7 Wonders Duel

Game Name:	7 Wonders Duel	Published Year:	2015
Game Publisher:	Repos Productions	Player Scale:	2
Game Designers:	Antoine Bauza & Bruno Cathala	Run Time:	30 – 60 mins

7 Wonders Duel takes you back three–thousand odd years or so, to once again rule over an empire in this tricky, thought provoking, and ultimately brilliant riff on its big brother; 7 Wonders. If you have never played 7 Wonders don’t panic, as these games are very different, yet are clearly related.  If you’ve played 7 Wonders, and, love it or hate it, this game is worth investigating.  A relatively small footprint, and gameplay under an hour it is great for couples, lunch breaks or just as a cracking head-to-head game that wraps up in under an hour.



After each selecting four of the available wonders each – yes that does mean there will be eight of them in total, but only seven can be built – and your starting coins, in turn, you will select one the available cards from the pyramid style display and add it to you civilisation, paying any costs associated and thus gain its benefits/resource.

There are three ages to the game, where each subsequent Age the range of resources changes and evolves, advancing your civilisation forward.  The game will come to a natural close at the end of the Third Age, where all points are calculated and a winner is declared.  Alternatively, victory can be achieved through a ‘Scientific’ channel – collecting six of the seven possible scientific icons, or via the ‘Military’ route, whereby you crush your opponent beneath sandal shod foot.  These latter two are much harder to achieve – but believe me, it feels really, really good when you do.

 

[caption id="attachment_1873" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Pyramid of the 1st Age[/caption]

 

A central feature of the game, and one that makes the game look very different from many, is the table layout of the cards for each of the Ages.  Not only does it look cool, and it is also pretty thematic but it provides a great assimilation of the drafting mechanic used in 7 Wonders, but for two players.  Which is far, far better than the two player mode that exists in that game.  From this very simple set-up, each player is beset by an array of choices and consequences, in a greater fashion that you would normally experience in a draft.  With about 50% open information – since roughly half of the cards are placed face down – the questions of what to take, what to leave behind, what to open, or leave for your opponent to open form your basic, yet difficult choices that must be made each turn.

[gallery ids="1875,1874" type="rectangular"]

When playing this game, there is a definite sense of flow, with the game’s pace charging ahead as the Ages fall, as your civilisation becomes more coherent and more structured, choices become more clear, but never simpler.  Ways and means of blocking your opponent become more recognisable, but ultimately more costly if they don’t also benefit you.  If you fall into the category of a “Classic Gamer”, one who likes strategically planning ahead, second guessing your opponent and basically planning your victory from four or five moves away, 7 Wonders Duel will be right up your street, with a nice flourish – in that every now and then, a revealed card scuppers even your best laid plan.  On the flip side of this though, if you are prone to Analysis Paralysis this game can, for those same reasons feel a little daunting at times.

 

[caption id="attachment_1880" align="alignnone" width="4032"] 8 of the 7 Wonders...erm...yeah, 8[/caption]

 

Players already familiar with 7 Wonders will feel right at home playing this game, coming armed to the table with an understanding of how the tableau and resource building works.  There is a significant change in the way Commerce, Science, and Military are handled, but not so much so to create a barrier.  New players to this cannon will quickly be able to make sense of the rule book, which provides plenty of examples plays for the more ‘complex’ rules.  The rulebook, isn’t the most concise, and looking for rule clarity and reminders isn’t always as straightforward as one would like – I always forget how many coins you start with during set up, and I also forget I have to go to page six to find out.  Of particular note is the iconography, particularly on some of the Science tokens, Guides and Wonders – once you know what they mean the symbols do “make sense” but that meaning doesn’t spring forth, so early games can become slowed while you look them up.



With an almost perfect and useful box insert, quality components including the nifty military tracker, Repos Productions have done exactly what you would expect of a major game distributor.  Unfortunately, they have even managed to make the card sizes irritating again – in 7 Wonders they are unnecessarily big, in Duel, too small – yes it helps keeps the footprint down, but if a standard poker card size had been used very little would have been lost.

There are no ‘Take That’ actions you can make in this game, no way you can directly stop or hamper your opponent, other than removing or limiting their options (a couple of the Wonders do allow you to destroy one of your opponents resources).  Military actions do provide a little back and forth, but never enough that you ever feel like you are focussing solely on that aspect of the game, and certainly not enough to spoil anyone's enjoyment.  All the player interaction happens above the table; one player out-smarting, out-manoeuvring and out-playing the other. The tit-for-tat of selecting the card you know you opponent needs soon becomes too costly, and so as the game progresses so too must a player’s ability to plan and strategize.



After a game of 7 Wonders Duel, I feel compelled to play it again, and again.  Throughout each game there is a palpable competition and conflict, and far more so than one would expect from such a small, compact box.  Some iconography feels obtuse, and the cards are a little too small for me to be able to comfortably shuffle, but really, these are the only bad points about the game...in fact, I wish I could play a multiplayer version of Duel, that wasn’t 7 Wonders.

It plays in under an hour, is a great two-player game with enough depth, strategy and variation to ensure each game will feel and play differently.  It also looks both interesting and beautiful on the table. 7 Wonders Duel, really does feel like it pits you head-to-head, in an all-out rivalry against your opponent in a way that many larger games just don’t seem to capture.  I strongly believe everybody needs a solid two-player game in their collection, and you can’t go far wrong with this game at all.

 

The Good:

Compelling game play

Great pacing

Strong competition

Thought provoking

Multiple paths to victory

 

The Bad:

Cards are too small for “man hands”

Icons can be very confusing

Rulebook is a little on the naff side

Can only be played two-player!

Don't just take my word for it though, check out what Meeple Like Us or Creaking Shelves have to say about this game.

Review: Overseers

Overseers is the English reprint of the Japanese game Chenghuang: Guardian of the City first published in 2015 by Big Fun Games.  This game marks the first game from ThunderGryph Games and was successfully funded on Kickstarter in July 2016 raising €62,710, 712% of its €8,800 target. The copy seen in the photos below is the Kickstarter edition so some components may vary from a retail purchase of the game.

In Overseers players take up the mantles of celestial beings whose purpose is to continually strike a balance in the world of men, to do this they will apply Traits to human-kind such as Courage, Hope, Greed and Anger, however; they will also be in constant conflict with one another, thus ensuring that no one Overseer can impose their will exclusively upon mankind.
Truth be told; the theme in this game is a very simple, yet very beautiful, veneer; so if theme is of paramount importance to you in your games, then this one will certainly not be plucking that string. Do not stop reading though, because mechanically this is a wonderful game of drafting, set collection, and bluffing with variable player powers and heaps and heaps of player interaction. And to top it all off, these things are pulled off quickly, deftly and with panache.


Overseers is played over three rounds, with the player collecting the most victory tokens being deemed the winner, a three-player game will take about thirty minutes but do not mistake its brevity for any lack of depth. Each player will be dealt a new Overseer at the beginning of every round, each with their own special ability, before being dealt a hand of six Trait cards. As a Set Collection/Drafting game, each player is looking to put together the best five cards they can, selecting one card from their hand before passing the remainder to their neighbour. The really main area of Overseers comes from the following Phase: Placement.
Here, players will place their five cards on the play space in front of them, three of the cards will be face-up, the other two face down. All players then discuss who they believe to have the best and highest scoring set of cards, before entering the Vote Phase and simultaneously placing their Token in front of that player.
The Judgement Phase only affects that one chosen player, where they will either Admit (and discard two cards of their choosing) or Deny that they have the best hand. In the Showdown Phase all players reveal their cards, and if the voted player Denied, and didn’t score the highest scoring cards, they get to take one of the discarded cards to bolster their final score! Which is ace. Alternatively, they lose two of their best cards if they did have the high score.

The Greed Phase allows the player with the most Greed cards (very low scoring) to steal a card from another player! Which introduces a brilliant and simple Take That system into the game.

The round ends and each player dives into the Overseers stamped cloth bag to dig out their victory tokens with the winner being declared after three rounds to the player with the most victory points. These coins are a bit of a struggle, with denominations of 1, 5, 10, and 20 it varying shades of grey through to a greyish-gold on one side and then a uniform grey/brown on the reverse makes this part of the game a little sluggish and saps some of the pace in this game, I have a mind to pimp mine out with some simple wooden tokens at some point and if you have any form of colour blindness you may struggle even more here.
Overseers may well be my favourite drafting game (insert gasp here), and this is for one very simple reason; because it is very easy to keep track of what you are giving to your neighbours. With only six types of cards to keep track of, you almost feel like a card counter in a Las Vegas casino; you know you passed your neighbour a (blue) Courage card each and every time, but come the Placement phase he isn’t showing any? Not a chance, he is sitting on a hidden 21 points there and so we enter the Vote phase and everyone around that table thinks they know what each other has hidden. This is integral to the enjoyment of Overseers, you make the best of the draft but go charging into the next phase with a slither of knowledge, with accusations ready, and so the player interaction ramps up.
I always enjoy this part of the game, the bluffing, the miss direction, and even the trying to attract all those counters (that I like to call the Denial Trap). In my games, this phase can get pretty heated, increasingly so with each successive round. However, the boisterous extremes I’ve seen this game taken to aren’t fundamental or necessary, shyer, quieter players will certainly be able to fully engage with this phase, just with a lot more decorum. Choosing your play group is important with this game, much like many games that use a bluffing/bidding mechanic, arguably these mechanics in Overseers are more accessible than Sheriff of Nottingham for example, as all players are simultaneously hiding something, and no one person is the “bad guy”.

The art and graphic design (from Studio Amatiz) are…noteworthy. It is brilliant, the Overseer cards and box art have the very popular and attractive spot UV varnish, the artwork itself is beautiful, intricate, and detailed, reminiscent, I think, of Soul Calibur. But; it is a little racy for my very English sensibilities. All the Overseers are women, all of them are Caucasian, all of them are scantily or revealing clad, some of them are verging on pornographic. None of this is relevant to the theme of the game, it has been a very conscious decision to have these cards look this way, simply to have them look that way.

The trait cards, conversely, are purely graphical, simple large, bold iconography with Chinese writing which is all you need for a set collection card game.
Some people will be absolutely fine with the artwork, they will appreciate the talent and skill required for it, and then just get on and play the game. I’m not one of those people though unfortunately, sometimes I play games with my nieces and nephews who are all roughly around thirteen, and I simply wouldn’t feel comfortable putting Meixiu
(a girl’s name meaning grace and beauty) down in front of a thirteen-year-old boy or girl, and even some grown men or women could be made to feel uncomfortable with the art too. For me, this limits who I can play this great game with, it limits when I can play it and these limitations result in people missing out on a great, fun little game.

This game was one of the first games I ever backed on Kickstarter, and I’m proud to be one of the 2,617 to help bring it to life because it is fabulous. Overseers has a lot of my favourite game mechanics and some of the best player interaction I’ve experienced in a competitive game. It is quick and light, and although may sound fragmented and clunky with all the phases, it is actually very slick and easy to pick up. I only wish that I could get Overseers to the table as often as it deserves.

You can pre-order your copy of the second print run here and there are still some of the first print around here.

If you like Sherriff of Nottingham you may also like Overseers.

5 Great Lunch Break Games

Do you remember when you used to run around playing football or some such on your lunch break as a kid?  At some point lunch breaks just became a break in the day to eat, maybe have a chat and catch up on social media, sure they were still ‘fun’ in the loosest possible use of that word – but they weren’t being used to their fullest potential.  Until now.  Now, I play games.

5 Great Lunch Break Games

When looking for lunch break games there are some very specific considerations to take into account, and these are:

1. Run time: each one of these games easily plays in less than 45 minutes, including set-up and tear down – you still have to eat after all.


2. Player count, obviously with higher numbers, the runtime goes up, so we kept these to mainly two player games.


3. Space, unless you’re planning on taking up the big table in the canteen, all of these games fit on a 2 x 2 foot table.


4. Accessibility, by this I mean the games have to be easy to pick up and understand, we want limited Analysis Paralysis (AP), and rules that are very easy to explain when teaching the game.


5. Sticky Fingers, whether you’re eating a sandwich, burger, salad or soup you’re going to need to manipulate tokens, cards etc. so games that either has few of these or games that are easily protected.

So in alphabetical order:

7 Wonders Duel - Repos Production

Antoine Bauza & Bruno Cathala

This is the proper two player variant of 7 Wonders, so if you are a fan of that game, you will no doubt adore this.  With cards laid out in a pyramid fashion, and only some cards initially visible it imitates the draft system from 7 Wonders, but for two and it masterfully brings the level of choice into this game that the two player variant missed.  Each turn players are presented with a simple choice, which card/ability to they want to add to their civilisation, this choice must be carefully measured against what your opponent will want, and what your opponent will be able to do that you can’t.

A fantastically tight and tense game with three very different win conditions that tie together to instil a strategic balance. Of this list, 7 Wonders Duel probably has the most strategic depth, so you’ll probably only fit one game on a lunch break, but like the l’oreal adverts: it’ll be worth it.

Read the full review of 7 Wonders Duel here

Boss Monster – Brotherwise Games

Johnny O’Neal & Chris O’Neal

Face it; it’s more interesting being the bad guy.  In this NES inspired dungeon themed tableau builder you get to be just that, in spades.  Each player is a Boss Monster at the end of a dungeon that hapless heroes will traverse to try and kill you unless you can squash, skewer, maim and otherwise stop them.  The artwork, gameplay, style is all in the vein of a classic 8-bit side-scrolling computer game.  Even the damn box looks the part – which makes busting this game out to any gamer over thirty, a piece of cake.

Dungeons are built over five cards and are either Trap rooms, or Monster rooms, each of which will have a certain type of treasure.  Treasures attract the different types of hero from the town (a central pool of hero cards).  Bosses need to collect ten souls but have only five Hit Points, which heroes dish out automatically if they ever make it through your not-quite-death-trap dungeon.

Read the full review of Boss Monster here

Downsize – Braincrack Games

Lewis Shaw

This is a game about cut-throat corporations trying to maximise profits, and minimise costs, it short they are trying to downsize.  In this very slick and simple hand management game players will be firing (discarding) their employees (cards in their hands) in specifically matched pairs, the varying combination of pairs will grant bonuses such as the Corporate and Investments pairing, which grants access to the two cards from the Returns decks, or a Legal and HR which will force a player to hire another employee.  The aim of this game is not only to have no cards but to have no cards AND have collected the highest value of Returns.  The Market Movements expansion (it comes in the Boardroom Edition) adds, even more, conflict and strategy.

This is a really quick, light game with plenty of out-and-out player interaction.  You’ll need minimum space to play and seats between 2 and 6 players comfortably – the more players, the faster and more vicious the game!

Read the full review of Downsize here

Jaipur – Game Works

Sébastien Pauchon

In the hustle and bustle of Jaipur, two of the wealthiest and most influential traders compete to earn their place in the court of the Maharaja.  To do this they must manage their stock holding, maximise their trading and ultimately reap the largest reward.  This is a swift and deft game with a wonderfully simple economics engine at its heart which makes use of hand management and set collection.  Your seemingly limited choice of two actions opens a wealth of dilemma, trade cards from the market, or sell from your hand.  Naturally, the sooner you sell, the better the market for those goods, so more profit, and the more you sell, again the better, but also what goods you sell is important too.  Not forgetting the camels; you need camels, but having camels isn't getting you money or goods.

A wonderfully simple, quick and deep game, with a very small footprint, brilliantly bright components and compelling game play.

Star Realms – White Wizard Games

Darwin Kastle

In deepest, darkest space there can be only war…and a bit of trade.  This very quick-fire deck building game is a cracking lunch break filler, making use of very simple mechanics and rules.  Cards will add to your Trade ability (allowing you buy new ships and space stations), increase your Authority (Hit Points), or deal damage (…does some damage), some cards do one of these things, some do two, or all three.  Sometimes additional effects are triggered depending on what other cards you already have in play.

The four factions: The Trade Federation, The Blobs, The Star Empire or The Machine Cult, all behave slightly differently, and combinations of these four can be brutally effective at dealing damage, which is the aim of the game.  Yes, the theme is a little slapped on, but the game itself is fun and quick enough to be enjoyed without needing you to believe that you are leading an attack run in an Imperial Fighter.

And that is my list of great lunch break games, what are yours?  Why don’t you share your lunch break games on Twitter using the #LunchBeakGames

Other games that came very highly recommended for this category included:

Deep Sea Adventure

Onitama

Love Letter

Mint Works

Review: 7 Wonders

Game Name:	7 Wonders	Published Year:	2010
Game Publisher:	Repos Production	Player Scale:	2 – 7
Game Designer:	Antoine Bauza	Run Time:	30 mins

Govern, manage and rule one of the ancient civilisations of the world, and raise up your monuments and your wonders to show all that yours truly is the greatest.  In this game of tableau building, drafting and set collection each player will take responsibility for and guide one of these old world cultures hem through three ages of early civilisation, building up their scientific knowledge, their armies, and their resources in the hope that they will build their Wonder and be crowned the greatest kingdom.

7 Wonders has managed to rack up pretty much every board gaming award out there, as you’ll see from the award emblazoned box, and this is with very, very good reason.  Each player is given a wonder to build, represented by their tableau which will be placed in front of them, this will act as a guide to a player’s strategy – although it is by no means compulsory to build your wonder, doing so does bring with it some decent bonuses and victory points when calculating the end game score.



This game was my first experience I had with the drafting mechanic, which I have grown to love, but at the beginning, it felt very, very alien to me and some of my friends just flat out don’t like drafting games.  You’ll start each of the three Ages with seven cards, from this hand you’ll select the one card you want to play – this could add some resources to your culture like; stone, brick wood, cloth etc. or it might be more troops/training for your army, or even expanding the minds of your civilians with scientific structures and so on.  This card will be placed face down until each player is ready.  Simultaneously the cards will be flipped and you’ll gain that ability/resource from here on out.  You then pass the remained of the hand to the player on your left (in the Second Age it’s your right, and then back to your left for the Third and final Age).  The wonderful (pun intended) thing about this mechanic is that you’ll really have to plan ahead to do well, you’ll have to carefully consider and weigh your hand each and every turn.  Do you take the card you want/need, or do you take the card your neighbour (or even your neighbour’s neighbour) wants/needs?

[caption id="attachment_815" align="alignleft" width="300"] First Age Cards[/caption]

At the end of each Age combat is resolved (more on that in a minute) and new Age begins, bringing with it a brand new hand of cards, which are slightly more advanced or “better” than the previous Age.  At the end of the Third Age all the final scores are calculated and the winner decided.  Now, despite the pretty quick actual play time of the game, the end game scoring is a little…complicated, which; on the one hand, is very good because trying to work out who is winning throughout the game is difficult, but on the other…it is just a pain to do.  There are in fact apps around that will help with this, but it is a major (and not uncommonly noted) drawback to an otherwise great game.

This game seats up to seven people, and with numbers that high you might worry that there will be too much player interaction, or too much going on, but what 7 Wonders does so well is that it only has you directly competing and trading with your immediate neighbours at the table.  This gives every player a slightly different experience, and opens slightly different opportunities and styles of play, especially in larger groups.  This dynamic means that you really only need to play close attention to the person on your left and your right, you still need to be mindful of the other player’s but you can’t directly interfere with them anyway. Because all players act simultaneously the pace of this game is very, very quick – certainly, if everyone knows how to play – so keeping track of who is doing and collecting what is easy and at no point is it ever overwhelming.



The box states that this game can be played with two people, and as far as facts go, that is true.  It really isn’t very good with two, and it’s only an OK game with three, but it quickly gets better, more fun and more dynamic with more players; this best games of this I’ve had are with seven, and I probably wouldn’t want to play with less than five these days.

The component quality is of a great standard, with decent, thick cardboard tableaus and slightly larger than standard playing cards (this does mean you’ll need different, larger card sleeves though) with beautiful artwork from the incredibly talented Miguel Coimbra, all of this combines to make a rich and vibrantly tactile playing experience – is it any wonder (again, pun intended)that all the cards are played face up when they look this good?

This game has, what I would argue two levels of player interaction: ‘Table Led’ and ‘Player Led’.  On the table, there is a subtle semi-indirect player interaction.  What I mean by this is that one civilisation can’t overtly attack or hamper another.  Combat works in a simple and fluid fashion; at the end of the Age, players will compare their military score to the player on your left and right, the highest score wins and receives victory points for that win (and negative points for the loss).  This simple system allows players to see from very early on how they will fare in the forthcoming “battle”.  Trade is handled in a likewise manner: a player can buy good from a neighbour for a small cost, this purchase doesn’t detract from a players ‘stockpile’, but does increase their treasury.

From a Player Led viewpoint, the interaction is more explicit but is secretive.  As a player, you can assess and guess as to what your opponents are trying to amass and accomplish, and you can try and scupper those plans by taking the card you think they need.

With two levels of player interactions, on top of wonderful components and art work makes 7 Wonders a brilliant and varied game, with many nuances that continually change as the players become more experienced and change.  Although this game does sit two players, it really, really shines when you have all seven civilisations on the go.  This is a game I have had in my collection for years, and it isn’t going anywhere; it works as a splendid introduction into the drafting mechanic, and since most cards are played face-up, it is a game that can be taught easily too.  7 Wonders is a “one of those” classic games that everyone should at least try, just warn your wallet, because you will want to buy this.

With classic, big title games like 7 Wonders, it is very easy to forget how good they really are and get wrapped up in the newest release.  I probably haven’t played this in about a year, but it was such a great experience, why haven’t I played it more?  When was the last time you dusted off an “old classic/favourite”?

Review: Steampunk Rally

Game Name:	Steampunk Rally	Published Year:	2015
Game Publisher:	Roxley Games	Player Scale:	2 - 8
Game Designer:	Orin Bishop	Run Time:	45 – 60 mins

 

The greatest scientific minds have converged across time and space in a bid to discover who the best inventor of all time is; naturally, the only way to truly compare scientific achievement is to have them all build giant steampunk engines and race around the Alps.  How else would you compare the contributions of Marie Curie, Elijah J McCoy, and Nikola Tesla?

This is an engine-building, card-drafting race game; meaning you’ll draft one card from each of the four decks, pick one and pass the remainder on to the adjacent player.  You can then use those cards to build your steampunk engine or discard them for power represented by the one-hundred-and-eight-dice in blue (Steam), red (Fire) or yellow (Electricity).  Alternatively, you can discard your cards for Cogs, which allow you to change the pips on a die, and give you the all-important re-rolls.  After Venting the previously built up pressure in your machine (lowering and hopefully removing engaged dice) by discarding Cogs, you race; which is where you’ll roll all of those dice you’ve just collected.

These dice are then used to engage parts of your machine, some components will require high rolls, some will allow multiple engagements if you apply multiple dice.  Now, obviously; the aim of your machine is to generally move forward, towards that distant chequered finishing line, but you’ll also want it to reinforce itself, to protect against that notoriously difficult Alpine terrain, and possibly generate more Power or Cogs.  If you don’t vent frequently enough you’ll soon discover that you have no open slots for all the dice you’ve just generated, and if you take too much damage, parts of your engine will fall off and you could even spectacularly explode!

Do not be fooled by this game’s cartoony exterior, this is not the light race game that it looks like, far from it in fact.  Although each of the mechanics, as a standalone tool are straight forward enough, the combination of them in the context of the race is not only a hot molten mess of mechanics, it's counter-intuitive.  There is a faux-strategy to this game, it makes you think you are making worthwhile decisions; that you are presented with choices that need to be weighed, measured and carefully considered – which incidentally is what I think a game should do.  But you are not doing that at all, you pick the best of the hand you are given – and at the beginning that is only four cards, and not only are your choices limited, so too are the outcomes; power, cogs or parts.

This game wants you to build great big, hulking machine monstrosities to traverse the extremely treacherous terrain.  It wants you to have fun with rolling loads of dice, which in turn make you roll more dice, and turn the spinner and gain cogs etc.; which is great, but if you are doing those things you’re not really moving very far, or very fast; which, for a race game is, well…counter-intuitive.  On the other hand, if you build a super lean, economic machine built for movement, you then face the trouble of building up your defence to overcome the terrain, so you stop moving; which, for a racing game is, well…counter-intuitive.  And then when you finally get to the finish line, when you have reached the end of the game, beaten off your opponents to cross the finish line first…everyone gets another go, and the actual winner is the person furthest past the finish line – literal moving goal-posts – which, for a racing game is, well…counter-intuitive.

With a racing game one would expect a huge amount of player interaction; jockeying for positions, overtaking, shortcuts, and with a cartoon steampunk finish, you’d expect to see silly weapons, bombs, claws, trip-wires, rudimental electrical attacks and lasers etc.  Of course you would, it’s a game about a race, between you and your friends/rivals; in fact, if you thought Mario Kart the board game, but with steampunk inventors instead of Italian plumbers, you and I would have had the same thought.  And we would both be wrong.  Very wrong.  For player interaction in this game, you will pass cards to one player, and another will pass you their cards to you.  That’s it.  You’ll roll your dice, they will roll theirs.  They move their standee and you’ll move yours.  Out of politeness, you may well declare what you are doing, but it won’t really affect them in any way at all really.  There are of course some weapons in the Boost deck, but they are few, far between, very limited and, basically you need dice and cogs more than you need a weapon that doesn’t do much.

The artwork in this game is really quite lovely; provided by Lina Cossette and David Forest.  Wonderful caricatures of some of the world’s most famous and recognisable scientific minds, all with a steampunk glaze –Marie Curie has a bionic arm for example.  Each of the component cards has been crafted with great attention to detail and captures the theme and tone of this game brilliantly.  The standees could have been replaced by plastic models to match the colours and machine of the cockpit cards, but that would have been less amazing art on the board and driven the price up.

One thing I really like about this game, and it is something Orin Bishop and the Roxley team should be praised and lauded for is their efforts in creating a rich and diverse player-scape.  It would have been all-too-easy to focus on white, European, male inventors/scientists but there is a large and diverse selection to choose from in this game.  If you want to play this game to have fun and build a giant machine that creates and spends power almost perpetually; you probably won’t win.  And if you play this game to win and get the furthest past the finish line, you probably won’t have had much fun.