Ion: A Compound Building Game - A Review

Ion: A Compound Building Game is a simple card drafting game where [2-7] players select from a number of available ion cards and noble gas cards, with the objective of forming either neutrally charged compounds or sets of stable noble gases. Web site
This and another game were freebies on the Kickstarter for Subatomic earlier this year. Of the three games it's the weakest in play, but the chemistry is well represented.

Digression: I seem to have peaked too soon in finding punning song titles to post in these columns. Isn't that Ionic?

The game features a deck of element cards with add-on decks of radioactive atoms, transition metals and poly-atomic ions. There's some cards with specific compounds that score bonus points and some tokens to allow special actions. Then there's a scoreboard with coloured tokens.

Bits and pieces of the game

Players are dealt nine cards (or 8 in the base version) and then pick & play cards, passing the remainder to the left before discarding the last two cards. In this way you build compounds or collections of elements on the table.

Each round has four cards in the pool and three compound bonus cards

A compound must be neutrally charged in order to score, so you're looking for negatives to match positives. Transitive metals have two possible charge levels, so you can build larger compounds. The bonus compound cards also give you bonus points if you make one or both of the given substances. Noble gases score bonus points for the more you have in your collection. Radioactive elements score at the end of the round and again at the end of the game, although there is a complex half-life mechanism involved.

A hand at the end of a round. The Calcium Chloride gets bonus points becasue as per the compound card in the previous photo, it is use as a de-icer.

The three action tokens allow you to take an extra card from your hand, take a card from four cards laid out on the table and to totally re-arrange your hand at the end of the round. There are three rounds in a game and these tokens can only be used once, so there is a bit of thought required. However, playing a poly-atomic ions card allows you to regain an action token.

And that's about it. It's rummy with a complex hand redistribution mechanic. We played the basic game once, then the advanced and then put the game away.
However, I can see this working well in the chemistry classroom. You have to look for the right elements to balance each other out and the bonus compound cards also show an example of where that compound is used commercially.

So there you have it. Three chemistry-themed games, of which Subatomic is definitely the pick.

Other game reviews:
Thunderbirds Board Game
Covalence: A Molecule Building Game
Hangry Blobfish From Mars Card Game
Subatomic: An Atom Building Game