Benevolent Review

boardgamequest.com:

Benevolent is a game where players are in a magical forest to respect its guardians and to gather their 5 different gift tokens to win.

I used to regularly go camping at the boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada. It was very hard not to appreciate what nature provides like food, shelter, and even fuel for a fire. It also taught you to respect it like when you’re fishing in the shallows from your canoe and a moose bellows to let you know that he doesn’t like you in its “spot”. You’d better paddle toward deep water as quickly and quietly as you can before it decides to stomp, kick, or charge you and your toy boat.

This brings us to today’s review Benevolent where you’re heading out to a magical forest to respect its guardians and to gather their 5 different gift tokens to win. Benevolent is for 2-4 players and plays in about 20 minutes.

Players will take turns starting with the first player and a player can move and then take an action on their turn. When a first player moves, they place one of their 4 remaining footsteps on any space on the player board. There are two things to note on their subsequent turn moves. Players must place their footprints adjacent to their footprints on the player board and cannot place a footprint on a space they already have their footprint on. Other players or gray footprints on the player board do not affect your movement.

After movement, players can perform an action and have two choices: perform the hex’s action on the player board or gather 2 leaves. Before players take a Hex action, they must pay 1 leaf for a gray footstep and for each other player’s footsteps on that Hex. If the player selects not to take the Hex action they do not pay other players if they have footsteps on the Hex and the actions you can take are as follows:

When a player collects each of the 5 different gift tokens Clover, Feather, Crystal, Amber, & Figurine, then the game ends immediately and that player wins.

Benevolent is easy to learn and is fast to