Fairy Trails - A 2 Player Game Set in an Enchanted Forest

Uwe Rosenberg's Patchwork is a family favorite, so when this game came out, I had high hopes for it. It looked like it could be another great family game -- quick, simple enough for kids, but somewhat strategic. Plus, the theme of building hidden homes for magical forest creatures made it almost sure to be a winner with my fairy-obsessed daughter.Unfortunately, the manufacturer's decision to cheap out on components ruined the entire game. Fairy Trails is a classic tile-laying game. And anyone familiar with tile-laying games knows that sturdy go a long way toward making tile-laying games playable/enjoyable. Unfortunately, Paperplane Games seem to have missed the whole "tile-laying games need to include actual tiles" memo and instead opted to print tiles on glossy cardstock, This means that every time players attempt to lay one card down, half the slick cards on the table inevitably shift ever so slightly until nothing really lines up. Plus, the glossy finish results in a reflective glare that makes it a royal pain to see the fairy trails amid the busy, dark forest background.We've played twice. My daughter wants to love the game because of the theme. But it's just not working for us. We're going blind, and we're spending more time "fixing" the ever-sliding cards than we are playing the game. ... If this were a print-and-play, I'd glue the "tiles" to cardboard or of foamboard to render the game playable. But given that this was a commercially-published game, I would have expected components to be at least on par with, say, a cheap memory/matching game.