Wispwood, one of the latest releases from CGE, is a simple tile-laying game. On a turn, you choose a wisp tile from a central board, which provides a choice between two polyomino shapes to add to your forest/grid. You form the shape you picked with tree tiles (which are the back of the wisp tiles) from the supply and the selected wisp tile.

The game is played over three rounds. Your grid size is limited to 4×4 in the first round, 5×5 in the second round, and 6×6 in the third round. After each round, all tree tiles are removed from the grid, while the wisps remain, and you will have to place tiles around them in the following rounds.

Scoring happens after each round based on five cards: four for the different types of wisps and one for your trees. There are multiple cards for each scoring condition to increase variety.

The gameplay is quick and quite fun. The game does an excellent job of limiting options and creating a focused decision space for each turn. Most of the time, everyone knows what they are looking for by the time it’s their turn to pick a wisp. The display of wisps does not refresh after every turn, so the options become more limited until only one type of wisp is left or the display is empty.

A clever mechanic helps players out of tough situations. Each player has a cat token that can be flipped to take one of two possible actions: refresh the wisp board, or take a wisp and choose any polyomino shape instead of the two usual options. Another great feature is that tiles are used in two different ways, which makes shuffling easier and less important than in many other games in this genre.

Wispwood also includes a simple solo mode with multiple difficulty levels. Each type of wisp scores a certain number of points for the bot. On the bot’s turn, a random token determines which wisp it takes. You simply place that tile next to the bot’s board and then proceed with your turn.

This game has excellent artwork that works well with the theme. The production quality is also great, with thick cardboard for the tiles and game pieces. A great quality-of-life component in the game is the cardboard pieces for each player to measure the size of their forest without having to count the tiles.

Overall, Wispwood is a great tile-laying game. If you do not like this genre, it is unlikely this game will change your mind. However, if you enjoy tile-laying games, you will likely have a great time with this one.

Disclosure: We received a review copy of this game. Also, there may be an affiliate link in the links included at the end of this article.