Meteo Review – Time for a Holiday?

Take a little holiday, but choose your moment carefully because you don’t want the whole trip ruined by bad weather! 

Published by Hachette Boardgames USA, Meteo is a fifteen minute card game for 2-5 players.

Gameplay

There are eight weather cards, with values ranging from -2 to +2. These are shuffled and six are placed face-up in the center of the table. The other two are returned to the box. The six colored secret sky cards are then shuffled and dealt face-down, one to each weather card. There are sixty regular sky cards in the game, and each one matches the color of one of the secret sky cards. At the end of the game, a sky card is worth points based on its matching secret sky card and which weather card it was dealt to at the start of the game.

At the start of the game, each player secretly looks at one of the secret sky cards. Then the dealer starts drawing and revealing sky cards from the deck one at a time and placing them in the center of the table. At any time, as soon as there are two sky cards face-up on the table, a player may announce that he is going on holiday. If no one announces it, the dealer keeps drawing cards, giving players a chance between card draws to announce they are going on holiday. If there are ever five sky cards face-up on the table at a time, and no one chooses to go on holiday, then the five cards are discarded.

When a player goes on holiday, he takes all the cards in the center of the table, and places them in a stack, in front of himself. He may then look at one of the face-down secret sky cards. Each player may only go on holiday up to three times. Once a player has gone three times, he is out of the game until scoring. A player has to go on holiday at least once, in order to win the game, but he doesn’t have to go on all three holidays.

Once all the deck has been drawn, and the final cards have either been claimed or discarded, all the secret sky card are revealed and players calculate how many points all the cards in their holidays are worth. The player with the most points wins.

Review

Meteo has a fun pacing to it. Each player has limited information that slowly grows as the game progresses. Trying to track which cards players seem to be collecting can also help you to get an idea as to which secret sky cards they might have seen. At the start of the game, everyone very much feels like they’re in the dark, but as the end nears there’s more educated guessing going on.

It plays quickly, which helps with the fact that a player can end up sitting out for some of it if they go on their three holidays too quickly. There’s some simultaneous gameplay as players are choosing all at once if they wish to go on holiday or not. We weren’t sure this was the best mechanic for this game, as we enjoyed more the thoughtful tracking and deduction of trying to figure out which colors each player was going for.

Generally, the rules are straight-forward. This is an easy one to learn, and you already feel like you have the general gist of it before you’ve reached the end of the explanation. It’s light, and casual, and a fun little game to dip into.

It’s a colorful little game. There are not a lot of components, but the cards are nicely done, with iconography on the different colors to assist colorblind players. It’s quite a tiny box that’s about the size of the palm of your hand, so it’s quite portable and could easily be fit into a purse or some pockets. That being said, the top of the box does fall off a little bit too easily.

The box calls Meteo a mini card game and that feels like a fair description. This is a bite-sized little game that would be good while traveling, at restaurants, or when you only have a little bit of time, as set up is so minimal. We had a fun time with it, even if it didn’t wow us.

Pros: Simple, portable, fast, colorful

Cons: The different mechanics feel a little at odds with one another

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.