Review: Rats of Wistar

Introduction & Overview

As one of the four rats that orchestrated the escape from the famous Wistar Institute, you must lead your family to prove that you are the most qualified to guide the entire colony. You will need to carefully plan your actions to explore the farmhouse and interact with various elements, all while expanding your family’s size and building a set of inventions that will help you achieve your goal.

This is the premise of Rats of Wistar, designed by Danilo Sabia (Wendake) and Simone Luciani (The Voyages of Marco Polo, Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar). It was first published in 2023 by Cranio Creations in English and Italian editions. The artwork is by Candida Corsi and Sara Valentino (My Shelfie).

The game is published in Spanish by Maldito Games (although it is language-independent, except for the rulebook and card titles). It accommodates 1 to 4 players, with a recommended minimum age of 13 and an approximate playing time of 90 minutes. The MSRP is €55. A review copy of the English edition by Cranio Creations was used for this review.

 

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom) measuring 31.5×22.5×7 cm (a rectangular format similar to Agricola, though slightly longer), we find the following components:

• Main Board (cardboard)
• 4 Player Boards (cardboard)
• Action Wheel (cardboard) with Metal Bolt
• 6 Action Sectors (cardboard)
• 221 Cards (62.5×88 mm):
  • 180 Invention Cards
  • 5 Hero Cards
  • 13 Goal Cards
  • 10 Mission Cards
  • 7 Automa Cards
  • 6 Track Cards
• 7 Exploration Cards (65×100 mm)
• 25 Guest Mouse Tiles (cardboard)
• 2 Cheese Tiles (cardboard)
• 20 Movement Tokens (cardboard)
• 10 Door Tiles (cardboard)
• 4 Electricity Tokens (cardboard)
• 5 Skill Tokens (cardboard)
• 12 Wild Skill Tokens (cardboard)
• 18 Wood Tokens
• 18 Metal Tokens
• 12 Resource Multiplier Tokens (cardboard)
• 12 1x Tokens
• 4 Reference Tiles (cardboard)
• 24 Bed Tiles (6 per color) (cardboard)
• 24 Excavation Tiles (6 per color) (cardboard)
• 40 Cubes (10 per color) (wooden)
• 20 Discs (5 per color) (wooden)
• 36 Rats (8 per color) (wooden)
• 12 Leader Pawns (3 per color) (wooden)
• 8 Tents (2 per color) (wooden)
• Rulebook
• Solo Mode Rulebook

How to Play

Rats of Wistar is a medium-weight eurogame driven by worker placement. Each player has three leader pawns to place on a circular action area featuring six main actions, with one to three action spaces associated with each, offering various bonuses. When activating an action, players rely on rat pawns that can move between the three regions where the main actions are located (each region contains two actions), determining the strength with which the main action is executed. These actions let players gather resources (wood, metal, or cards), explore the house (moving through it, uncovering missions, opening doors, or welcoming guest mice), excavate burrows, or build rooms to field new pawns. Missions require specific skill icons provided by cards and grant diverse perks. At the end of each round, all pawns are retrieved, the wheel with the action spaces rotates one position, and a new round begins. After five rounds, a final scoring takes place, evaluating burrow development, played cards, and leftover items.

Key Concepts

Let’s begin with the Main Board. It is divided into three distinct areas. On the left is the house, structured across two floors (ground floor and basement) with dedicated spaces for mission cards, guest tiles, and door tokens connecting rooms. The upper right corner features the action wheel set over three regions (the farmhouse yard, the forest, and the underground). Each region is linked to two main actions depicted by circular icons. In the lower right area, we find the section for goal cards. Finally, encircling the board is the classic score track with spaces numbered from 0 to 99.

On the action wheel, action sectors are arranged with a specific number of action spaces (between 1 and 3). Each sector tile is double-sided, selected according to the player count. Each action space includes a secondary action that the player performs alongside the main action linked to that sector’s current position. An important rule is that a player must resolve all effects of a secondary action entirely before or after their main action. At the end of the round, the wheel turns sixty degrees clockwise, shifting each sector to the next main action.

Players place their Leader Pawns onto these action spaces. Each player has three pawns to deploy across alternating turns in each of the five rounds. Every pawn activates both the effect of the chosen action space and the main action currently paired with that sector. Crucially, each sector can host at most one pawn of each player color per round. Naturally, each action space within a sector can only hold a single pawn. There is also a special action space in the upper left corner used to manipulate turn order. This space has no placement limit, allowing a player to assign multiple leaders there if desired.

The core mechanism of the game lies in the strength of these leader pawns, which is determined by the Rat Pawns. Each player possesses eight rat pawns: two are available from the start, while the remaining six can be unlocked throughout the game. Rats begin inside the player’s burrow and can be deployed into any of the three board regions. When placing a leader pawn on a sector’s action space, its action points for resolving the main action equal the number of rat pawns present in that region. Once placed on the board, rats remain there until the end of the game, only capable of moving between adjacent regions. In addition, each player has one rat pawn serving as an explorer inside the house, beginning at the entrance door.

To reposition rat pawns beyond the sectors’ secondary actions, players can spend Movement Tokens. Each token allows a player to shift one rat pawn to one of the two regions adjacent to its current location.

While exploring the farmhouse, players will encounter several elements. The first are Door Tiles, which block passageways between rooms. Resolving an explore action allows a player to spend one action point to unlock a door in the room where their explorer is currently located. The reverse side of these tiles reveals immediate bonuses granted to the player.

Another discoverable element is Guest Tiles. Each depicts a mouse that takes up a bed slot in our burrow, providing an ongoing, immediate, recurring, or end-game ability alongside victory points. They begin face-down in specific rooms and come in two types: brown for the ground floor and grey for the basement. These tiles also act as a round tracker: a stack of five is created, and in each round, one becomes available via a secondary action on a sector (discarded at round end if unclaimed). A special variant includes the cheese tiles found in the final room, which simply grant victory points.

Lastly, there are Mission Cards. These oversized cards are placed on designated spaces within the house. The lower-left corner shows a bonus awarded to the player who reveals it by spending an exploration point. The right side features three missions, each with specific requirements and rewards. Crucially, the explore action itself does not allow players to complete missions; they must be completed through secondary actions. Just like guest tiles, mission cards are split by card back: brown for the ground floor and grey for the basement.

Players also possess two Tents that can be pitched in the room where their explorer is currently stationed. By pitching a tent, the player can perform exploration actions in that room as if their explorer were still present, bypassing the restriction that normally requires the explorer pawn to be physically in the room.

During the game, players manage two primary Resources: wood and metal. These are represented by small brown and silver tokens respectively, complemented by multiplier tokens representing three units of each type. Unspent resources convert into victory points at game end.

These resources are mainly spent in two ways. First, on playing Invention Cards. These represent various devices the rats can build. Each has a resource cost in the upper-left corner and may require specific skill icons or access to electricity. The center displays an illustration alongside its ability (passive, immediate, once per round, or end-game scoring). The bottom bar indicates the invention type (structure with a house icon on brown, tool with a wrench/screwdriver on grey, or automaton with a robot on green) along with the skill icons it grants (strength in red, perception in white with an eye, endurance in blue with a heart, agility in green with a rat, and intelligence in yellow with a brain). The top banner lists the card name and its victory point value. The deck is divided into Level I inventions (one lightbulb icon on grey in the bottom-left corner) and Level II inventions (two lightbulbs on yellow).

Certain inventions require an active electrical connection. A player’s access to power is marked by an Electricity Token. This token can be gained as a reward from inventions or missions, or purchased as a free action by paying a specific cost. Gaining electricity a second time flips the token, awarding end-game victory points.

As noted earlier, completing missions and building inventions demands specific skills. Players can cover missing icons using single-use Wild Skill Tokens. These tokens can be acquired through various means and score points at the end of the game if kept in reserve.

Wild skill tokens cannot, however, be used to satisfy Goal Cards. At setup, three goal cards are placed in the lower-right area of the main board, sparking a race among players to claim them. Each card specifies a condition and displays four spaces on the left with escalating requirements, alongside victory point rewards and bonus effects on the right.

Whenever a player completes a goal, they place one of their Discs on it, raising the bar for any opponents who have yet to fulfill it. Players also use a fourth disc as a score marker and a fifth on the turn order track.

Each participant has a Player Board arranged into three distinct sections. The left section holds room tiles with rat pawns waiting to join the workforce. Each tile displays an escalating point value, scoring only the highest revealed value at game end. The right side represents the burrow, providing nine slots for rooms and guest mice. Initially, only three slots are open; the remaining six are blocked by excavation tiles showing increasing victory point thresholds, where only the highest excavated value scores. Across the bottom row are unlockable abilities gained from completing missions (the top row triggers from any mission card, whereas the bottom row requires basement missions). An extra room or guest slot can also be unlocked through one of these abilities.

To track active abilities, each player has a supply of Cubes placed over these spaces during setup. Completing a mission allows a player to lift a cube from the appropriate track and place it onto the mission card, claiming the ability and locking out that mission slot.

Lastly, there are Hero Cards that provide two skill icons and award victory points for them. These can be gained as rewards on the player board by completing basement missions.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

1. Place the main board in the center of the table.
2. Attach the wheel with the metal bolt and place the 6 sector tiles on it using the side matching the player count. Rotate the wheel until each sector aligns with a main action.
3. Shuffle the mission cards by type and place one card of the matching type face-down on each room space. Return the rest to the box.
4. Shuffle the guest tiles by type. Form a draw pile on the round space using 2 grey-backed tiles beneath 3 brown-backed tiles. Place one of the remaining tiles face-down on each designated room slot according to player count.
5. Place the cheese tiles in the final basement room based on player count.
6. Shuffle the goal cards and place 3 on the main board’s designated slots.
7. Create a general supply with resources, wild skill tokens, and movement tokens.
8. Shuffle each invention deck by level and place them nearby. Reveal the top four cards of each deck to form a market display.
9. Set aside the electricity tokens, skill tokens, and hero cards.
10. Each player chooses a color and receives: a player board, 6 room tiles (placed on their matching spaces), 6 excavation tiles (placed on their matching spaces), 8 rat pawns (6 placed on the room tiles and 2 on the player board starting burrow space), 5 discs (1 on space 10 of the score track and 3 near the goal cards), 2 tents (set aside), 3 leader pawns (placed on the player board), and 10 cubes (placed on the player board ability spaces).
11. Each player takes 2 wood, 2 metal, and 1 movement token.
12. Randomly determine the first player, placing their disc on the first space of the turn order track. Remaining players place their discs in clockwise order.
13. Starting with the last player and proceeding in reverse turn order, each player drafts a pair of cards from the same market column (one Level I and one Level II card). Refill the market display after each pick.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Rats of Wistar is played over five rounds. Each round consists of two phases.

Phase I: New Round

This phase is skipped in the first round. Proceed as follows:

• Update turn order. Reorganize discs based on pawns in the turn order action space; the first player to place a pawn claims first position. Players who did not place pawns maintain their relative order.
• Each player retrieves their three leader pawns.
• Rotate the wheel sixty degrees clockwise.
• Discard the guest tile from the round space if it went unclaimed.
• Players collect income from active inventions and guest tiles.
• Refresh once-per-round inventions.
• Discard the rightmost two invention cards from the market display, slide the remaining two to the right, and reveal two new cards.

Phase II: Actions

This phase unfolds over three action turns per player. Starting with the first player and following turn order, each player takes a turn.

On their turn, the active player places an available leader pawn onto an open action space or onto the turn order action space. Next, they execute the main action with a strength equal to their rat pawns in that region, and resolve the secondary action(s) from that space in whatever order they prefer (though secondary actions must be completed either entirely before or entirely after the main action).

Play then passes to the next player. The phase ends once all players have completed their three turns.

The main actions are:

• Collect Wood: the player gains wood equal to their rat pawns in the forest region.
• Collect Metal: the player gains metal equal to their rat pawns in the underground region.
• Draw Cards: the player draws one Level I card per rat pawn in the farmyard region, or one Level II card for every 2 rat pawns there. Cards may be taken from the market or drawn blind from the deck. At the end of the turn, slide market cards rightward and refill empty slots.
• Excavate: the player may excavate one burrow space per rat pawn in the underground region at a cost of 2 metal each. Removed tiles return to the box.
• Build Rooms: the player may build one room per rat pawn in the forest region at a cost of 2 wood each. Tiles must be placed onto excavated spaces (without available excavated spaces, rooms cannot be built).
• Explore: the player receives one exploration point per rat pawn in the farmyard region. Each point can be spent to:
  • Open a Door. If the explorer is in a room with a door tile, reveal it, gain its bonus, and add the tile to your play area.
  • Move. The explorer moves into an adjacent room through an opened doorway.
  • Reveal a Mission Card. If the explorer is in a room with a face-down mission card, flip it and claim the bonus shown in its lower-left corner.
  • Gain a Guest. If the explorer is in a room with face-down guest tiles, reveal one and place it onto an open excavated space in your burrow. If in the final basement room, a cheese tile can be taken in the same manner.

Additionally, players may perform free auxiliary actions at any point during their turn (but always strictly before or after resolving another action):

• Move Rats. Spend a movement token to move one rat pawn to an adjacent region.
• Gain a Wild Skill Token. Return 3 items (wood, metal, and/or cards) to the supply to take a wild skill token.
• Buy Electricity. Return 4 items (wood, metal, and/or cards) to the supply to take an electricity token or flip an existing one.
• Activate Invention Effect. Use an on-demand, once-per-round invention by tapping the card or placing a 1x marker on it.
• Deploy Rat. Place an available rat from your player board into any board region.
• Pitch Tent. Place one of your two tents into the room where your explorer is currently located. Tents cannot be moved once placed.
• Claim Goal. If eligible, place a disc on the highest open space of a goal card and collect its rewards.

Unless this was the fifth round, a new round begins.

Game End

The game concludes at the end of the fifth round, followed by final scoring where each player tallies:

• Points from unlocked skill slots on their player board.
• The highest visible point value on the room track.
• The highest visible point value on the excavation track.
• Victory points from guest tiles.
• Victory points printed on invention cards.
• Victory points from end-game scoring inventions.
• 2 points if holding the flipped (advanced) electricity token.
• 1 point per set of 5 leftover items among wood, metal, movement tokens, and unplayed invention cards.
• 1 point per 2 wild skill tokens.

The player with the most victory points wins. In case of a tie, victory goes to the tied player higher on the turn order track (which is not updated at game end).

Variants

Solo Mode. Uses the reverse side of any player board alongside exploration cards, track cards, and action cards. The player competes against an automa with adjustable difficulty levels. Each action card dictates the sector the bot’s leader occupies, the rat pawns it deploys, the action it takes, and the bonuses it earns along the track cards. The bot evaluates its own scoring criteria at game end.

Personal Opinion

It should come as a surprise to no one when I say that the leading figures in modern board game design (at the time of writing this tocho-review) hail from Italy, particularly Simone Luciani. A glance at the incredible titles bearing his name—often co-designed—is simply astonishing.

He has contributed to genuine masterpieces, even if some require expansions to reach true brilliance, such as Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar (tocho-review here), Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan (tocho-review here), Lorenzo il Magnifico (tocho-review here), Barrage (tocho-review here), and Grand Austria Hotel (tocho-review here).

Even in recent joint efforts like Nucleum (tocho-review here), his development talent shines through. He consistently reins in David Turczi, whose designs outside of solo modes often veer into overly convoluted territory, as seen in Dice Settlers (tocho-review here), Excavation Earth (tocho-review here), Tawantinsuyu: The Inca Empire (tocho-review here), or Imperium (tocho-review here).

Right now, Luciani is the designer whose releases I anticipate most, as his titles feel exceptionally tight while introducing clever twists that stand out amid the annual deluge of eurogames. For that reason, Rats of Wistar caught my eye immediately.

The appeal went beyond Simone co-crediting the design with Danilo Sabia, creator of Wendake (tocho-review here). I was also drawn to the charming cover art and the rodent-shaped meeples that instantly brought back fond memories of Root (tocho-review here). I flagged it on my Essen wishlist, though keeping expectations tempered, anticipating a solid release akin to Tiletum (tocho-review here).

Cracking open the rulebook of Rats of Wistar reveals an attention to thematic framing rarely found in eurogames of this caliber. The very first page introduces a two-column story about laboratory rats who gained heightened intelligence, fled confinement, and established a thriving burrow adjacent to a farmhouse teeming with opportunities.

Each player controls one of these gifted rodents—Fleming, Pasteur, Hippocrates, or Kuliscioff—striving to prove they possess the vision needed to lead an ever-growing colony of local recruits.

What does this entail? Simply running your corner of the burrow, digging out chambers to house incoming rats, and gathering materials to engineer useful inventions.

Exploring the farmhouse interior is equally vital. There, you will tackle missions to secure discounts and player board perks. Achieving these feats usually requires building up specific skill suites (strength, perception, endurance, agility, and intelligence) via played invention cards.

As you can see, the core premise is clean and accessible: expand your burrow and assemble an engine of invention cards. Mechanically, the game utilizes a worker placement system that feels intuitive on the surface. Players have three leaders to assign to action spaces linked to six primary actions.

These core actions fall into two camps. Three focus on gathering assets: wood, metal, and invention cards. Wood and metal are tangible resources stockpiled in your supply, whereas inventions are cards requiring those goods to be played.

The remaining actions drive colony development: excavating underground slots (using metal), constructing bed chambers (using wood), and exploring the farmhouse to gather goods, welcome guest mice, and uncover mission goals.

Depending on player count, each main action offers a constrained number of action spaces, and players may only place one pawn per action sector. The brilliance lies in the secondary actions tied to these spaces, which represent your primary avenue for playing cards and clearing missions.

This structure creates intense timing pressure. You must juggle resolving steps in a strict sequence to prevent your desired spaces from being occupied, while eyeing specific action spaces for their secondary perks. This elevates the table tension significantly, as players race to pull off optimal turns. Opponents can easily disrupt your plans, especially on sectors featuring fewer spaces than players.

Adding another layer of depth, Rats of Wistar implements an action point system reminiscent of Lorenzo il Magnifico, where a placed worker’s potency is shaped by an external modifier. In Lorenzo, dice values dictated worker strength each round.

Here, worker efficiency stems from the regular rats you have deployed across the board. The main actions are grouped into three regions where these rats reside. Each rat present in a region adds one point of strength to any leader placed there, meaning a rat in a single region empowers two distinct actions.

Players start with two rats and can deploy them freely to any region. This creates a gentle opening round that can be deceptive. You drop a leader, assign a rat or two, and take an efficient turn. The tension spikes when you realize that once placed on the board, rats can never return to your supply; they can only walk between regions.

By round two, the puzzle tightens considerably. You are no longer just maneuvering around blocked spaces; you must also carefully shift your rat pawns so your upcoming actions carry sufficient strength.

Consequently, developing your burrow quickly becomes an essential early priority. Every built room unleashes another worker rat into your regions. Distributing at least one rat into each area ensures baseline access to every action, although taking an action at a single point of strength is painfully inefficient.

Compounding this puzzle, action spaces are not static; they ride on a wheel that rotates round by round. Players must anticipate future states, projecting where action spaces will align on subsequent turns. This forward planning makes movement tokens precious commodities.

Consider that one sector features only a single action space, meaning only one player can select that action in a round. If you desperately need that action next round and the wheel rotates it to that single-slot sector, claiming the top spot on the turn order track becomes mandatory.

Over time, I have found that interaction in worker placement games correlates directly with how fiercely turn order is contested. When a game offers active ways to claim initiative and players fight over them, you can be sure the interaction is cutthroat. In Rats of Wistar, the battle for action priority is fierce.

Beyond individual burrows, players race through the house to grab the perks offered by missions. Unlocking personal abilities through missions offers massive efficiency boosts, such as discounts on building rooms or excavating slots (while doubling movement token efficiency can rescue a lagging burrow economy).

Fulfilling missions hinges on your tableau of cards, as most require specific skill combinations. While wild tokens help bridge gaps, expanding your tableau of played cards remains the bedrock of a winning strategy.

This highlights another of the design’s great assets: the two hefty invention decks provide substantial longevity. Like Grand Austria Hotel, the overarching goals remain steady across sessions, yet the distinct card combinations in hand steer every playthrough in fresh directions.

A massive card deck cuts both ways. On the positive side, because the core mechanisms are streamlined, the deck avoids bewildering complexities; many cards share familiar functions with slight variations, softening the blow of draw variance. On the downside, seeing similar effects emerge repeatedly might give the impression of less variety than the box contents suggest.

I lean heavily toward the positives. Much like Grand Austria Hotel, adapting to the card market keeps the gameplay dynamic and engaging, even if missing a needed card can feel briefly frustrating. Finding synergistic combos and chaining effects together delivers that deeply rewarding experience eurogame fans love.

We must also touch on the shared goal cards. As with Grand Austria Hotel, players race to claim three shared objectives, though with an intriguing twist. In Grand Austria Hotel, claiming goals earlier awarded more victory points. Here, the point payout remains flat, but early achievers face considerably easier milestone requirements.

This mechanism supercharges the competitive rush, especially since goals provide immediate resources or bonus actions alongside victory points, creating vital tempo advantages.

Turning to flaws, there is little to criticize. The small pool of mission cards stands out slightly when contrasted with the vast invention decks and varied goals. Even though their board layout varies and some sit out each game, a few additional mission designs would have been welcome.

A minor usability hurdle is that newcomers frequently assume the explore action allows them to complete missions. Explore points uncover tokens, open doors, move your rat, and reveal mission cards or guest mice.

Assuming that exploring includes completing a mission is a very easy trap to fall into, when in reality missions are completed strictly via secondary actions. It is a slight counterintuitive quirk you will find yourself clarifying to first-time players.

Regarding scaling, the game runs smoothly across all player counts, but peaks at four players. With four, the last player in turn order genuinely risks being completely shut out of a desired action. Sectors cap out at three action spaces, so while components adjust at lower player counts, four-player games guarantee that the final player can be frozen out if opponents converge on the same action. At two or three players, this lockout occurs only on select wheel rotations. Still, that extra bite at four players is something I relish.

One final observation: Rats of Wistar is neither an overburdened design nor a radically experimental one (though the mobile worker-strength wheel is an inspired trademark). At its heart lies a classic worker placement loop—gather ingredients to play cards—which might explain why it flew under some radars.

Yet what it does, it executes brilliantly. It draws you in further with every play, flowing at a brisk pace where downtime melts away, delivering an hour and a half of consistently tight and satisfying decision-making. It feels complete, polished, and dependable.

Production-wise, Cranio Creations delivered above-average quality. The cardboard is thick and well-punched, wooden pieces are solid (if slightly petite for the resources), and cards feature a pleasant linen finish with reliable snap. The central metal bolt on the action wheel drew online debate, but it operates smoothly in practice. A standard square box would have avoided assembly altogether, but it remains a trivial quibble. The rulebook is clean and easy to navigate, barring minor setup oversights in the English text.

Visually, the illustrative style crafted by Candida Corsi and Sara Valentino is delightful. Its modern comic aesthetic departs from traditional dry eurogame visuals—a stylistic choice that might have led some to mistake it for a lightweight family game, but it is gorgeous on the table and functionally clear.

And let’s wrap this up. Rats of Wistar was one of the standout surprises of Essen Spiel 2023. What could have easily been just another worker placement title introduces sharp twists that dial the tension up regarding action timing and board tempo. Striking an enviable harmony between tactical adaptation and long-term planning, it keeps you on the edge of your seat as you execute critical moves under constant table pressure. Pulling off a well-timed round is immensely gratifying. Minor quirks like market card luck and slightly looser turns at lower player counts do little to dim its appeal. For all these reasons, it earns an outstanding rating.