Portals Review - Puzzley Abstract Brain Burner

Description provided by Board Stupid on YouTube:

We review the brand new abstract strategy game from CrowD games and designer Maxim Istomin, Portals! Portals ostensibly casts you as travellers between worlds, collecting magic keys and charging them to jump through portals, but really, it's an abstract game with funky art work. You'll be drafting various key cards which have symbols on them, unto which you will place stones of different colours. Once all the symbols on the card have been placed, the card is charged and can then be scored on one of the scoring boards you have access to! Portals does some clever stuff with drafting, with the keys being an open draft, and the stones and scoring boards being a limited draft and limited placement, as you can only access what's next to you on your left and right. The placement of your stones is super important as well, as you can score either for adjacency, or for just purely completing the card, but either way there is plenty of interaction through denial and blocking of stones so they don't score! What do YOU think of Portals? Do you like the way it implements it's mechanisms? Is the theme in any way important to an abstract in general? If you liked this video, do us a solid and please subscribe and leave us a comment to help us grow! Here's an affiliate link here to grab a copy of Moon, one of the BEST games of 2023. https://sinisterfish.com/?sld=boardstupid 00:00 Introduction 01:07 Overview 02:35 Gameplay 07:54 Production 09:17 Who it's for 12:05 Conclusion and Final Rating Our ratings: 5: Excellent Game. It's going in the collection, let's play it now! 4: Great Game. We would love to play it any time it’s suggested. 3: Solid Game. We would be happy to play it, but we wouldn't suggest it. 2: It’s an OK game. We would play it under the right circumstances. 1: Er... Have you got anything else we can play? Go look at lots of pretty pictures of our board games! You can find us on Instagram at instagram.com/boardstupiduk and we'd love a follow over there also! Did you know we've got a podcast? Find the Board Stupid Podcast WHEREVER you listen to your favourite podcasts! For all media or publisher inquiries, please email Wayne at ukboardstupid@gmail.com #boardgames #boardgaming #tabletop #boardgamereview