Favelas Board Game First Impressions

Posted on February 14, 2018 by Jesta ThaRogue

Painting the Favelas in Brazil to make them look pretty by laying tiles on other tiles.

Probably the brightest tile laying, area control game you’ll ever see!

The iconic favelas of Rio de Janeiro! These stacked and ever-evolving neighbourhoods are home to many people who stand to benefit greatly from this infusion of money, modernization, and beauty.

The bad news is that the council who will approve the funding is fickle and constantly coming back with notes which alter the value of the colours that are used in this beautification.

Favelas Review

My first impressions of Favelas include a brief overview of gameplay followed by my positives and negatives and a final summary.

TL:DR Draft coloured tiles into your Favelas and manipulate the value of those colours to maximise points.

Update August 2018

This is one of those games that I remember fondly, but I don’t actually remember the game. I know I like it I just don’t remember it at all.

So I rewatched my own video and I very quickly remembered. Doing a thing to affect the value of a die reminds me of Biblios. I didn’t like that game, I thought it was dull and repetitive.

Favelas wasn’t. It was competitive and interesting. You have to look at other player’s boards to see where you are colour-wise. Also, you need to see if you can hate draft 🙂 Not something I enjoy doing but you have to do what you need to in order to win, right?

Tile laying is always fun and laying tiles on tiles is fun too. I like having to think about where I’m placing things in relation to how I may need to build on them later.

NMBR9 does this really well but that’s more of a puzzle than Favelas.

It’s a good theme and the final board looks like the real thing. Now all of the Favelas are painted in these bright colours but those that are looking really good.

I’m sure they’re not great living conditions but at least from the outside, they’re very pretty.