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Epic Resort game review: Build your own fantasy resort
Epic-Resort-Box-Cover
Build your own fantasy resort and attract tourists and fantasy heroes to earn victory points. - photo by Ryan Morgenegg
Epic Resort is board game with a fresh and original theme. Players represent vacation resort owners trying to attract tourists and fantasy heroes to come and spend time and money. Players score victory points by providing rest to fantasy heroes such as the paladin and barbarian all the while upgrading and maintaining resort locations.

The player who can best manage his or her resort and earn the most victory points, wins the game, but be careful of the monsters. They might appear on the next ship coming to the island and theyre hungry, very hungry. They like to eat tourists, and if there are none available they can be very destructive. Chomp. Smash.

The variety of popular game mechanics that come together to tell a fun narrative about building a fantasy-themed resort is another great thing about this game. The ability to take actions in the game is tied to building a deck of cards that represent employees at the resort.

Employees can perform a variety of tasks including staffing resort locations, hiring more personnel, earning gold and protecting the resort from monsters. Players must develop a plan based on the cards they draw.

Gold and flair are the two mediums of income that can be spent to upgrade resort locations, hire new employees, attract more tourists or motivate heroes to come to a resort for rest. At the start of each turn, players draw five worker cards and decide which workers will go to work at the different locations at the resort. Each worker also has an ability it can perform. Players have to make tough decisions about whether to staff their resorts or use the special abilities of their workers.

After deciding what to do with workers, gathering income and spending income, a new ship arrives at the resort with exciting cargo. New tourists or heroes get off the boat, but the ship may also contain something more sinister: monsters.

A monster will attack the island and eat tourists, but it typically only goes after one player. The monster card indicates which player gets attacked and then crucial decisions must be made. If a resort has a hero, he or she can protect it but suffers health loss and may die. An unprotected resort is open for monsters to eat tourists or destroy resort locations. Unrested or dead heroes dont score points so resort management is crucial.

Epic Resort is a solid game with a great theme and fun mechanics.
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