very specific type of player.
Cons
- I do find the two-player game underwhelming, just because it’s either essentially cooperative or luck. I wish there were a cooperative mode, to be honest. Cooperative would be nice! I’m not entirely sure how it all would work, but having something a bit less cutthroat (or luck-driven, at low player counts) would be nice.
Overall: 7.25 / 10
Overall, I think Switchbacks is fun! Granted, it’s a pretty cutthroat little game, so you need to be emotionally prepared for that sort of thing, but it’s also a pretty fast cutthroat little game, so that goes a long way in its favor, in my opinion. Also helping it out is some truly striking color work and art on the game, continuing a storied tradition of Allplay’s little boxes having some really great visuals. It’s a good look, pun intended. I think this entire sub-group (games like this, Mountain Goats, Sequoia, et cetera) is a solid set of entry-weight games for a lot of players, and the striking art and quick, interactive gameplay is going to be a hit for them. Granted, the theme helps a bit, I imagine, though as a non-hiker it doesn’t really do anything for me. I can appreciate it, but still not going to get me going out. Regardless, you might find most success with this at higher player counts (3 – 4), so if that’s your preferred group it might be more worth that size to play. I like my cutthroat two player games as much as the next guy, but even then I find that there are other games that appeal to me more in a similar way than this ended up doing at two players. It was another one of those games where you finish it up and you’re like “oh, that was interesting”. Not bad! Just, at four, I finished up and said “oh, that was fun”. And you see the difference there. That first impression does a lot. Either way, if you enjoy a hiking-themed game, you love some good art, or you’re just looking for a quick board game to break out, I’d recommend trying your hand at Switchbacks! I had fun.
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