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Graham Silvanus - Warp's Edge
Warp’s Edge is a game that had taken up what seemed like permanent residence on my wish list. A solo game with a great bag building mechanism, an appealing theme and plenty of variety should have been in my collection already. Alas, it was repeatedly overlooked, until it’s time came and I finally picked it up in November. I’m pleased to report it has not disappointed and is easily my game of the month.
Bag building is something I first encountered with Quacks of Quedlinburg. I think that’s what made me hesitant about getting Warp’s Edge, as I found the push-your-luck aspect of Quacks incredibly frustrating. Luckily for me, Warp’s Edge has a bag and tokens, but that is where the similarities end.
Here, the act of pulling tokens from the bag is always positive. The game is about how you can best utilise your 5 tokens in order to take down the enemy ships, through evading or blasting them with lasers. Ultimately, you need to destroy all parts of the mothership to be victorious and it is a very satisfying puzzle.
Defeating enemy ships provides you with rewards in the form of additional tokens in your bag, so you feel like you are continuously levelling up and becoming more powerful. This is just as well, as this is exactly what happens with the enemy ships as you progress through the mission. They become harder to defeat and if your bag is not being upgraded from your starter tokens, you will be in for a rough flight.
I played Warp’s Edge 4 times this month, using different ships and going up against different enemies. It is fast becoming a favoured solo game and provides a consistently enjoyable challenge with its accessible ruleset, fun gameplay and midweek-evening-friendly 45 minute playtime.
It’s a game I feel any solo player would want in their collection and I’m surprised it took me so long to add it to mine. Warp’s Edge could easily end up as my game of the month next month too, especially as I have so much more to explore, particularly with the intriguing Warp’s Edge Anomaly expansion.
Who knew drawing chits from a bag would be the most fun way to fight for survival in the vast depths of space? Having finally tried it, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Seb Hawden - Last Light
A 4x game in less than an hour? Up until playing Last Light, I thought that was impossible. I have now played it three times and every game, even the first that included the teach, was under an hour. Last Light is a 4x game, where you EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate. How you build your fleet, how you explore the cosmos, the battles you choose and where you spend your vital resources will determine victory.
What makes Last Light so different from other 4x games is that everyone takes turns simultaneously and the board rotates as the galaxy moves. This not only makes Last Light move at a brisk pace but also makes sure players get into each other's business regularly. Last Light is Race though, so leaving players to do their own thing is heavily discouraged.
Last Light has such a table presence, each planet is an acrylic sphere floating above the board and the board actually resembles a galaxy of various coloured and sized planets. Rotating the board never gets old and the whole thing definitely looks the part. It's one of those games that people walk past and go oooooooooooo!
The simultaneous play part of Last Light reminds me a bit of Century Spice Road, in that you play cards for actions and if you want to use the same action again you have to play your Refresh card to get all your other cards back. Your Refresh card stays down, however, until everyone has played their Refresh card. This is also when the galaxy spins and really puts the cats amongst the pigeons.
All these card and action play shenanigans really lead to Last Light having serious timing and tempo considerations. You can only attack or defend if you play the Command card, so if other players have played it, you can get some free hits in, lovely jubbly! The exploration, mining and controlling planets is also an entertaining system and is how you will probably win the game.
It is the first to 20 Light and controlling planets closer to the centre of the board is the best way to do this. There are other ways but controlling planets is the most efficient. You can trickle getting light in other ways such as tech, fighting or mining but the big gains are from galactic dominance.
Last Light is quick, has massive decisions, replay value and plays up to eight. For a 4x game in under an hour, it's superb.
Roger BW - A Touch Of Evil
This game from 2008 has been hitting my table recently. It’s not mechanically elegant: you roll a die to see how far you can move each turn, and there’s plenty of other randomness to prevent you from making and carrying through a plan. But somehow it manages to retain a sense of fun.
In scale it’s somewhere between Mansions of Madness and Eldritch Horror—in colonial America, a monster is threatening the town of Shadowbrook. Heroes will have to travel around the town and nearby locations, increasing their skills, husbanding sometimes scant resources, and arming up with weapons and magic, until they feel they can confront the evil once and for all.
There are two ways to play: the standard is semi-cooperative, where every hero wants the monster dead, but they also each want to be the one to strike the fatal blow. I prefer the fully cooperative game, in which the heroes don’t try to mess each other about or keep secrets, but the villain is tougher. (I mean, this is a threat that’s going to destroy the town, and maybe spread out after that… can’t we work together?)
A key element beyond individual power-ups is the community of town elders, six of them in the core game. Each of them can be a useful aid when it comes to the final showdown with the villain… but they all have Secret cards, and some of them may have turned to evil: take them along to help you in the big fight, and you’ll end up stabbed in the back as they change sides. So you’ll also need to take time to investigate those Secrets, not to mention trying to keep the elders alive as monsters attack.
Every hero has their own style, as well as every villain, and the tactics needed shift depending on who’s in play. But the most important thing is that the game always generates enjoyable stories, like a role-playing game in miniature.
Tom Harrod - Nucleum
Board & Dice have garnered a reputation for producing top-quality, crunchy Euro-style games. The T-Series (Teotihuacan, Tiletum, Tabannusi and more). Terracotta Army, Books of Time… The list goes on! And their latest release, Nucleum, might be the deepest of the lot.
To look at it from the outside, the lazy description of Nucleum would be, “Oh, it’s pretty much Brass: Germany – Nuclear Edition.” True, there are some parallels between this and Brass. There’s no way that designer Simone Luciani could say, straight-faced, that he took zero inspiration from Martin Wallace’s smash hit.
You’re building a network between cities in Saxony, spanning Leipzig to Prague. They're linked with railways. You’re constructing square building tiles in the cities within your network. Then, you need to figure out how to transport raw resources (coal, and uranium) to those buildings via a nucleum power plant. Flip the building tile, now it’s been ‘energised’, and you’ll score juicy points for it…
Pretty Brassy, to be honest! But the major difference here is there’s no card play. Players use action tiles instead – and they’re all asymmetrical. You can buy more from the public market, meaning you’ll get a wide array of options that differ, game to game. You also have the option to spend these action tiles as the railways themselves, linking city to city. To do that, you need manpower (meeples). Which means you need to figure out ways of increasing your workforce. That way you can ensure you can continue to grow your network!
My first play of Nucleum was an entire afternoon’s worth of gaming. The modular set-up; the rules teach; the actual playing of the game. The deciphering and re-deciphering the rules, mid-game! Plus, of course, the organic way of discovering the nuances in the second half of the game. (By which point you realise all the strategical mistakes you made in the first half!) Nucleum is by far the ‘heaviest’ game I’ve played in 2023 so far (it sits at 4.06/5 on boardgamegeek.com’s weight scale). But now I’ve got that tricky first teach and game under my belt, I’m looking forward to playing it again!