Sometimes you are pulled into a game for a completely random reason, like the box cover artwork. Other times, you are pulled in by the actual game illustrations, which is what happened with me and “Brew” by Stevo Torres, out now from Pandasaurus Games.

Brew is an area-control game involving dice and cards, that players will use to control cute fantasy animals and collect ingredients to make potions. So cute! So chill!

Not so much. That’s where the area-control comes in. Players are all fighting for control of the forest, represented by a number of cards (depending on player count) that go out every round. Each card has 3-5 spaces on it for forraging for ingredients or for training an adorable animal, that will give each player a unique power to use. Whoever has the most dice of their color on the card wins control of that forest and gains those points at the end of the round. If there is a tie, no one gets the forest card and it is discarded.

Each player has 4 dice in their color, and then 2 element dice, which have their own uses, such as the fire dice’s ability to be placed on another player’s die already in a forest, making it null and void when it comes to area control.

The potion cards are available for players to brew, after they’re aquired the right ingredients, and then use for the card benefit later, which usually involves messing with the other players, like switching dice, rerolling your own dice or “burning” a space in a forest, making it so no one can place a die there.

There is also a village board where dice can be placed, in which players can do differing things, such as train a creature, gain an ingredient and remove all element dice from forests. The village board changes from day to night at each round, flipping over and having new spaces for players to use.

The cute creatures were already mentioned, and the artwork for the character cards – each player will also get an ability unique to them – are just as cute. The cuteness of the art distracts from the fact that this is a cutthroat game. Each player is actively trying to mess with the others to get control of the forest card. Each three-player game I played had each of us scrambling for control, and control changing from turn to turn based on what potion, dice and what animal someone had. If you don’t mind actively playing against the other players to victory, you will enjoy this. If you prefer a more hands-off approach to gaming, with little to no player interaction, you won’t. I tend to lean toward the latter, but I still enjoyed playing it, especially if you get the right players who take it all in stride.

“Brew” is for 2-4 players and has an estimated play time of 45-90 minutes, which seems about right. It is for ages 10 and up, and that depends entirely on how cutthroat your kids are and if they will get upset if you “attack” them.

You can find “Brew” at pandasaurusgames.com, online retailers and at local game stores. It retails for $29.95.

Amy Phelps owns an insane amount of board games with her husband and is quite fond of euros. Contact her at news@graffitiwv.com.