Ring Side Report-Board Game/ iOS review of The Manhattan Project

September 18, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game-The Manhattan Project on iOS

Producer-Domowicz Creative Group

System-iOS

TL;DR– Great for multiplayer, problems with single player. 80%

Basics– BOOM BABY! It’s Manhattan Project on the iOS. It plays exactly like the original board game. Players take turns placing workers on the main board and placing workers on different locations on their own boards, or recalling workers from where they have been placed with the goal of building the most bomb points. For my full review of the base board game, check out this link: https://throatpunchgames.com/2013/10/29/ring-side-report-game-review-the-manhattan-project/ This is the iOS version of the game that my mother and I played on the iPad. Let’s break the game down.

Mechanics-The iOS game follows the same mechanics as the base game. What it does add are some nice animations as well as doing all the computations for the game well. The game functions pretty smoothly. What problem you will have are some things are not indicated well. Some items will glow if you can do them, but others like the construction area don’t. It’s not indicated if you can have multiple people on there. The game works well, but a few changes would really help things. HOWEVER, NO MATTER WHAT BAD THINGS YOU CAN SAY, THIS GAME HAS AN UNDO BUTTON! That makes life so much better! 4.5/5

Visuals/Sounds– The game looks nice, but it’s basically just the board game floating in space. It’s easy to read as you can zoom in, but it’s not suped up like some other board games on the iOS. The game looks like the developer just took the tabletop version and placed it on the iPad. That’s not bad, but I would like a bit more. The sounds are ok, but the music can get a bit repetitive. 4/5

Execution-This game is well done, but the major problems you will have boil down to a lack of instruction. Everything in this game comes directly from The Manhattan Project board game box: tokens, boards, and instructions. The bad thing is that there are no instructions for how to play the game on the iOS. If you’ve played a few of these before, you will be fine. Your first play through will be a bit of a mess because you have to learn as you go. That’s a pretty sizable problem. However, it’s a problem you will have only for your first play through. Nothing you won’t get past, but it will turn a few people away. The AI is a bit weak; I’ve never been bombed by the AI, had espionage happen, or even lost once! It’s fun to play, but if you’re a decent player, you will win. When you do win, the game doesn’t allow you to do anything or prompt you to quit. You have to manually quit. That’s not a problem per se, but a little bit more effort would really make this game better. As for the multiplayer, it does amazingly well with either the pass and play or internet versions. I had to explain to my mom how to play and start an internet game (see above), but once she understood how to play she was off to the races. So, great job on the multiplayer! 3.5/5

Summary– I love The Manhattan Project. It’s one of my favorite games that I can’t convince my local gaming group to play. I loved it before, and now I have the chance to play on my iPad. If Playdeck’s games are the A tier games, then this is a solid B game. The game is good, but you will be left wanting a bit more. It’s the game you want, but a little bit more would really knock this out of the park. The absence is what really notice and hurt the game: no iOS instruction, no prompting for things, and limited AI. What is here is the board game you want that works well and is fun. If you can get past the problems and know this game,then this is a great iOS title. 80%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Guildhall

September 9, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game-Guildhall
Producer-AEG
Price– $50 here http://www.amazon.com/Alderac-Entertainment-Group-AEG5601-Guildhall/dp/B00AQJ5Y92/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1410285314&sr=8-2&keywords=guildhall
Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 40 minutes
TL; DR-An awesome, quick card game. 88%

Basics– Rise up through commerce! In Guildhall, you play someone who starts a guildhall in the middle ages vying for power through the economy. You do this by creating the most powerful guild in town. You start with a hand of six cards. These cards each show a profession and a color. Each turn you choose two actions: play a card, discard and draw up to six, or buy victory points. When you play a card, you place it directly in front of you and get a benefit based on the number of other cards of that profession you already have in your guildhall. The current card does not count for this. That is really important! As an example let’s look at the weaver. If you have no weavers in your guild hall, when you play a weaver from your hand, you get to place one card in your guild hall. If you have two weavers in your guildhall already, you get to place two cards directly in your guildhall, but you have to take one card back to hand. If you have four weavers in your guildhall, you can place as many cards as you want from hand into your guildhall, but you must pick up two cards from your guildhall. There are five colors to each profession. You can only play cards that you do not all ready have. As an example, you can’t play a red farmer if you have a red farmer, but playing a blue farmer is ok with a red farmer in your guildhall. When you have five different color cards of one profession in your guildhall, that stack is turned over and can be used with the second action to buy points. As another action, you can spend one or two stacks of cards by placing those cards in the discard area to buy a victory card. Some of these cards are just a ton of points while other cards give some points and extra actions or free cards. The last action that you can take is to discard as many cards as you want and draw up to six cards. After your two actions, you move all your played cards into your guild hall, and the next player goes. The game continues until someone scores 20 points and is the winner.

Mechanics-I love this game. The mechanics are tight and card combos come out really quickly. Nothing is too broken since any card you have a chance to get could always show up in your opponents hand too. It moves quickly, teaches easily, and is a great game even in a short timeframe. 5/5

Theme-This is not a theme heavy game. The art is all nice and the characters look like their concepts, but beyond that it’s just playing cards. Some of the actions the cards do is related to the role on the card, but it’s not as strong as I would hope for some cards. The game is really fun, but the mechanics and theme are just too separated. 2.5/5

Instructions-AEG does an excellent job on these rules. It’s even written in two languages-English and German. The rules have text, but columns and boxes to break up the text making this a quick easy read. It’s read quickly and teaches the rules really well. 5/5

Execution-This game is executed really well. The box is way too big for the cards in it, but the box also comes with some really cool plastic dividers to help make the size less of a problem. The cards are nice quality and don’t tear easily. The coins are nice and chunky. And the iconography teaches the rules in a way that requires no language, just concept pictures. Well done! 5/5

Summary-I love this game. It’s a quick game to get out either between longer games as a filler or as a few games over a night. It’s less than an hour even for four players. I wish the theme was a bit stronger, but that’s my only problem. This is a game I keep in my car when I’m out and about. You never know when you might want or have the opportunity to get a good game in, and this one is easy to teach, quick to master, and a blast to play. 88%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Shadowrun: Crossfire

September 4, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game– Shadowrun: Crossfire

Producer- Catalyst Game Labs

Price– $60 here http://www.amazon.com/Catalyst-Game-Labs-CYT27700-Shadowrun/dp/B000B2VCDG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409799537&sr=8-1&keywords=shadowrun+crossfire

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 20 min per player (2-4 players)

TL; DR– Randomness hurts the story. 84%

Basics-Welcome to the shadows, chummer. Crossfire is a co-op deck building card game where players take the roll of different Shadowrun characters. Each character chooses a race and a roll. The race give you hit points, a starting hand size, and starting money. The rolls are twofold. The rolls give you a starting deck of cards as well as determine what cards will attack your character. The players then choose a scenario. The scenarios give you a set up conditions, new rules, and a story. Aside from the scenario specific changes to the basic game, the game goes as follows. A number of obstacles are dealt out equal to the number of players. Each obstacle has a color and that obstacle will attack a player with the same roll color. Then, players take turns as follows. First, the start player draws a crossfire card. This card will give an effect for the round such as increased damage to players or players not being able to heal. Some cards also have an effect if enough crossfire cards are in the discard pile. Next, the player play cards with icons that match the current icons on any obstacle to damage it. If the players play enough cards to completely damage an obstacle, then the players get money. Otherwise, counters are used to indicate the next icons that have to be played on the obstacles to defeat them, so damage to an obstacle is tracked between players. When the player is done playing cards on obsticles, any obstacle in front of him/her damages that player. Finally, the player draws cards if he/she has less than three cards, buys cards from the center, and play passes to the next player. This player takes an almost identical turn except does not draw a crossfire card. Play continues until it’s the start players turn, a new crossfire card is drawn, and the game continues. If all the players do not have an obstacle in front of them, then the crossfire pile is discarded. The game keeps going until the players beat the scenario or a player dies. If the players beat the scenario, they score karma (experience) based on the scenario. If a player dies, then the players run away and only get one karma each. Between scenarios, players can spend karma to upgrade their characters, but they almost always start with the same basic cards in their starter deck.

Theme-This game feels like a stripped down Shadowrun game. It’s fun, but you don’t get the complete experience. There is a bunch of Shadowrun things here ranging from quotes and story starts for the scenarios, but the games random nature makes the cohesiveness come apart a bit. You don’t get the story you would expect from a standard night of playing Shadowrun, the Pathfinder adventure card game, or the Lord of the Rings card game. Both of those card games have more targeted effects and story. Make no mistake, this is Shadowrun. But, it’s not as Shadowrun as I wanted. 4/5

Mechanics– Your enjoyment of the mechanics of this game will directly reflect how many people you play with. If you play with four, this game is awesome. Each player gets a roll; everybody gets a ton of turns to help, even if one player has all the obstacles in front of him/her. The mechanics of building a deck, using icons to target icons to damage an obstacle, rolls, karma, and money will all work pretty well. But if you play with three players, or god forbid two, this game is a ride on the pain train. With fewer players, the current players take more rolls. But, those same players DON’T take more cards for those rolls. You take two roll cards, choose one, and then get the base cards for the roll you choose, not the one you didn’t. This means you get fewer icons and can still be target by obstacles from that color. That’s a problem as the random nature of the obstacle deck means the Orc Decker/face could get all face obstacles even though Orc only has Decker cards. That player will die, and his/her partner won’t be able to do anything because the center market cards could only be black attacking cards. The balance is off if you are missing players, so that is a very troubling problem for me as my wife and I typically only play co-op cards together. 4 /5

Instructions– The instructions are ok. The rules start with a quick start guide, but the quick start isn’t quick, and to really understand the game, you have to read the full rules anyway. Also, the rules hide some of the more fiddly bits of the game in text. They rules do a decent job of explaining the game, but it could use a bit more polish and a one page external summary of what to do to get you playing in under five minutes. 4/5

Execution– I like what I see here, but the game makes a very BAD sin! This box is full of cards, room to expand the decks, glossy character cards, stickers, and lots of nice, hard tokens. The cards don’t bend or tare easily. A major complaint a while back was that the stickers would ruin the game. But, the glossy cards and the stickers work together to hold the stickers just enough to keep them on the character cards, but not hard enough to make it a pain to change stickers. However, this game could really use a start player marker among the many other tokens. Also, the book says to just use a dry erase marker to track karma on the characters. But, no marker comes in the box. I HATE when instructions do that. If you tell me to use something to do X, by god, you better have put X in the box! This game has a MSRP of $60, and I don’t get a nice way to track karma besides buy another thing?! Why not give me stickers? What’s here is well done, but what’s missing is pretty obvious. 4.8/5

Summary– This is a fun game, but your fun will really very with the number of players you got. Like any good Shadowrun RPG game, you need all the bases covered-one person on magic, another on computers, a talker, and a guy/gal with a gun. Playing a game without those people will really make life that much more hard, and that’s reflected in this game. It’s fun, but it’s punishing if you don’t have that full party. Another problem is the story. It’s there, but get used to randomness. I’d like a bit more targeted problems for my team to deal with, so each game fits the story, not just random encounters. This game is fun, its one I want to play more of, but it’s one that I know the sheer randomness of could really make me hate playing. A bad draw, and a bad night can really spin out of control easy. What this game really needs is more options and cards. I really want some more cards for characters, half rolls, and more scenarios. If Catalyst promised semi-regular releases of this game, I’ll keep buying! Keep that in mind, shoot straight, never deal with a dragon, and you will have a great time. 84%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Machina Arcana

September 3, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game– Machina Arcana

Producer- Machina Arcana

Price– $80 here http://machinaarcana.com/store/

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 45 min per player (1-4 players)

TL; DR– Style over substance. 65%

Basics– Can you stop the end? Machina Arcana takes place in the Cthulhu mythos/steam punk world as brave heroes battle the forces of darkness. Each turn, each player gets a number of stamina points to spend on different actions that range from one point for moving to three points to activate places on the map. Players can act in any order each turn. Then, each player rolls to see if monsters spawn on the map with each player who doesn’t spawn a monster making it easier for monsters to spawn. Then, one player rolls a horror check. If the party doesn’t have a horror event, then it becomes easier for a horror check to happen next round. If the party does have a horror event, then another track that monitors how difficult the monsters are moves forward and a bad event occurs. Finally, the monsters move around the map attacking players if able. Play continues like this until players activate map points advancing the plot. Players continue moving about the map, activating different map points for items/events/plot until the final plot card is resolved and the players win or the last available hero is killed and the players lose (and the world ends).

Theme-This game has a lot of theme, but it’s pretty random. The game makes some great strides in telling a cool story as the different scenarios all have different plots. I liked to move through the cards and read aloud the story as well as the horror cards, events, and even the characters backgrounds. What takes away from all that is the randomness of the game. The best comparison for this game is Arkham Horror, Decent 2nd ed., and Castle Ravenloft. The monsters that spawn are all random in both Arkham Horror and Castle Ravenloft, with Decent only having on theme monsters for each scenario. But, those games fix the story problem in several ways with Arkham Horror stating that more than just the big bad guy is moving around, doing stuff and Castle Ravenloft has all the monsters on theme to begin with. This game has random monsters spawn from all over the Cthulhu rogues gallery, but the theme is off as some of these monsters really wouldn’t work together. Some even have eaten one another in the mythos! The boards are random too, but again this is fixed in comparison games as well. Arkham horror has gates to different lands with random mythos encounters in the gates, Castle Ravenloft stacking the tile deck to make sure a desired tile occurs, and Decent custom building each map. All of the problems in this game don’t completely make it jarringly difficult to get into the world, but it’s a noticeable problem. As for a steam punk, the theme of that comes across only on the art. Again, not bad, but I was expecting more. 3/5

Mechanics– Again I’m going to compare to Castle Ravenloft, Decent, and Arkham Horror. The basics thoughts of all those games combine decently in this game. You get the exploration of Ravenloft, the movement and attack of Decent, and the mythos/story/events of Arkham Horror. What I got here was fairly well done. What are new about this one are the items. Some items have marks on the sides and bottom. If you combine these items with other cards with the same marks on the opposite side or top, you can upgrade your equipment. That’s pretty cool! The only real big problem is the monsters mechanics. Monsters all follow some basics rules. Castle Ravenloft has much better mechanics for giving the monsters autonomy when they attack, move, or do anything else. 4.5/5

Instructions-These instructions are not well done. Arkham Horror, Decent, and Castle Ravenloft all have better instructions in them to get the same points across. This game attempts to do a semi-quick start, but the quick start doesn’t end quickly and will leave you fairly confused. There is way too much going on on any page. The rules are convoluted, and you will end up rereading a passage several times as you try to understand the game. I barely made it through because I bought the game and I wanted to see how it worked. 2.5/5

Execution– Here is another problem area. Lots of the boards came warped. My box was dented on the inside. That’s a pretty petty complaint, but I paid $60 via kickstarter, I expect more. The art is somewhat detracting as it interferes with readability. The cardboard is also strange as its thick but too malleable. The monsters come as cardboard tokens with standees, but to get them in the standees, you have to force them, and they more often than not bend too much and warp. I now have a wappiejaw Mi-Go and shoggoth standing at strange, sadly Euclidian angles! 3/5

Summary-This isn’t a bad game, but it’s not a good game either. If you want a well-done co-op Cthulhu mythos game, play Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror. If you want a well-done co-op dungeon crawl, then play Decent or Castle Ravenloft. If you have to have both of those together, then this game will do. It does have steam punk, but it’s not the main push. Its got faults, but it’s not unplayable by any means. But odds are, I won’t be playing this one any time soon. 65%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Run, Fight, or Die

August 26, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Product– Run, Fight, or Die

Producer-Grey Fox Games

Price– ~$35 here http://boardgamegeek.com/geekads/click/361282?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.coolstuffinc.com%2Fp%2F205940

Set-Up/Play/Clean-Up– 10 min per player 1-6 players

TL; DR-Zombies!!! without the annoying length/Yahtzee with Zombies! 90%

Basics– Zombies!!! meat Yahtzee! In Run Fight or Die, you play several different survivors trying to flee the zombie apocalypse while gathering up different survivors in town. Each turn, you roll the main five dice and an event die. The event die has random occurrences ranging from a sneak attack from a zombie (lose health) to an all clear night with no more zombies spawning this turn. After that you have your main dice which can be rerolled two more times after the first roll. These dice have faces ranging from running, melee attacks, range attacks, finding people, the “book of the dead”, and the zombie symbol which can’t be rerolled normally. Each player has a board with three ranges on it (close, medium, and far). Melee kills two close zombies, ranged attacks kill one at any range, and running moves one zombie back one range or off the player’s board. The “book of the dead” and the finding people sides have different effects ranging from finding locations, healing, killing all zombies in one range, events, or finding gear depending on the number of matching symbols. The zombie symbol causes one more zombie to spawn on your turn during the end of turn steps. You can reroll a zombie symbol if you take a fleeing card-these are never good events! After you attack zombies and get followers/locations/gear, you move all zombies one space closer. If a zombie moves on to your character (from close range onto you), you lose health. Then, you spawn three zombies with more for every zombie die side you have at far range, and the next player takes his or her turn. The game continues until someone dies, someone finds the town line card with enough followers or someone gets the last zombie boss victory point. Then, its the player with the most points wins!

Mechanics– This game is pretty simple and pretty fun. Make no mistake; this is NOT a brain buster of a game. It’s a simplified run and gun game. You run around killing an unlimited hoard of zombies while trying to find people, locations, and gear. The dice rule this game, and if your dice run cold, you will have a phenomenally bad time. Each character is enough different from one another because their powers really do separate them from one another. Each character has a different dice combo that will trigger something amazing if it happens, but it’s usually really hard to pull off, so I’ve never seen it actually happen. The best description of this game is the old Zombies!!! game mixed with Yahtzee. You move around town waiting for an end condition card to occur or enough point to happen to end the game. Most often though, the game will end when someone dies. It’s not a bad mechanic, but don’t expect any surprises or extreme complexity from this game. 4/5

Theme – I like this theme. It’s zombies, so I know some people think that theme is played out. But, the way the theme of advancing undead is implemented is a fun one. The zombies fall down your player board almost like Tetris pieces at an unstoppable pace. It’s rather tense as you try to stay alive but know that your continued survival is all dependent on the dice rolls. It’s a very tense game that plays out in less than 30 minutes sometimes. The different stories from each survivor do make an interesting story for how the world’s ending, and the fact that some followers are detrimental is another interesting way to represent how hard it is to deal with some people under pressure. This game has a lot of style that really help emerge you in the world. 5/5

Instructions-So funny story-When I got my kickstarter copy of the game, it came with the rules, but was missing the middle pages of the rules. The rules were not on board game geek either. After emailing the creator, they now posted them there. With the rules, the game isn’t hard to play. It’s not horribly organized, but I think it could be better laid out. Also, some questions like how often I can flee from zombie dice have come up, and the rules don’t specifically answer that question. The rules are not bad, and the game is playable even with these questions, but a bit more would have helped make this game a bit better. 4.5/5

Execution-This game is pretty well set up. The zombie pieces are well done miniatures, and you get a ton of them. The cards all look cool. The different characters have great art, layout, and story. The player aids and zombie range boards are all done well. The dice are nice and chunky with easy to read pictures. The one thing I don’t like is the zombie boss. It’s a giant zombie, but for most people who buy the game, it’s a cardboard token. I would have liked to pay a bit more and ensure that everyone gets an awesome zombie boss mini that was part of the kickstarter. You can buy your own boss mini, but that seems off to me. I hate paying to make my games a bit better-it feels a bit like pay to win for me. Like all my other minor problems with the game, the problems I have are not major, but a little bit more would really rocket this one to the top. 4.5/5

Summary- This is a fun game. It’s not the kind of game I’d solely invite people over to play for a weekend, but it’s a great game to bring out late game day as a quicker game to get a bunch of people playing some last minute games. This game has elements of games like Zombies!!!, but really cuts down on the length of the game. And, the game has Yahtzee elements as you will try to roll for combinations of different effects to make it to the next turn or find different things. The game isn’t perfect, but it’s a great way to get your zombie fix without having to spend hours spinning your wheels. 90%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of CO2

August 6, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game– CO2

Producer– Stronghold Games

Price-~$55 here http://www.amazon.com/Stronghold-Games-8007SG-CO2-Board/dp/B00AKVLMY2/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1407249487&sr=1-1&keywords=CO2

Set-Up/Play/Clean-Up-35 min per player (2-5 players)

TL; DR-A few problems mar an otherwise good game. 83%

Basics-The world is in trouble, and you have to fix it through capitalism! In CO2 you play a company specializing in green/renewable power starting in the 1970s. Each round starts with players gaining money, coins or both based on how much research their companies have in each type of green energy. Then, each of the six areas of Earth gains more CO2 producing power plants if they do not have enough power plant in that region for each decade( 2 in 1980, 3 in 1990 and so on). Each CO2 producing power plant increases the global CO2 parts per million rating and can lead to ecological disasters on a continent. After that, in each decade you are given a number of turns based on the number of players. On a turn you can do one of three actions: propose, implement, or build a green power plant. When you propose a power plant, you place a project token in one of three sections that either gives you money, technology cubes, or scientist meeples. When you implement a proposed plant you spend a carbon credit to gain resources depending on the type of plant with resources ranging from technology cubes to money or both. If your company has enough research in a particular type of plant and enough money, you can build an implemented plant gaining more research in that plants type as well as victory points. Also on your turn, you have several free actions where you can move a scientist meeples, buy/sell carbon credits, and play cards. Scientist meeples can be moved to an implement or proposed project, from one project to another, or from a project to a research convention with the same energy type as a project the meeple was on. If all the spaces on a convention are covered, all companies gain research in each type of energy the scientists were on as well as one research in any type of energy from that meeting. If you implement or build a project with another player’s meeple, that player gains one research in that type of energy, get to move that meeple for free, and you must pay them an extra dollar for the privilege. In the center of the board are the carbon credits. On your turn you can buy or sell credits, but not both. The cards are UN mandates give you bonus points if you build specified types of power plants. The cards in your hand give you bonus money, credits, tech cubes, or scientists if you do an action specified on the card. You may only perform one free card action each turn. At the end of your turn, you gain one research in one type of energy based on a project one of your scientist meeples is on. And the game continues like this. After each player has taken a turn, and the first player advances the action counter. When there are no more action spaces left for this decade, the decade advances, and research points/money are given out, disasters happen, and then the turn counter is reset based on the number of players. The game continues like this until a few events happen: 1) the CO2 level gets high enough that mankind dies/everybody loses 2) the decade is 2030 or 3) the CO2 level drops below 350. At the end, players who controls the different areas of the board based on number of power plants in each area gain carbon credits based on the region, the players spend those for money, get research money/points one last time, sell money for points, and the player with the most points wins.

Mechanics- When you get past the instructions (see below), this game is really fun! The game makes you think on your feet a lot while having to make smart choices based on what the other players are doing. You CAN’T build stuff alone. You need to work with the other players to get the power plants built and experience to do it, but if you let the other build everything, you will lose. This game does semi-cooperative really well, maybe almost the best I’ve seen for a while. 5/5

Theme- The game does do some justice to the theme of different green energy companies working together/against one another. The mechanics do enforce the theme of needing other to help you and the theme of environmentalism. An example is the ecological disasters. When an area of the world has a problem, each company WITHOUT power plants in the area has to pay a cube to the region or be seen as callous. These cubes can be used by other players who build in the region because now grants are available to help fix the damage. I do have some problems with the theme as the components could use a bit more to make things a bit more thematic. Yes, this is a euro game, but that doesn’t mean it has to have cubes. Give me some other kinds of meeples like little computers or something. 4.5/5

Instructions- This game was written by a lawyer. The rules are divided into sections and subsections that make this game not fun to read. The rules are several pages of three columns of words with few pictures. The pictures that are in there are awesome and really help to explain the rules. But, there are not many! The rules reference sections like 2.2.1. DON’T DO THAT! Have a nice flow that invites me to read! I’ve been sitting on this game for a long time (six months) because I couldn’t make it through the rules. When you do read the rules, you see the game is pretty standard euro-game fare, so it’s not too complicated. But even after the several subsections in the rules, I and my gaming group were still left with questions regarding scientist movement and other important aspects. Overall, it’s not the worst set of rules I’ve read as I was still able to play the game without a visit to Board Game Geek, but only just. 3/5

Execution- The game components are not bad, but I would have liked a bit more. The game uses small, half standard cards for all the cards in the game. That’s not bad, but there are less than 60 cards in the game. So, the cards are more of a pain. Adding to the pain, the cards don’t have any words and unless you know what cards you’re looking for, it’s really a pain as you need to constantly look at the rules to find which cards are separated into which piles. Bigger cards with different colors would have really helped distinguish the types of cards. Also, the box is kind of flimsy. The board is well done and the iconography is good, except where the rules fail it. Overall, it’s the product is ok, but some minor problems hamper the whole. 4/5

Summary-This is a fun game. The game itself is a great Euro game. The theme is fun as it’s a controversial subject-global warming-while being executed well. This game is semi-cooperative worker placement on two different levels-projects and scientists- which I haven’t seen for a while. If you love worker placement/development/resource management euro games and can get past the dry, boring instructions, you will have a blast trying to outwit your opponents on a global scale. 83%