Review: Welcome To...

Its post World War 2 and as the world is being put back together there is a baby boom going on in the United States. The 1950s was a time of incredible growth and building in the US. You are going to be one of the architects that is helping to build out the suburban sprawl in your city. Welcome To... designed by Benoit Turpin and published in 2018 is a fun flip and write game for 1-100 players.

I'd like to start off with a definition of Flip and Write. There is a whole genre of games in the "... and Write" category. There is roll and write which was pioneered by Yahtzee where you roll a die or dice and write the result in a score sheet using some strategy of where you put the score. This concept has advanced with new games like Voyages where you are actually moving across a map. This then brings us Flip and Write this is the same basic concept except rather than some dice you are flipping cards over and using those to determine your actions.

The setup of the game is super easy which will come in handy if you have 99 guests over for a game. There are 3 cards that are flipped these are the city plan cards. These will give you a bonus at the end of the game if you complete the pattern. the first person to complete the pattern on the card gets a higher bonus. The next part of setup is to divide up the construction cards in to three equal piles and place the number side up. Pass out sheets and pens to everyone and you are ready to go!

To start the first turn you will flip over one card from each of the 3 construction card piles you made. That will result in there being 3 combinations of the number side up and symbol side up. The combination of the top card of the deck and the one you just flipped over is what you will use to play on your player sheet. Each player picks one combo and marks it down.

The setup of the game is super easy which will come in handy if you have 99 guests over for a game.

Each of the player sheets has three rows of empty houses on the top half. This is where you will mark your number. The houses have to be in ascending order left to right on each row. If you put a 2 on the first house in a row you cannot put a 1 in that row anymore because it would have to be to the left of the two to be in number order. The symbol part of the combination is an action you may take during this turn. There 6 different actions like building a pool, a park, a fence, adding value to a estate, decrease or increase the number associated with this action, or duplicating a number on your card. So depending on the combination (number/action) you pick you then write both down on your player sheet and your done with the turn.

The bottom half of the score sheet is where you track all of you points. At the end of the game you total each column and then the bottom row you subtract and add the points together to get you final score. The fences in the game group your houses into estates. You will score based on the estates you have that have a fence on both sides (in a row) and all the houses in the estate have a number on them. Estates are the heart of scoring in this game.

There are a lot of expansion with many themes like Halloween, summer, winter and outbreak.

There is a single player version of the game that works almost identically to the multiplayer version and its still fun to play. I can't finish up with out talking about the eco-system this game has. There are a lot of expansion with many themes like Halloween, summer, winter and outbreak. There is a companion app that you can use for scoring rather than using all the sheets of paper. Also available is a pack of dry erase versions of the score sheets and of course there is a playmat to make setup even easier.

Welcome to is a great light weight game that plays well with 1 or many (we didn't test 100 players). It plays fast and sets up quick and easy. If you have the playmat most of the rules are on it for everyone and it comes with very informative player guide sheets. If you are looking for a quick fix before the main event or just want to play something easy on a week night that offers light strategy and puzzly aspects then Welcome To is for you!

Players: 1-100

Year Published: 2018

Recommended Ages: 10+

Time to Play: 25

Transparency Statement

A copy of Welcome To was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games by Deep Water Games for to donate to our local Library and we played it in preparation to explain it to the board game club we setup at the library.