3 Pretty but Shallow Posted by Madi on Jan 17th 2019

I own this game and have played a handful of times, with 2 and 4 players.



The Good:



The game is gorgeous and the notch mechanic on the player boards is fantastic, as it has two effects: reducing the cost of actions, and giving you more resources for doing an action. The player board itself has beautiful artwork, as does the main board and cards.



The encounters are a neat mechanic - like a choose-your-own-adventure scenario - and all the choices benefit the player. And the worker placement mechanic is novel, in that you can have your mech miniatures act like chauffeurs, picking up and dropping off workers, as well as helping them cross impassable terrain.



The miniatures are highly detailed and add a lot of style to the game. It's fun having a hero Cossack with a flintlock rifle and pet bear.



The Bad:

The gameplay is rather shallow, and although it's billed as a more American style game (direct combat between players), aggressive combat comes with negative penalties, in reality it plays out more like a worker placement Euro-style game.



The encounter cards are interesting, though they are only triggered once. Wasting turns traveling your hero pawn across the board to grab the remaining encounters is rarely worth it. As a result, you usually only trigger the encounter card from your own starting zone, making one of the more fun features of the game fairly moot.



There is little incentive to interact with other players on the board. Aside from getting the two combat achievements (which are optional to win), combat is rarely worth seeking out. Moving your army is slow, even with the tunnel improvement. Even when you do get to attack an enemy player, it often results in popularity loss which can greatly reduce your end game score multipliers.



The Verdict:

All in all the game is a visual work of art, but the underlying gameplay systems seem to lack any real cohesion. Worth a few play-throughs, but if pretty art and figurines is secondary to compelling gameplay for you, there are much better games out there. If you still must own - buy used or borrow a friends' copy.

