One of the games we brought back from Spiel Essen 2024, Fairy Ring is a neat, fast-playing card drafting game from Repos Production. It's designed by Laurence Grenier and Fabien Tanguy, with attractive art by Maud Chalmel.
The game is played over just two rounds of card drafting. You have a hand of cards showing various mushrooms, you take a card (keeping it initially face down) and you pass the other cards to your neighbouring player. The cards players have selected are simultaneously revealed and you position your card in your tableau, either to the left or right of mushrooms already there or, if the mushroom matches one you already have, built on top of that mushroom. The cards all show a movement value, and you move your fairy around the 'ring' (the mushrooms in all the players' tableaus) the number of places indicated by the number of the card you selected. The various mushroom types give points when any player's fairy lands on them but if you have that same mushroom in your own tableau you get the points on your mushrooms.
When you're making your choice over which card to draft, you'll be conscious of where the movement is likely to take your fairy - tho' unless your are the first player this turn you will also need to weigh up the possibility that players will add mushrooms that widen their tableaus and so affect where your movement will take you... You also have to weigh up whether it's best to go for a wide tableau where there's more chance of players landing on your mushrooms or a narrower tableau with taller mushrooms that give you a lot more points when anyone lands on them.
This all makes for a highly entertaining family-friendly filler length game that's interactive without being 'take that'. If a player has gone all-in on tall high points value mushrooms, approaching them can feel a bit like entering the side of the Monopoly board where a player has built hotels on Mayfair and Park Lane (Boardwalk and Park Place in the US Atlantic City version). There are no pernicious dice rolls but of course you could be handed a Hobson's Choice of cards that afford you no 'safe' movement options.
You have the option to play with objective cards that reward players that meet those objectives. These add more variation between plays and going for an objective can help to direct a player's strategy.
Fairy Ring says 2-4 players at the box but it's definitely at its best with three or four players. And tho' the box gives a 40-minute playing time, our plays at Board's Eye View have mostly run to around 20 minutes, even with a full complement of four players.