Aotearoa / New Zealand

Just getting used to it, but once we googled for some clarity on the rules it was good (the rules say "turn" to refer to a round of each player having a turn, as well as referring to an individual player's turn as a turn. In addition, in a two player game each player plays twice in a round, leading to further confusion about things you can only do once per turn).

I don't have a sound strategy yet (clearly). It looked a bit complex when setting up but the base gameplay turned out to be pretty straightforward once you got your head around it. I think there may be some deep strategy involved, and not too dependent on luck, which is good. You claim spaces on the board, resource cards, djinns, palaces, palm trees, different types of people (meeples) as well as coins, and have to balance your strategy between them while trying to shoot down the other player's strategy. Scoring is done via their special score pad because it's got so many different ways to score, but you only add up at the end.

It does need a fair bit of table space, though.