Faraway

The pitch is simple enough to say in one sentence: you draft cards left to right into your row, but you score right to left, so the last card you draft is actually the first one that counts. Simple to say, genuinely disorienting the first time you play it. My first game with this was a bit of a mess, honestly, I kept optimizing for the wrong end of the row and paid for it on the scoring pass. That’s not a knock. It’s the game doing its job.

Once it clicks, and it clicks fast, this becomes one of my favorite fifteen minute games. Every draft pick is doing double duty, does this card help the engine I’m building toward the front of my row, and does it also meet whatever condition the cards behind it are demanding. The tension in a single pick can be surprisingly real for something this short. I’ve had turns where I sat there longer than the game’s own pace really wants, which some people at my table have ribbed me for, weighing a card that helps two different scoring conditions against one that fully completes just one of them.

Where I’ll dock it slightly is player interaction, or the lack of it. Outside of drafting the card someone else wanted, you’re mostly playing your own puzzle in parallel with the table, and a couple of plays in a row of that without a break can start to feel a little quiet for a game night that wants more table talk. It’s not trying to be a negotiation game though, so holding that against it too hard feels like judging it for something it never promised.

It travels well, teaches in under five minutes once you’ve got the reverse scoring gimmick down, and I’ve gotten north of thirty plays out of my copy without it going stale. That’s a good filler doing exactly what a filler is supposed to do.