Emboscados / Ambushed TGM Editora - 2020
You’re the secret guardian of one kind of predator and one kind of prey in the woods. You must position prey cards in the predator columns in order to feed as much prey to your predator as you can, while protecting your prey from all the others.
But prey of the same kind interact with each other, either reproducing or fighting, and you also have 3 single-use special cards, so there’s a lot of opportunities for clever plays in this small 55-card game.
Emboscados has been a sleeper hit in Brazil, from a modest launch in 2020, it won popularity amongst gamers in 2021, and was later published in Spain and Latin America. It is being played today much more than in its beginnings.
I’m still delighted to see how much this unpretentious card game lends itself to multiple plays without losing its interest. Matches are quick and the combinations of special cards you get allow for a lot of surprise and variation from game to game.
2 to 5
10-20 min
10+
Cubo de Ouro’s Best Brazilian board game of 2020 (nominee)