The Gone-Over Board

In Newton, I love it when I have to end each round with an increasingly agonizing decision.

Newton is the new-ish Eurogame on the block. You’re all playing scientists trying to follow in the footsteps of Newton, and each turn you get to play a card in your hand that decides which action you get to take. That might be adding a card to your hand, covering up spaces on your personal board, or a number of other things. Regardless, a given round gives you five turns and you really need to make them count by using the cards with both the right sequence of actions and the best side benefits.

And then you get to the end of the turn, whereupon you must decide which of the five cards you will lose forever. There is a side benefit to which card you pick, but the particular action it allows you to do and the resources it bestows are lost to you for the rest of the game. The pain is especially acute when it’s a card you managed to nick under someone else’s nose, a shining prize you were hoping to keep in your arsenal for the entire game, but suddenly it can become the least needed tool and a target for a timely sacrifice.

The pain of sacrifice on each succeeding turn mounts, because it’s likely with each trip to the market that your cards are doing cooler things and parting that much more full of sorrow.