Players: 1-4
Works well with just 2: Yes!
Solo quality: very good
Age: 12+
Playtime: 70-110 min
(but once you know the game, it’s at most 60 min for a 2-player match)
Gnomes and guardians and magical bonfires, plus mystical islands you need to reach by boat…
It’s a fantasy theme wrapped around a tight engine where players need to generate their own Action Tiles (and be clever about it), and then use those tiles to accomplish special tasks, rebuild their cities, rekindle the magic—all the while keeping an eye on dwindling resources.
I don’t care for the theme (which makes the game a bit more difficult to grok than it should be), but the mechanics are fantastic, the components beautiful, and the tension genuine: you always want to do five different things at once. Bonfire is a typical Stefan Feld design, where points come at you from every direction, but which requires some serious optimization if you ever hope to emerge victorious.
Beware, though, that Bonfire is not an entry-level game: while each rule is simple to understand, putting them all together into a coherent strategy can be overwhelming for newcomers, at least in the first couple of games.
But it’s all well worth the effort.
Most easily forgotten rule: You can’t play a Fate Tile if you hold more than 1 Action Tile. (You can discard down to 1 if you want, though.)
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