BIG SUR is a small box engine and tableau building game that is deceptively easy. I say “easy”, because you only have two parts to your turn: choose two cards from an available market (or from the top of the deck), and then play cards to your tableau. (There is potentially a third action, some lagniappe if you will, that I will dish about in a sec.)

But back to the main game. I say “deceptively” because those two little micro actions have some heft to them. The cards in the game have near flawless graphic design, but there is a lot of information to digest. Each highway card is made up of a few things.

First, each card has icons representing the type of highway it is. Maybe it’s a forested mountain. Or maybe it has flowers and trees. Either way, you’ll be placing one or more of these by discarding cards that satisfy its costs. Second, the cards show a number for the length of the highway section that it represents. At the end of the game, you score a point per mile of all of the cards that are next to each other in the tableau AND connected by the same terrain type.

How do you pay for the cards? That’s where the front and back side of the cards comes into play. Players can discard cards from their hand to use the unique symbol it represents (shown graphically on the front and back) to pay for cards that they want to add to their tableau. But that’s not the only bit to the economy.

There are a couple of other ways besides spending precious cards out of your hands. Some cards (the tiny one milers), after being played to your tableau, grant you access to one resource. There’s that engine part. Plus, any card you discard to your personal discard pile temporarily represents the resource on the back of the card.

And finally, we have the card powers themselves. There are three types of mile cards — one milers that give you those sweet resources for your engine, longer milers (three plus) that give you lots of points if you chain them with other cards, and then my personal favorites, the two milers. These can be the most valuable sometimes because each of these give you ways to score more points or do something cool and twisty.

One of the joys of BIG SUR is the breezy speed of the turns, because you can control whether you are going to draft a lot of cards in a row and then play everything out of your hand, even if it creates less than perfect scenic views or combos. Or just play slow and steady, with the windows rolled down while the breeze tousles your hair, and play everything you draft (either on the tableau or in the discard pile) every turn. It’s your game, cher!

I’ll note here that we are playing with a pre-production copy, so there may be some changes to the artwork or the components or the rulebook. But I did like the lagniappe that came with the copy that 25th Century Games sent us. Not only do you have a cool first player marker in the form of the California Hwy One symbol, but the game also comes with a rest stop full of the Landmark cards that I alluded to earlier.

The Landmark cards could have been the standard “fulfill this requirement, get some points” type of cards. But instead, I was pleasantly surprised that some allowed you to score straight points, some focused on giving you points for collecting symbols, and a few gave you some kind of cool bonus power. I like the variety a lot. The rulebook says that the Landmark cards are for “advanced gamers” only, but I really feel like anyone could and should add these cards. At the start of the game, you only lay out three cards from the deck, and you can only earn one once per turn, so scanning the available market does not really add much to the cognitive load.

In total, BIG SUR has been an enjoyable little ride. I can’t lie, it’s giving me the envie to plan another trip out West. BIG SUR’s small package, breezy play, and puzzly nature make it a natural fit to get some plays in after each beautiful trip down that gorgeous highway.