Artists: Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas, Beth Sobel
Release Year: 2019
Mechanics: Card Drafting, Dice Rolling, Hand Management, Engine Building
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Introduction
Hoo-boy, talk about a sleeper hit. I remember so much drama when Wingspan was first released by Stonemaier Games in 2019. It hit store shelves and immediately sold out. Everyone wanted to get their hands on the hot new bird game, to the point where nasty rumors of ‘artificial scarcity’ began to circulate and people criticized Stonemaier Games for having poor forecasting. The reality of the situation was that no one could have predicted just how successful Wingspan would become.
How to Play
Wingspan begins each player with an empty ecosystem board, 5 bird cards, 2 goals, and 5 food (one of each type). Players can keep as many birds from their initial draw as they wish, but they need to sacrifice 1 food for each card kept.
On your turn you may place one of your cubes in any one of the four action spots on your player board, simultaneously helping keep track of how many turns in the round, and helping you remember how to run your engine.
The first possible action is to play a bird card. From your hand, simply pay the required food from your personal supply back to the bank and place your bird on one of the three ecosystems on your board (Woodlands, Plains, and Wetlands). Your bird card must go in the leftmost empty column, and depending on the column you may also need to pay an egg.
If you choose not to play a bird, You can instead play your cube in one of your three ecosystems. Each ecosystem will net you different benefits. If you place your cube in the woodland area, you’ll get to generate food based off the die on the table. The Plains allows you to lay eggs on your bird cards, and the Wetlands allow you to draw cards. As you play birds to an ecosystems, choosing to play your cube there becomes more lucrative. When you take any of the actions that correspond to the ecosystems you place your cube in the left most empty spot on that track. As bird cards fill up the weaker left slots, the basic action will get stronger (for example, the first woodland column generates 1 food while the right most generates 3). Not only will your action be better, you will also benefit from the specific bird cards that you activate as you move your cube left, completing your turn.
The charm of Wingspan lies in its great variety. The base game contains 170 individual cards, all with lovely and unique art depicting each bird. While not every card power is unique, there is still a huge variety to behold.
The game continues with players taking actions until they all run out of cubes. Players score for the goal of the round and move to the next round. After the 4th round the final score is tallied and the player with the highest score is the winner.
Review
The production of Wingspan is simply fantastic. The box and rulebook have a luxury linen finish, and the card stock for all the cards is thick and satisfying. The artwork is breathtaking, and the pastel coloured eggs are sure to give you candy cravings. Everyone I’ve shown this game to has complimented how nice everything is; it is clear that no compromises were made during production.
The game play of Wingspan is simply and straightforward. Everyone has their own goal that they’re working towards and some shared goals to help nudge players in a specific direction. The public goals generally refer to having birds in specific ecosystems, or eggs in certain types of nests, while the private goals are much more varied. Some goals will have you seeking birds with colours in their name, while others want you to amass a flock of birds with a wingspan of 76cm or less. While you only start with one of these goals, some bird cards will give you the chance to obtain more.
The bird cards are the core of Wingspan. The entire game revolves around collecting, playing, and activating the birds on your player board. Often players will find themselves grappling with the desire to activate a certain row of birds, but really needing the effects of a different action.
Over the course of a game of Wingspan you’ll likely play anywhere between 8 – 14 cards into your tableau. With 170 unique bird cards there is a great amount of variability and many paths and engines for you to explore. There is no need to do the same thing over and over again, game after game.
A game of Wingspan starts off slowly, which can be a bit painful. It takes over half of your turns of the first round to get enough food and cards to play just a couple of birds. Luckily a lot of the cards you play will give you a benefit every time they activate, making your subsequent turns more effective and allowing you to reach heights you previously thought impossible.
Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of Wingspan. It’s pleasant to look at, easy to teach and play, and offers a great amount of replayability, but I dislike how much luck is involved. The card deck, while tall and varied makes it difficult to find the specific card you need, and if one of your opponents was lucky enough to pull a food generating crow early in the game, it can be difficult to keep up. I do enjoy the small amount of positive player interaction (some cards will give all players a food, and others will give you a point when a other player takes a certain action), but I wish there were just a little more. Again, this has to do with the size of the deck and just how varied the cards are. While I know I would prefer a more focused tableau building game such as Race for the Galaxy, I recognize that the wide variety is important for the replayability of Wingspan.
But who cares about what I think – my wife absolutely LOVES Wingspan. This is one of the few games she actively asks to play, and any game that inspires a level of enthusiasm from my partner is a game that deserves applause. She loves the feeling of building an engine, she enjoys the fact that no one can throw a wrench into her mechanics and slow down her process, and she particularly enjoys when a satisfying combo can be created.
It’s also worth pointing out that the theme of birds is just plain pleasant. It’s so nice to see lovely illustrations of birds that we could see in our back yard. If Wingspan had a goblin or mountain troll theme, it would be eminently less pleasant. I think this is where Wingspan shines the brightest; it’s a fun, comforting, enjoyable experience and it is completely inoffensive. Wingspan welcomes players into the board game hobby with open wings.
Number of plays: 2 Designer: Maxime Tardif Release Year: 2023 Mechanics: Tableu building, Card Drafting, Hand Management
A prototype of Earth was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
Earth, designed by Maxime Tardif and published by Inside Up Games, is an engine building, hand management, tableau building game for 1 – 5 players. In this post I’ll be focusing on the multiplayer mode of play, which generally takes between 60 to 90 minutes to complete. Earth is on Kickstarter until March 7th, so if anything I say below interests you, check out their fundraising project here!
And if you’re interested in the solo game, you can find my review of it here!
How to Play
In Earth you are an island, with a distinct and unique ecosystem. Your goal is to plant flora into a 4 x 4 tableau that will grant you special abilities and amass points, as its the player with the most points who gets the distinction of being the best island.
Every player starts with 3 double sided cards, an island, an ecosystem, and a climate. These cards will dictate how many cards and soil you start with, grant you a special ability to use throughout the game, and give you an end game scoring condition that only you can fill.
In the centre of the table four Fauna cards are laid out, each offering a unique goal (such as “have 6 plans with 3 or less cube spots” or “have 4 cards completely full, all their growth and plant tracks complete”). Should you accomplish any of the requests of the fauna cards, you’ll earn victory points. The first player to satisfy each one will earn slightly more than those who come after them. On this board two more ecosystem cards are laid down, offering even more end game scoring conditions that all players can fulfill.
Now the stage is set and everyone draws their initial hand of cards based off their individual island. Some will draw 10 cards and need to compost 4 of them, others will draw 3 cards, but get extra soil to start with. Either way, each player will have an asymmetric starting position with their own benefits and drawbacks
The active player chooses one of the four actions (Planting, Composting, Watering, and Growing). That player gets a major benefit based off that action while all other players get a minor benefit. Then all players trigger any abilities on their cards from top left to bottom right that match the colour of that action. Once resolved, the next player becomes the active player, and the game continues in this fashion until someone has completed their 16 card tableau and triggers the end of the game. Play continues so all players had the same number of turns, then the final scores are tallied.
Points in Earth come from a wide variety of places. Cards in your tableau have a base VP, cards in your event space usually have a negative VP, you get 1 VP per card in your compost pile,1 VP per plant cube in your tableau, 1 VP per growth token, unless the canopy has been placed, in which case you gain the completion bonus instead, Terrain cards in your tableau may offer VPs, the Fauna board offers VPs to those who completed them, and finally, the ecosystem cards will offer VPs as well.
Review
Earth is a rare game where the player interactions aren’t negative; you’re not trying to cut your opponents down or steal their resources to gain a better position for yourself. Instead, there’s a beneficial relationship here. When you choose an action all the other players gain a fraction of the benefit you received, and everyone gets to trigger any cards of that colour.
With over 360 unique cards in the main plant deck, there’s no real way to hate draft or otherwise stifle your opponents, other than capitalize on their weaker positions. If you see they’re low on soil, it may be in your interest to choose the Plant action as they may not be able to fully utilize the benefit. Likewise, if you notice that both your opponents are full on cubes but you aren’t, consider taking the action that gives everyone cubes and laugh as they groan!
You won’t get far in Earth if you’re playing this way however. The goal is to grow the best ecosystem you can, and that is only achieved when you can create and maintain a well balanced engine. Having too many cards that produce cubes is a detriment when you’ve reached your capacity. I’ve really enjoyed playing cards into my tableau that create a self-sustaining ecosystem; the first card earns me a soil, the second card let’s me compost a card from my hand. The third card lets me pick up a card from the deck, and my fourth card discards a soil and a compost to earn 2 cubes and 1 growth. It’s so satisfying when you can align your abilities to create the perfect perpetual motion machine.
Earth has been billed as Terraforming Mars mixed with Wingspan. While it has much more in common with the latter, I can see the comparisons to both. Like Wingspan, you have 4 actions to choose from on your turn, and the action you take dictates which aspects of your engine will trigger. It also features point scoring cards based on various features (like 3pts per plant with a colour in its name) which Earth does its very best to inform players of the likely-hood of obtaining cards by including how many cards in the deck include that feature. I’m curious as to how that would change with future expansions, if diluting the deck would modify those odds, or if every expansion that adds cards to the Plant desk will need to maintain the appropriate ratios of cards.
Also like Wingspan the cards of your engine trigger in a specific order, making where and when you place them important. While some will agonize over the loss of efficiency when you’re forced to put a card that scores points based on being adjacent to other cards along the edge, it absolutely does cut down on some analysis paralysis. Considering you’ll be triggering the abilities on your cards on every players turn, it’s nice that you can just start from the top left and go to the bottom right, collecting and converting resources. This step can happen simultaneously and helps cut down on the play time.
While the comparisons to other games like Wingspan are apt, another mechanic I want to touch on is the benefits players give to each other on their turns. Harkening back to games like Puerto Rico or Race for the Galaxy, when the active player picks an action they get a major benefit while all the other players get a minor benefit. This system manages to keep all the players at the table involved, as their actions directly affect and benefit you. It’s wonderful when you’re agonizing over your cards trying to figure out which two you’ll want to plant but being constrained by your low soil supply, then the player before you takes an action that pours soil onto your player board. I really enjoy this positive player interaction and think it’s one of the more interesting parts of this design.
Earth has been fun to discover. I love the slight amount of asymmetry from the start and more as each player grows their engine in a different direction. I particularly enjoyed my friends as all the pieces started to fall into place. When deciding on their first hand of cards and exclaiming “oh! OH! But then… ooooohhh!”, their excitement was contagious. if you’ve enjoyed games like Wingspan or Terraforming Mars in the past, I’m willing to bet that you’ll enjoy Earth. Even if you don’t, at the very least you’ll get to enjoy some really lovely nature photography and learn about some fascinating plants. Like how cool the bleeding tooth fungus looks!
If you’re in the market for a medium weight engine builder that’s high in discovery and low in direct conflict, Earth will not disappoint!
Designer: Lance Hill Artists: Matthew Ebisch Release Year: 2022 Mechanics: Card drafting, set collection
A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
Introduction
OT Fantasy Draft is a up-coming card drafting and set collection game by Lance Hill, published by Funhill Games. In OT Fantasy Draft you’re trying to assemble the very best team of Old Testament characters, all of whom will offer a wide variety of ways to score points and other special abilities.
How to Play
The box of OT Fantasy Draft contains only a single deck of 54 cards, and a paper pad of score sheets. To begin, shuffle the entire deck and deal everyone two cards. Each player returns one card to the bottom of the desk, and keeps the other one secret. Deal out 5 cards to the centre of the table and decide who is going first.
The first player simply takes one card from the draft line and places it in front of them. They then refill the draft line so that it has 5 cards for the next player. Once everyone has taken a turn the whole draft line is discarded and refilled with 5 new cards. The player who went last in the previous round goes first in the subsequent round.
Round and round players take turns pulling players, things, and locations into their team, hoping to be the player with the most points at the end of the game.
The trick of the game is that every card has rules or effects that will affect other cards in your draft line. Samson for instance will destroy Grain, Lion, Philistia, and Temple, but give you points for each card that Samson destroys. Deborah on the other hand doubles the total points of all drafted women. The key is to assemble a team that synergizes well to score the most points.
Review
OT Fantasy Draft is a quick and fun card game. The rules are light and while it’s dead simple to play (literally pick a card on your turn. That’s it), the challenge lies in assembling the best lineup, which may be difficult if you find a man eating lion on your team. Seeing as OT Fantasy Draft is just 54 cards (and a paper score pad), this game is perfect for travelling. As long as you have a place where you can lay out 5 cards for the draft line, you could play standing up, holding the rest of the cards in your hands. Although for optimum comfort I do recommend a table and chair.
I’ve had odd successes and failures with pitching OT Fantasy Draft to players. The non-religious recoil and dismiss the game entirely, I’m sure no doubt due to the perception that Christian themed media is inherently poor quality and exists only to proselytize to its audience.
On the other hand, playing OT Fantasy Draft with some friends of faith, we had a ball. Laughing at the connections and interactions of the cards, like Abraham, who destroys Issac or Job, who destroys all things. The joy came from our shared knowledge and the callbacks to the classic stories out of The Bible.
I was reminded of the first time I played the Battlestar Galactica board game (before I watched the show) and my friends spent the whole game shouting quotes at each other and referencing events from the show that I just didn’t get. It was a fine experience, but without that cultural context most of the flavour was lost. I can only imagine all the references and interactions of OT Fantasy Draft would feel arbitrary to someone who hasn’t done their required reading.
It’s nearly impossible to separate OT Fantasy Draft from another drafting game, Fantasy Realms by Bruce Glassco. Both games have decks full of unique cards with varied scoring capabilities and interactions between the cards in your hand. Where Fantasy Realms has a generic fantasy theme OT Fantasy Draft employs characters, locations, and items from the Old Testament. If you’ve played Fantasy Realms before, the complex interactions of opposing cards in your draft line will feel very familiar.
While I’m not the biggest fan of the gridiron background on all the Location cards, I do like the logo style artwork on all the items, and all the human characters in various football poses, like Moses catching a dove like a wide receiver, or Saul, absolutely dunking on another player. I imagine those who reside in the Venn diagram of Christians, football fans and board game aficionados will be absolutely stoked with this product.
If you have a group of friends who know the Old Testament Bible stories, I’d recommend OT Fantasy Draft. The familiar theme and characters can be a useful bridge for someone who many be intimated by modern games. Experienced players will have an edge over new players, but I doubt that will be a concern for many people. With games so short it’s easy to just reshuffle the deck and play again and being so portable I reckon that you could get 3 or 4 games played in the pews during a Sunday morning service. Not that you should, mind you.
Number of plays: 2 Designer: Maxime Tardif Release Year: 2023 Mechanics: Tableu building, Card Drafting, Hand Management
A prototype of Earth was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
Earth, designed by Maxime Tardif and published by Inside Up Games, is an engine building, hand management, tableau building game for 1 – 5 players. In this post I’ll be focusing on the solo mode of play, which takes about an hour to complete. Earth is currently on Kickstarter so if anything I say below interests you, check out their fundraising project here!
How to play
In the solo game of Earth you are pitted against an AI named Gaia who is controlled by a small deck of 6 cards. The setup is mostly the same as the multiplayer game; shuffle the (massive) deck of 360 unique cards, then draw an island, climate, and ecosystem card, which will form your asymmetric starting powers and personal end game victory point goals. These cards are double sided to offer plenty of variety. Four Fauna cards are laid out on the common central board, and two public ecosystem cards give all players further victory points to work towards. After that, you’re ready to start.
On your turn you pick one of the four available actions (Planting, Composting, Watering, and Growing). After taking the benefit the action affords, you activate any cards that have played that contain the same colour as the action you just took. Then Gaia gets a small benefit based on that action.
For Gaia’s turn, draw the top card from her deck and follow the instructions. Most cards will have you adding points to her board while simultaneously giving you a small benefit and activating all the cards in your tableau of a specific colour. A large part of the game is ensuring you’re ready to capitalize on whatever benefit Gaia offers you.
Back and forth you and Gaia play until either you have 16 cards (in a 4 x 4 grid) in your personal tableau or Gaia plays all 6 of her cards twice. Whoever amasses the highest score is the winner.
Review
Earth was a fast game to learn and play. I found it helpful to know some of the design inspirations behind the systems (it was sold to me as cross between Terraforming Mars and Wingspan), but what I didn’t know about was the Puerto Rico-esque action following mechanism where the active player gets to choose an action and gets a big benefit while all the other players at the table get a small benefit. This interaction is simulated well in the solo game, as Gaia will trigger many of your abilities. Knowing what cards still remain in her deck is akin to looking over at another player and estimating which of the available actions they’ll take on.
While it was fairly simple to grasp the rules, I was somewhat overwhelmed with information when I started my first game. Trying to choose the Island card that I would use, and which 2 of the 10 cards in my hand to compost was a bit much. Every plant card has around 7 different features to consider (cost, base points, ecosystems, plant type, tree size, plant cube spots, and potential bonus action), so parsing 10 cards right at the start can be a bit much. In later plays, the shock was nowhere near as bad as I had a deeper understanding of how the mechanics fit together and how to quickly scan the cards for the information I needed.
Designer Maxime Tardif has posted an extensive designer diary talking about how they balanced the cards in Earth (which you can read here). While the value of each card is quite variable based on the goals of each game and other cards that it may interact with, you can be comforted by the thought that even if you throw away a good card, the rest you keep should be somewhat balanced.
Earth has a massive amount of variability ensuring that no two games you play will be identical. With 360 unique plant cards, 32 double-sided ecosystem cards, 23 double-sided Fauna, 10 double-sided Island and Climate cards, every game will have you exploring something new. In one game I focused on building a grove of berry bushes, with each one giving benefits to my other bush plants, while in another game I focused on growing all the trees on my cards to their full height. There’s no obvious single path to victory. Instead, players who are able survey the situation and capitalize on it the most effectively will be rewarded.
I enjoyed my solo plays of Earth. It was relaxing and challenging at the same time. I love the feeling of building an engine, particularly when you happen to get all the right pieces in place and your one action cascades into mountains of points. The AI opponent has four difficulty levels to choose from, so you can make adjustments if you find yourself absolutely trouncing her. The harder difficulties don’t drastically impact how Gaia plays, just how many points she accrues and how much more benefits she earns from each of your actions. I found the Medium difficulty to be the sweet-spot where I had fun and could narrowly eke out a win. I keep looking at the harder difficulties but shying away, waiting for the day where I’m in the mood to get absolutely wrecked by Gaia.
I have to admit that I don’t think there’s too much of a difference between having a dummy player accruing points and a point goal to work toward, but it feels more engaging to see Gaia’s board grow alongside your own. I enjoy the feeling of pressure as I see the mess of cubes and trees on Gaia’s board and only being able to guess at just how many points she has and how in the world am I going to surpass her. Sometimes I’d find myself second guessing which action I should take because the benefit I would be providing to Gaia would vastly outweigh the points I would gain.
While the copy of Earth I received from Inside Up Games is a prototype so none of the components are final, I found the production charming. They chose to use hundreds of breathtakingly gorgeous photographs on the cards. I love the height of the tiny trees as they grow off the table (somewhat reminiscent of Takenoko), but take care! I shudder to think about the calamity the would be caused by carelessly bumping the table and knocking everything askew. I’ve enjoyed following the crowdfunding campaign as they reveal more about the final compontents.
One of the features that I’m really looking forward to is the neoprene play mats. Neoprene play mats isn’t something that’s really tempted me before, but I love the gorgeous imagery on these mats, and having a mat to lay your 4 x 4 tableau of cards onto would be a very nice addition.
Earth is a looker, the mechanics are fun and interesting, and it’s simultaneously relaxing and engaging. I enjoy the different difficulty levels that let me choose if I want to push myself to new heights or if I just want to wind down at the end of the day. I’d love to see Gaia get some more decks that could simulate different priorities or change how she acts in some way, but as it stands, Earth is a quality game that I’m excited to explore further.
Not that I’m particularly well travelled or cultured, but I had never heard of a Tuscan castle before. I visited English and Dutch castles in my youth, and like most things, if I haven’t experienced them, I just assume they don’t exist.
The Castles of Tuscany is Stefan Feld’s 2019 follow-up to one of his most popular games, The Castles of Burgundy (2011). I won’t get into the specifics of what makes these two games different, because I’ll dedicate a whole article to that in the future. Make sure you’re following me on Twitter and Instagram to be notified when that article is live!
Overview
Disclaimer: The rulebook contained several ambiguities that required clarifications from the community FAQ. Publisher Alea has revised the rulebook (available here) which changed some rules; most notably, the ‘draw two cards’ action is now ‘draw three cards’ by default.
The Castles of Tuscany is a 2 – 4 player game that usually plays in under an hour. In The Castles of Tuscany players will collect tiles representing towns, villages, and monasteries and place them into their lands surrounding their castle, collecting special benefits to accrue points. The neat twist on scoring in The Castles of Tuscany is that there are 2 score tracks and two types of points that you can earn: green points and red points. During each of the 3 scoring phases, you gain red points equal to the number of green points you have. This means that a green point you earn at the beginning of the game will score you 3 red points by the end. At the end of the game the player with the most red points is the winner.
Each individual turn in The Castles of Tuscany is quick and smooth. You can only do one action per turn (although if you have a marble you can spend it to take a second turn). You maychoose from the following actions: take a tile from the centre and put it into your supply, pay two cards from your hand to play a tile from your supply into your province and gain the special benefit of the tile, or draw cards into your hand.
The ‘timer’ for the game comes from the number of tiles each player takes. When a player takes a tile from the offer row they must replace the tile they took with one from their own stack. When the first player depletes their first stack of tiles, the first scoring is triggered. When a player depletes their second stack, the second scoring is triggered, and when one player runs entirely out of tiles, the game ends.
Review
A new game from prolific designer Stefan Feld and being the successor to a wildly popular game means The Castles of Tuscany had some big shoes to fill. And the quick summary is, The Castles of Tuscany is easier to teach and faster to play. It feels streamlined and smoothed, almost as if it’s been finely developed by someone who has been making board games for decades.
Because it’s so smooth and streamlined, the gameplay flows well. Turns come and go quickly, leaving little downtime between turns. In my experience, because players only get one action per turn there is very little action paralysis.
Due to turns being so short, I found each individual turn to be somewhat unsatisfying. It may take several turns to queue up anything of value. This is especially true during the first few rounds of the game. It takes two cards of the same colour to play a matching coloured tile, so it’s not unheard of to spend two or three turns in a row just drawing cards, hoping you get the correct ones. You can always spend two cards as one card of a different colour, but my instinct refuses to let me do something so inefficient.
Restricting players to only one action per turn means that you can generally see what other players are planning on doing. You can afford to defer specific actions, safe in the knowledge that your plans won’t be foiled by a sudden rug pull. Of course, it’s important to notice when a player has a stone and they are able to pull off a double turn, both placing a tile and snagging the last blue tile available, much to your own chagrin.
The Castles of Tuscany is a perfectly fine game. The component quality is nice, the rules aren’t too onerous, and it’s easy to pick up and play. I find it lacking the punchy moments where you’re able to build up to big exciting moves. “I play this tile, which gets me this tile, and I use a stone which lets me play this tile, which gets me six points” is about as exciting as it gets. Now, not every game needs to have moments where the whole table leaps to their feet, hooting and hollering (especially when the baby is napping), but the entire experience of The Castles of Tuscany feels subdued.I enjoy that play time is less than an hour, which means that The Castles of Tuscany is more likely to get played than some of my other more exciting, but longer board games, but in the end it falls short of the expectations that were heaped upon it.
Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns was pitched to me as if Mass Effect had a board game baby. What a hook! My interest was immediately roused, but I was also skeptical. Comparing your game to a critical juggernaut like Mass Effect is quite the gamble; if it fails to deliver on the rich narrative that made Bioware’s space opera such a beloved experience among millions of players, myself included, then you’re setting everyone up for disappointment.
The longer, more technical description of Rogue Angels is that it’s a cooperative sci-fi legacy game containing a strong narrative with multiple paths, tactical combat with fluent turns, action management and asymmetric abilities. If that description catches your attention, read on as I detail my experience with the first couple missions.
The preview box I received contained 3 characters to whet my appetize (over 20 characters are promised to be included in the full game). Players assume the role of a rag-tag crew of freelancers or mercenaries as they traverse the stars and interact with various characters and factions. Missions can vary from gun blazing all-out battles, to stealthy subterfuges. As each mission progresses, players may be forced to make choices that directly impacts how their story develops.
The introductory mission has players escaping a hanger as they’re being hunted by guards of the Hellfire faction. The mission is broken into small chunks, giving players room to explore each of the main mechanics of Rogue Angels one-at-a-time before submerging themselves into the system. This method offers the person tasked with teaching the rules a very easy on-ramp to the system. The introduction goes as far as to take away all the players equipment at the start so no one gets overwhelmed by the myriad of options their cards present.
The mission begins by simply moving a single character adjacent to a point-of-interest, and continues by having other players interact with a door and a console. Interacting with objects, like trying to pick the lock on a door, or hack into a console, is achieved by drawing tokens out of a bag, and trying to match 3 colours together. This may take several actions as tokens of the wrong colour are returned to the bag. Finally, the mission gives you all your equipment back, and introduces enemies. This has players managing interacting, attacking, and moving simultaneously. At the same time, players are managing the scripted behaviour of enemies. Finally, players have arrived at the full Rogue Angels experience.
The core of Rogue Angels gameplay is the card action system; each card has a cost, and when you play a card for the action, you slot it into the appropriate spot under your player board. At the end of each of your turns, you ‘rest’, which slides all your action cards one slot to the left. Any cards that happen to fall off the track are returned to your hand and are able to be used again.
In addition to playing cards to the action row, most cards allow you to roll dice to accent your action. The die can boost the listed effect of the card, regenerate your shields, or offer you extra movement. Initially I was worried about the potential for bad die rolls to screw me out of achieving victory, but in Rouge Angels, dice are only ever positive; they always enhance your card actions. In some situations you may be really hoping to get a specific benefit, but the base effect(s) of your card will always trigger, and that’s a really nice feeling. No critical misses here!
One more aspect to the card play is some cards can gain even further benefits based on the personality of the one the wields it. As your characters go through the campaign and make choices, they’ll gain personality tokens. These personality tokens can be played to enhance a card action, and can change how a card functions significantly.
Rogue Angels is quite forgiving. Should you have multiple potential targets during an action, you get to roll any applicable die, see exactly how well you did, then get to decide who you want to target. The gameplay is very flexible.
The Rogue Angels rulebook is extremely intimating, clocking in at 44 pages long. I found that there are several pages of examples, walking you through how every action works and covering many of the edge cases that we experienced during the first few games. It was a lot of pages to get through, but I found a fairly straightforward rule-set underneath.
The other (massive) book involved is the Campaign book. At the time of writing the campaign has 8 missions, and is already over 100 pages long. Every mission has several checkpoints and updates where the stated goal may suddenly change, or you and your players are forced to react to an unexpected event. It makes for a lot of reading, but once you get past the initial shock factor of just how many pages exist for this game, there’s a well executed system for progressing the mission without interrupting gameplay too dramatically.
My initial impressions of Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Sun is that it’s a deep game – much deeper than I initially expected. I can tell that designer Emil Larson LOVES the universe that he has created, going as far as to create a Wiki to aid the players in submerging themselves in the lore. The campaign book is already over 100 pages long and filled with story and dialogue. The full version of Rogue Angels is advertised to have a spiral bound book containing a large number of maps, making the game fast to set up.
While playing Rogue Angels I kept thinking about Gloomhaven. While I’m not proclaiming that this is going to be the next Gloomhaven, the best way I can describe Rogue Angels is if Gloomhaven and Mass Effect had a board game baby, this would be it. If you know either (or even better, both) of these games, you’ll know that this is high praise.
It’s difficult to tell just from the demo missions I played, but I do have very high hopes for the story and legacy aspects. All the groundwork has been laid for the consequences and call-backs that made Mass Effect so popular. I would love to see the decisions we made early in the campaign return and affect players later in the game. The systems seems to be in place for this to happen, but I didn’t experience any payoffs during my short playthrough. That being said, I have only scratched the surface of what Rogue Angels has in store for it’s players.
I played Rogue Angels solo. While there is a lot of reading, the action stays on the table for the bulk of the playtime. It’s quite easy to manage three different characters when playing solo, and I would recommend playing multiple characters, as each one is quite different and has wildly different strengths and weaknesses. The enemy AI is straightforward, and I enjoyed seeing the different stratagems or rules to control the enemies in simulating different situations, such as patrolling, a disorganized attack, or tactical retreat.
I am excited to see where this project goes and what Emil Larson has in store for players. I eagerly anticipate seeing the project grow and evolve, and cannot wait until I get my hands on the full-fledged product. I’m sure I can easily sell this experience to a couple of my sci-fi loving friends to form a crew and dive deeply into this excellent system. The gameplay is smooth, and the story has hooks that will have you and your friends eager to play again.
