Glen More puts you in charge of a 17th-century Scottish clan, expanding your territory by selecting tiles from a central rondel and placing them into your personal estate. What makes it special is a turn order mechanism borrowed from games like Tokaido: the player furthest behind on the rondel always goes next. This means grabbing a tile far ahead on the track gives you something desirable but skips your turn while opponents take multiple actions. The tension between patience and greed drives every decision.
The Rondel’s Elegant Restraint
The rondel mechanism is Glen More’s defining feature and its greatest strength. Tiles representing whisky distilleries, pastures, villages, and lochs appear in a circle, and players move their marker forward to claim one. Moving just one space ahead gets you a modest tile but lets you act again quickly. Jumping several spaces forward grabs a more powerful tile but hands multiple turns to your opponents. This constant calculation between quality and tempo creates decisions that remain interesting throughout the game.
Tile activation adds another satisfying layer. When you place a new tile in your estate, every adjacent tile activates, generating resources, victory points, or special abilities. Early tiles that become surrounded by later placements activate frequently, creating a spatial puzzle about where to build for maximum efficiency. The way tiles interact with their neighbors gives the placement decisions a depth that standard grid-building games often lack.
The Scottish theme, while light, provides enough flavor to make the tiles feel meaningful. Producing whisky from grain, raising cattle on pastures, and scoring lochs for their scenic value all connect to a vaguely historical setting that makes the resource management feel grounded rather than abstract.
Growing Too Large Has Consequences
The game’s penalty for having more tiles than your opponents is a clever balance mechanism but can feel unintuitive for new players. At each scoring round, players compare the number of tiles in their estates, and anyone with more tiles than the player with the fewest loses victory points for each extra tile. This means a compact, efficient estate can outperform a sprawling one, but understanding this scoring wrinkle takes experience.
At five players, the rondel depletes faster and individual agency decreases. Your options narrow because more tiles get claimed between your turns, and the game’s strategic feel shifts toward opportunism rather than planning. Two players also creates a less engaging experience since the competitive tension over tiles is reduced. Three players provides the ideal balance.
The visual presentation, while functional, lacks the polish of more modern tile-laying games. The tiles serve their purpose but won’t impress anyone accustomed to the lavish production standards that have become common in the hobby.
Efficiency Over Expansion
New players tend to grab every appealing tile they see, building large estates that look impressive but score poorly due to the tile count penalty. Veterans know that Glen More rewards selective, efficient building. Taking fewer tiles of higher quality and placing them to maximize activation cascades is the path to victory.
Should You Play Glen More?
Fans of tile placement and rondel mechanisms who enjoy spatial puzzles will find a well-designed game that has aged gracefully. It works best at three players and provides a satisfying mid-weight strategic experience. Skip it if you need modern production values, prefer games with direct player interaction, or if two-player or five-player is your primary count.
The Verdict
Glen More earns its reputation as a modern classic through the strength of its core mechanisms. The rondel creates meaningful tempo decisions, the tile activation provides spatial satisfaction, and the restraint-over-expansion philosophy gives the game a strategic identity that sets it apart from other tile-laying games. It’s elegant, tightly designed, and rewards the kind of thoughtful play that keeps strategy gamers coming back.