Keep Your Enemies Close and Your (Fairy) Friends’ Secret with the ‘Fae’ Board Game
Fae is a competitive strategy game of keeping secrets, scrutinizing the actions of your foes, and rising to the top of fae society.
Fae is a strategy game of fairy secrets and magical rituals. Players work against each other towards similar goals. But this game has a twist; you don’t know exactly who your opponents are.
Fae
Originally released as Clans, Fae is a 2018 board game by Z-Man Games. The premise is relatively simple. Players each act and play as different factions of fairies. Each of this factions is working to bring together druids who will host rituals. Depending on the druids colors, they will give more power to the various fae factions. But each player’s faction is hidden from the other players.
This makes for a game where players have to try to be sneaky. In order to keep secret which team you’re trying to rack up points for, players will try to move a mixture of pieces into position in order to collect points for a variety of different factions. But while this is happening, players must also try to figure out which color the other team is on. Simultaneously, players must try to collect as many points for themselves, while keeping their own team secret, and figure out who the other team is and blocking them.
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How to Play
Despite the complex sounding concept and multiple levels of spy-work and deception involved in a game of Fae, the game is surprisingly easy to set up and play.
As we said, the concept of Fae involves players acting as different factions of fairies. These factions are represented by different colors, and each faction is trying to bring together druids who will begin rituals that will give them more power (or points) to the various factions. But in Fae everyone’s faction allegiance is kept hidden so players don’t know for sure who they are working against or helping.
To set up a game, players distribute all of the druid figures across game board, one of each color in each region. Then five scoring tokens are placed on the zero point on edge of board. Ritual cards are into divided into piles by their number, and each player is given a secret spirit card that will show which colored faction they have been assigned.
Turns in Fae involve moving all of the druids on any one space to any adjacent space. But remember, factions and colors are secret, so players can move any color druid, not just those of their own faction. Druids cannot be moved to an empty space; at least one other druid must already be in that space. Eventually you will have a large group of druids that cannot move at all and this initiates a ritual. A ritual card is pulled all factions present get points for beginning that ritual.
Rituals are worth a number of points equal to number of druids in that ritual, but terrain and effects listed on the played ritual card can effect score, both positively and negatively. Sometimes rituals are worth more points, sometimes they are stopped half-way and cannot be completed. The initiating player takes the ritual card, which will be worth one additional point at the end of the game.
Gameplay goes on like this until the final ritual card is played. Points are tallied, factions are revealed, and the player who’s earned the most points for their faction wins. In the event of a tie, the player with the fewest ritual cards wins.
What Kind of Game is Fae?
Fae is a board game that’s a little bit strategy, a little bit spy and detective work and a lot of strategy. Players work competitively against each other as opposed to cooperatively. Fae is meant to be played by two to four players, and games usually last about thirty minutes.
Is Fae Good For Younger Players?
Officially, this game is meant for players ten and older. Children younger than that may have a hard time with the secretive and deductive aspects of gameplay. But as always, you would know the children in your lives better than a game box. There’s nothing objectionable, mature, or inappropriate about Fae.
Is Fae Hard to Learn and Play?
Despite the depth and deception that Fae involves, it’s a surprisingly easy game to learn and play. Most of the game mechanics are a simple matter of taking turns moving tokens around the board. And the scoring system is a matter of tallying up your points as you go. The most difficult part of Fae is the social aspect of maintaining your poker face and keeping your fae faction secret.
Is Fae Still in Production and Available to Buy?
At this time, I can’t find Fae on the Z-Man Games site. And the Amazon listing for the game has nothing available for sale at this time. However, there are copies available on secondhand websites and places like eBay.
Clans is similarly difficult to find.
What Games are Similar to Fae?
Fae was produced by Z-Man Games. They are more well known for games like Pandemic, Citadels, Carcassonne, and Love Letter. While none of them are very similar, something like Carcassonne has a similar level of competitiveness and ease. That said, the game Clans is almost identical to Fae in most ways aside from the fairy inspired story and style.
Happy adventuring!
