BY SAGGYHEAD

1-100 player

20-30 mins

Welcome To… Your Perfect Home is a 1-100 player flip and write game that packs a lot of fun into a small box. I got this game as a cheap-ish game that can easily be played via video call, because in the current climate, that is exactly what we need. 

The game is set in 1950s America, and you are neighbourhood planners, putting up those delightful boomtown pre-fabs that were so popular at the time. Rows of picket fences, occasional pool and park. The definition of the ‘burbs. 

In this game the aim is to fill in every house with a number, these have to run from smallest to largest or largest to smallest across the street. Unlike in real life however, you are permitted to miss out house numbers as long as the street runs ascending or descending end to end. Imagine being a postie on streets where random numbers were just missed out. How annoying would that be! 1,2,4,5,6,7,9,11,15. No rhyme or reason. So if you like playing God with the lives of fictional neighbourhood postmen, then Welcome To might just be for you.

Of course, if it was just plugging in numbers it would be an easy game to “math out” and learn. But of course, that game would be a poor man’s Sudoku and would suck so hard I wouldn’t be writing about it. 

However, there is thankfully a lot more to Welcome To than just that. The cards that you flip have a number on one side, and on the reverse an icon which offers you other scoring options to progress. The cards are flipped in three stacks, so you get a choice of three numbers, each of which is paired with a scoring icon. 

The most basic of these actions is the fence. You are in a race against your opponents to try and complete housing contracts as quickly as possible. These require you to have sections of streets filled and fenced in. maybe three single houses and a set of six houses. Completing a contract first guarantees you the best of the sweet sweet points available. After someone has completed a contract, the card is flipped to reveal some measly few points that other people are able to take for their paltry performance. 

Building pools and parks guarantee you points, rising exponentially (mathematically not quite exponentially, but the more you already have, the more one more is worth!). So you want to be sure to build a lot of parks, and pools. You can only build a pool when there is a little pool picture above the spot for the number, which creates a bit of a logistical headache trying to make sure you building the pool doesn’t totally goose you up later. 

I would say that damage limitation seems to be the undercurrent to my playstyle. I am a “shoot from the hip” type player. I am rarely plagued by “analysis paralysis”, because mostly I don’t have the foresight to see future turns the majority of the time. This does mean that I am not usually one to labour over my turn, but it also means that I frequently make costly mistakes. 

This game is pretty unforgiving, if you mess up then you really have messed up save for one sweet “fix-it” mechanism. This is the Bis. Coming from the original French, this action allows you to write a duplicate number somewhere in your neighbourhood. Writing a 9B may help you to undo a previous mistake or indeed it could also help you with completing a fenced-in section for a contract. The pesky problem is that using a Bis will cost you points at the end. So you need to be sure that you make those Bis houses count to undo the negative points in end-game scoring. 

I really like this game, it has a lot more about it than first appears. When we have been playing, we have played a minimum of 3 games in a row. This has started to worry me as although the pad that comes with the game is 100 sheets, we have already played through almost a third of the pad. If you are like me, and a worrier about that last sheet situation then I recommend either getting the dry erase board, or laminating the sheets. Although beware that without trimming the paper prior to laminating, they will no longer fit in the box.

There are a bunch of expansions that all take the basic premise of the game and add some new aim that totally changes the way you play the game (and you can click here for Favouritefoe’s own review of these)

For me, they all have their place, but none of them replace the base game. I will happily play base game or an expansion and now they are laminated and trimmed so neatly, they fit into the base box neatly too! If you like the sound of Welcome To, and you really should, then be sure to give in a try for free on Board Game Arena and see what you think!

Saggy Score: 91/100

Likes: 

-Great game to play as a filler

-The write pad is gorgeous to look at and use

-Always three options to pick from

-Bit of a race to get the contracts as well as end game scoring

Dislikes:

-100 sheets might not be enough

– The flipping piles look a bit messy

– You will never get a perfect neighbourhood…

If you like this, you may also like: Cartographers, Patchwork Doodle, Welcome To Las Vegas