Pyramid Review
R-Eco
Published by Z-Man Games
Designed by Susumu Kawasaki
Translated by Ro Sato
Full-color boxed set with 104 cards (100 garbage, four recycling facilities), 32 tokens, & rules; $15
Gaming can be glamorous, putting one in the role of superhero, time traveler, or even commander of the Allied forces. Even so, everything has its dark side. Someone's gotta take out the garbage, and Z-Man Games has a card game for that, too: R-Eco.
The object of the game is to earn the most money by having the cleanest environmental record at the end.
Two to five players are garbage collectors, and they are vying to be the best person in the city for the job (and to have all the glory that accords). They get a three-card hand to start their ventures. The department isn't just amassing the trash, it's recycling it . . . or rather, it ought to be. There are four color-coded dump sites for the types of materials: plastic, steel, paper, and glass. A player may discard from his hand as many of the same color cards as he likes onto the matching site. For example, the worker could choose to dump yellow steel cans, but any and all cards discarded at the same time must be cans.
If that site now has four or more steel can icons showing on the cards built up there, the stack is swept to the discard pile and the player takes a token from atop that location. Running from -2 to 5 points, these represent the money the company has gained, but a player must have . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: November 23, 2007
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