MY ISLAND by KOSMOS is the sequel to the fantastic MY CITY polyomino, tile laying, legacy game from designer, Reina Knizia.

Because it is a legacy, campaign style game, I can’t review it in the normal way. Legacy games are special as they develop over time, unlocking new content as you progress. And, as you need to play with the same group until the end of the campaign, it’s definitely a special game for the regular gamer(s) around your table.

I can give some details though – there are 24 games which are separated into 8 themed Chapters. The rules from one episode flow into the next which build up this immense and wonderful combination of placement restrictions and point potential.

MY ISLAND uses tiles made of hexomino shaped pieces. And unlike MY CITY where each piece is a single building type (colour), the tiles in MY ISLAND are a combination of any of the four terrain types in play (houses, fields, walls, and paths).

Like My CITY, other features get introduced and areas of the board become available as the game pays on via the Chapters mentioned above. You will be permanently marking and changing your personal player boards and so no two islands ever look the same!

Scoring happens both during and at the end of episodes. And depending on your final scores, you’ll be gaining VPs and adding features to your board with stickers that create that unique, evolving, ever-altered playing space.

Wonderfully, at the end of the campaign, once all 24 episodes have been completed, you can flip the legacy side of the board and there’s an eternal game to play and replay at your leisure.

With your own set of tiles and board to use, this becomes an efficiency puzzle – how best to score as many points as possible bearing in mind the goals and restrictions in effect during each episode. It’s also a game where there is no hate-drafting. You may get a little unsure as you work out where to place a piece so you may be tempted to look at what others are doing, but it won’t really matter. With the addition of stickers and your own aspirations, where you place a tile is going to have a different impact on where another plays slots theirs!

Another great thing about MY ISLAND is that there is a neat quasi-catch up mechanisms whereby those players who didn’t score the most in a game get something to help them in the next one. And the winner often gets something to make their next game more challenging. And that’s great for keeping the tension throughout the game.

MY ISLAND is also good in terms of replayability and sustainability which is unusual for a legacy game. Having something that we can go back to and enjoy as much as we did the journey to get us there is definitely unique and inspiring. And, although we aren’t there yet, we cannot wait to play the forever game!

We are really enjoying MY ISLAND and it is a huge hit around our table.

This blog was written by Favouritefoe