Intro
Fire Tower is a 4 player versus game. The goal of the game is to be last tower (or team) left standing.
This is carried out by manipulating the Eternal Flame in the center of the map to spread its fire to your enemy’s corner of the map. If the fire reaches a corner of the map, that player is defeated.
Fire Tower Setup
To get started:
- Place the bag of gems in a central location
- Shuffle and deal 5 cards to each player
- Roll the Wind Direction die and mark the result on the compass
How to Play Fire Tower
Each turn the players will do the following actions:
- Place a gem according to the wind direction
- Play one card
- Draw a card
- Or, instead of playing/drawing a card, you can discard and draw any amount up to your hand size
The cards are better described than anything I could type here. They even come with handy pictures!
The only thing you need to remember is that you can’t use fire cards on gems inside a tower, and that the tower can only be extinguished once with the bucket.
Game End
Once there is a last tower (or team of towers) standing, the game is over and the remaining players win!
Conclusion
I find this game to be very fun. I actually met the designer back in 2019! He was super cool, and made sure that we could play our hearts out before I ended up buying it. Check it out on their site!
Overall, the mechanics are solid, and it’s a great game for anyone who’s nervous about your giant collection on the wall. Super easy to set up and understand. Another game that is easy to setup get going is Splendor, which I did a review on!
One problem I’ve had after many, many playthroughs is that whoever is losing at the start of the game ends up getting ganged up on and knocked out in a few turns.
Because of this, I have some house-rule suggestions that might fix this…
8.1337 out of 10
BREAKGEEK.COM
Underrated
Try Fire Tower a Different Way!
You might notice after a few runs that one poor soul gets knocked out in a few rounds in. Try some of these house rules to reignite the spark of this game!
- Team battles only: The game is only played 2v2, either on opposite corners, or each time on one side of the board.
- Fire under your seat: The first time that fire is placed on a Tower, if no other players have fire on their Towers, that player takes two turns.
- Angry Spirits: Eliminated players draw the top card on their turn, if it is a fire card, place one fire gem connected to any other gem on the map, regardless of wind direction.
- Well Hydrated: Use any water card as a bucket
