Uluk - Painted Up
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Board Games - I love big chunky miniatures. Uluk has some really nice idols that are simple to paint up and look great on the board.
From the publisher:
Elders say that our world is a fruit of the sacred uluk tree. No humans have ever stepped on this magical land, and you are the leaders of its hunter-gatherer tribes of sentient animals, collecting food, developing inventions, and erecting monuments in honor of the ancient gods to fulfill their spiritual needs. The winner in this competition will ensure happiness and well-being for their tribe members, and he or she will be praised as the arch leader of all the tribes!
The goal of the game is to have the most Happiness Points at the end of the sixth round (season). There are several different ways to score points, but the most important activity in the game is to send your tribe members (called here "tribers") to various spaces on the main board and take actions corresponding to them.
Uluk mostly makes use of the classic worker placement mechanics. The players send their tribers to spaces on the main board to build monuments and gather raw resources. The resources gathered are stored on each player's tribe board and may then be processed into food. Feeding your tribers brings you HPs and lets you win the game after the sixth season. A single season is divided into six phases in which the players take their actions in a clockwise order:
Errand phase - place your tribers on the main board
Harvest phase - gather resources from the main board
Processing phase - process raw resources from your tribe board into food
Feeding phase - spend food on feeding your tribers
Ecology phase - adjust the harvest levels (quantity of resources available) on the main board
Clean-up phase - build monuments and prepare for the next season
Developing inventions (in the form of invention cards with different symbols) enhances the effectiveness of your food processing, and collecting sets of different symbols brings extra points at the end of the game.
