Monday, 7 September 2026

Ratti di Wistar

Danilo Sabia and Simone Luciani · 2023 · Cranio Creations

Players

1–4

On the box

90min

At our table

50–110min

Weight Demanding· 3.42 out of 5

Text in the game None

What it is

Rats of Wistar is a worker placement euro game, one of the demanding ones, for one to four players. The story is a charming one: some lab rats have become intelligent, escaped, and now live in a burrow under a farm. Each player has their own colony to grow over five rounds.

The game is played on two levels. Below is the burrow, which grows with new rooms and new rats to unlock. Above is the humans’ farm, where you send your teams to steal wood, metal and the ideas people leave lying around. Actions are tied to three areas, the forest, the farm and the underground, and they sit on a rondel that shifts the bonuses every round.

To take a strong action in an area you need to already have enough rats there. And rats sent above ground never come back, they can only be moved, so every placement needs some thought.

How it plays

In your first game it feels natural to focus on the burrow, because that’s the part you can see: new rooms, new rats, everything growing. Then the scores are counted and you find out the winner is whoever played the cards. What makes the difference above all is how they combo with each other, and anyone who neglects that part falls behind, every time.

One thing worth knowing about the length. The box says ninety minutes, but with two players we’re around fifty, and with four it gets close to two hours. At two it’s really a different game.

The nugget

Wistar rats really exist. They were the first rat breed raised specifically for research, back in 1906, and today more than half of all laboratory rats descend from them.