Gambit

I love Cyclades, one of my all time favourite – the bidding mechanism makes all the difference. It makes you choose your steps wisely, makes you plot out your strategy.. “Ok so I need Poseidon first, to make the route, and then Hades to march my troops..”.
This expansion kinda throws that out the window. EVERYONE can move, as long as they have Titans and enough gold.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s very fun! just.. it’s no longer Cyclades, see? The bids become less important, and the fighting and dice rolls become more common.

The game is easy to learn, very FUN with 4 players.. but once you’ve played it a few times it looses it’s replayabilty..
As a whole it simply doesn’t have enough theme in it, and it feels like a co-op chess game, or some other abstract game with theme attached to it.
Although the time restraints is very nice, the game feels too barren of stuff to do. Even unique dice or unique units added through research would have done it for me.

Very recommended to play – but not to own.

This was the very first “serious” boardgame I ever bought and played, some ten years ago. Since then I’ve played much more complex games, true, but this has always had a fond spot in my heart. When you’re feeling like you just want to take over the world with MASS armies, rolling dice, with just enough tweaks through cards and just a few special units (i.e. still on the light side of gaming) then look no further!
The only downside to this game for me is the 5 turn limitation. Granted, each round takes about 1 hour complete, but it always felt so ‘abrupt’ to “just finish” the game after a fixed amount of turns. A mission system, for example, or some sort of “end game trigger” would have made it better.

I never liked playing miniatures games (like Warhammer) with all the rulers, statistics, having to build your own (expensive) army. I never really liked playing D&D because it was so time taxing, the investment was too great for me.
This game offers a closed campaign, of only so and so missions (6 main, plus another few choice side missions) with *some* character build choices (you have a pool of abilities you can “buy” with earned xp, and equipment you can buy with obtained credits) and *some* miniatures game rules (line-of-sight is super easy and smart, different dice add good variance).
What packs everything neatly together is the story elements and the SUPERB components quality. Each mission has a set amount of rounds to finish before you fail it, and it’s really awesome when the player playing the imperials (the “DM”) Surprise you with plot triggered events (like when you open a door you thought was safe to open, and on the other side is a freaking MACHINE GUN with instant retaliation!)
Final thoughts: the game doesn’t punish you if you die, you just get “wounded” with lesser powers. The game doesn’t punish you if the entire team dies – you still get the xp and less money, but the following mission will be easier to compensate.
It’s a smart little game, that looks good, feels goos, and is FUN FUN FUN!

Best with three, good with two. Has alot of exapnsions to spice things around each time.
I own the fancy box kickstarter pack, which holds everything nice and neat. The box itself is a graphic marvel. I love the plastic cards, and money as cards (as opposed to chips). Sadly there are too few low denominators, and also only 1 cheatsheet card.
The chip quallity is really poor, and I will prob replace those in the future (but they are a part of one specific expansion so no biggy).