Tenby, designed (and illustrated) by Benji Talbot and published by Mighty Boards, is one of those rare family‑weight games that manages to feel breezy and inviting while still offering a genuinely satisfying puzzle beneath the surface.
It’s colourful, tactile, and approachable, yet the decisions you make from turn to turn carry significant weight. I played the retail edition — the standard version available in stores — and even without the Kickstarter extras, I found Tenby to be a delightful, clever little game that kept my family coming back for “just one more round.”
The premise is simple enough: you’re building out streets (represented by cards) that replicate the Welsh town of Tenby’s famous, colourful setting. Street cards come from three main decks (terrace houses, piers and landmarks) and must be placed as soon as you get them, whilst local character cards can be taken from time to time, opening up a secret scoring situation that remains in your hand until the end of the game.
What really stood out to me was how tight Tenby’s gameplay feels. Turns are set as the result of what the game calls “Night” and “Day” phases. The Night phase is simply a set of cards (equal to the number of players) where the player markers sit until the day phase. The marker in space one will choose a Day phase card first, second will go second and so on. Day phase cards are shuffled and dealt randomly — with one per player plus another one to choose from. Each Day phase card displays a number and then a series of actions.
What makes this a clever system is that the lower the number, the further left a Day phase card goes. If a player chooses a low number, they move their marker off their Night phase card and onto the Day card they want to use. When actions are resolved, turn order on the Night phase cards is then reset based on who chose the lowest Day phase card through to the highest. Accordingly, you can bet that higher numbered cards have more actions on them than lower ones. Whichever Day phase card is not chosen then receives a life-preserver token and the actual round begins.
On their turn, all a player does is resolve the actions on the Day card they took. Actions include things like drawing from any of the three main card decks, including those fairly rare character cards I mentioned. Sometimes, an action card will also be bolstered by one or more life-preservers, and these have some special powers that break usual rules that I’ll cover in a moment.
When a player picks a card up, it must be placed into their tableau immediately. Each and every card in Tenby, except the starting terrace houses, has some way of scoring. Some cards score their neighbouring cards, some score up to two neighbours away or in a single direction, whilst landmark cards score their entire street (and are the only card that scores themselves.) The trick is that sometimes you might not be able to place a card into your street — perhaps because that street now has piers at both ends and you’ve picked up a terrace — or you may simply not want to place it in that street.
In a case like this, you can always just start a new street (and you’ll probably end each game with three to five as a minimum) or, if you’re feeling especially strategic, you could actually spend some life-preserver rings to break the main rule of Tenby (which is that you must place cards on the end of a street only) and place a building in between two existing buildings. This action completely changes the way that Tenby plays, and it means that whilst there is always some reluctance to “finish” a street (by adding end cards), you have the option to “cheat” probably three or four times per game by spending those life-preservers and doing something gamebreaking.
Tenby has a lot of components and I am not going to pretend that it is a super simple game. It’s simple enough to teach and learn (although filled with small details and fundamental features that the teacher must not neglect to mention), but the actual gameplay can lead to some quite big decisions and in turn, a bit of analysis paralysis. New or inexperienced players will falter with the scale of options available to them, whilst experienced players will still sometimes malfunction whilst trying to optimise their turn.
The production quality of the retail version is generally strong, though it’s worth noting the differences from the Kickstarter edition. The lifesaving ring tokens in the retail box are cardboard rather than wooden, which is a minor downgrade but not something that affects gameplay. The bigger omission is the scoreboard. Scoring in Tenby is the most complex part of the game — not difficult, but multi‑layered enough that a clear, structured scoring track (as in the Kickstarter) would have made the process smoother.
Without it, you’re left tallying points manually card by card and street by street. Whilst this is perfectly doable, it feels like the lack of a scoreboard is a miss in an otherwise polished package. Given how central scoring is to the experience, the absence of a scoreboard in the retail edition is noticeable.
That said, the scoring itself is one of the game’s strengths. It’s varied, interesting, and encourages players to explore different strategies from one game to the next. Some rounds you’ll feel that it’s appropriate to build tight, focussed streets that always have clear ends. In others, you’ll have multiple streets of which a few might sprawl on and others will end. The character and landmark cards drive highly varied strategies that differ from one game to the next. Tenby nudges you to diversify your approach based on what cards are drawn, and because the board state changes so rapidly, no two games feel alike. This replayability is one of Tenby’s biggest assets — it’s light enough to play casually, but rich enough to reward repeated plays.
The theme also deserves praise. Tenby’s seaside charm comes through beautifully in the artwork and components, and the whole experience feels warm and inviting. It’s the kind of game that feels at home on a family table, and it’s easy to imagine it becoming a regular fixture for groups who enjoy accessible strategy games with a bit of personality. I also like how thick and durable the cards are, and I can see this one being played for a long time.
Even without the Kickstarter extras, Tenby is a lovely, clever, and highly replayable game. The lack of a scoreboard in the retail edition is a shame, especially given how central scoring is to the experience, but it doesn’t diminish the quality of the gameplay itself. This is a smart, engaging “older” family game that offers meaningful decisions without overwhelming youngish players, and it’s one I’m very glad to have on my shelf.
You can find out more about Tenby on the Mighty Board wesbite.
