On the face of it, this looks like a routine abstract game: after all, the object is simply to be the first to get your two pawns across the board to the diagonally opposite square. Joseph Bugbee's TacTile tho' is not at all what it seems...
For starters, TacTile is played on a modular board: for each game you draw the red, blue, green and yellow tiles from a bag to build the randomised 6 x 6 grid on which you're playing (the tiles all have a distinguishing symbol on the back so the game is playable even for those who are colourblind). On your turn you get to take two different actions. Obviously you can Move one of your pawns orthogonally but you can also Gain a resource token that matches the colour of any tile on which you have a pawn. Your third option is to spend two tokens to Buy an action card from those in the six-card market display...
It's the action cards that turn TacTile into a remarkably clever engine-builder. Each card corresponds to one of the four tile colours and specifies a specific action: Move or Gain, both of which duplicate players' standard actions, or Push, which lets you move another player's pawn to an orthogonally adjacent tile. Each card shows the two token symbols needed to Buy it. When you Buy cards, they activate whenever you land a pawn on the corresponding coloured tile. With the cards, TacTile switches from being a simple colourful abstract race game to a strategy game where canny players will focus their Move actions so that they Gain the tokens needed to Buy cards that will enable them to chain together Moves and other actions. Tho' there's not a lot of 'take that' in this game, the Push action can be used to stymie an opponent's plans, and you can also physically block an opponent by camping a pawn on the tile on which they are keen to Move (for example, because its colour will let them trigger a cascade of card actions).
TacTile plays similarly with two or three players but with four it's played as a 2 vs 2 team game. In this mode, each player is allied with the player that is diagonally opposite to them and players have available to them the additional action of being able to Swap a card with their team mate. In addition, the game is won by the team that's first to get three pawns to the diagonally opposite side of the grid, not all four. This opens up the option of a team using one of its pawns simply as a sweeper to frustrate the other team. If your games play out like ours at Board's Eye View, you'll find the four-player game develops a very different feel from the two- and three-player modes, adding to the strategic options and making greater use of Push actions, both to adversely affect an opponent and to better position a team mate...
Shown here on Board's Eye View is a preview prototype of TacTile produced by the Friendly Bee Game Company for their crowdfunding campaign. The campaign is already live on Kickstarter so click here to check it out now. Tho' we've so far only had a short time with TacTile it's already become a popular choice with the Board's Eye View team, and at all player counts!