If you've been following my blog or my reviews at all, you've probably picked up that I LOVE deckbuilders and that Goblivion (check out the review and playthrough) was one of my surprise favourite games of 2019, making its way to my number four solo game of the year. Well, when I heard that the wonderful Jean-François Gauthier was launching a new and improved deckbuilder on Kickstarter, it was a must-back for me! I've had the game for about a month now and it has gotten to the table a lot. That's one of my favourite thing about both of these games is their quick set up and play time. Rather than just making a new Goblivion with a few gameplay and component tweaks, Gauthier created a game that was a completely different type of deckbuilder.
Goblivion feels familiar as a castle defense game. Enemies come closer and closer to your castle and you need to train your troops to take them on. In Dinoblivion, the premise and execution is much different. You are a cave-person tribe attempting to survive in a prehistoric jungle (I don't know how accurate to history this is, but I'm suspending reality a bit because it's a board game). Dangers include dinosaurs, opposing tribes, cannibals, and piranhas. You start off with a deck of ten cards (nine standard and one variable chief card) and you use these to build up your tribe. You need to collect and manage various resources: food, dinosaur pets, and new babies. Food and babies allow you to "purchase" new cards: items and tribes-people, respectively.
