Wario

When I first saw my gaming group playing this game, my first thought was this seems boring and overly complicated. Well, I was completely and utterly wrong. All you need to know is in the board, in you sheet and in your common sense. But I get ahead of myself, let me try to make justice to this game, i doubt i can, because this game is massive.

Premise

You are beginning a space age, you have to gather resources do research and then use the valuable water you got to expand and create extraterrestrial factories. You want to basically exo-globalize the solar system.
For that to happen you must gather water, the currency of the game and the fuel. Then you must proceed to do research for your rocket components, which are too delicate and heavy to be constructed on earth and then taken to low orbit ( solar sails are 7.5 km in length ), there you assemble your rocket and fly through space for glory!!! 😀 You are given a “character card” with a special power, that also represents your manned crew.

Mechanics
Now lets get the light versions of the mechanics out of the way ( some of it might not be accurate)
You basically have 2 actions per turn ( a year in game time) that must be done in this order. You can move your rocket though space and do actions. The actions consist on getting resources (water), boosting the thing you want to build to low orbit, do research, claim a site, industrialize a site, build on a site. You also have a bunch of free actions, like refuelling the rocket, dump stuff in space, decommission material.

The game ends when a pre-determinate number of factories is built (4 in a two player game, 6 in a 3 and so on).
For victory conditions you have victory points! 😀
You gain victory points in various ways, on the game I played victory points where gained for:
Being the first to get to a site and back with a crew gets 3 points;4 sites are available Mars, science sites, Mercury and any other site.
One point for each claimed site.
Each factory gives points taking into account the planet type saturation (8 points if only one factory of that type, 6 if two, and so on, to a minimum of 4).
The points are limited, you can claim as much sites you want, but you have limited claim tokens, the same for the points, the factories and the first-to-reach are marked with the same tokens, so you have to think very carefully on your strategy.

The ROCKET!
To have a rocket you only need thrusters, you can also take with you a robonaut ( for water scavenging) and a refinery ( for factory building ), but you have to be very carefull because the more you take, the worse it will be in your thrusters ( hauling all that stuff is difficult). The cards of the equipement look like patent drawings, they are so awesome, and in the manual you have a explanation of how they teorectly work.(+1 for imersion and theme) You then fly across space hitting specific lines and burning fuel on special points that i am told correspond to some actual fenomena where you have to beat gravity( as everything else in this game!!! its amazing )

I realy cannot enter in more detail, it is HUGE, but at the same time, very simple. Because the game is a simulation, you only need to hear the rules once, because after that it just makes sense. So you want to exit that planet? Do your thrusters have enough acceleration to be able to simply leave or they have to burn a lot of fuel to get out of the planet gravity (other wise guess who is stranded). Want to do a quick turn into other planet orbit? you have to spend acceleration, because of the cost of getting out of movement. Its in a lagrange point where gravity is 0? you can do it for free. The game becomes natural.

This game is not for everyone, although there is a strategic component, the simulation is what shines. The game can be long and tedious, but with the right socializing mind set, and if you do your calculations on other players turns it passes like a breeze. It`s the fealing of you building the components transporting them to orbit, calculate trajectories and fuel consumption to minimize travel time. At the end of the game I wasn`t concerned with the points.
This game tells a story, how you and your organization managed in decades to conquer space.
In decades I sent an unmmaned one-way trip rocket to Mars, claimed it for myself and extablished a factory. Meanwhile my rivals where exploring the asteroid belt. With my factory I then created the components needed to take my crew to the moon, eureka and back. While my rival was preparing to create the last factory on a small but valuable asteroid, I went on a suicide mission to Mars, and managed to not crash on the planet and establish the game last factory myself.

It was awesome and epic.

Im sorry for my messed up review, but this game is huge and so detailed that i cannot simply go over it.
If you like the idea, don`t get scared of the game, play it once, and you`ll get the hang of it.

This is an abstract game that uses the walking dead franchise for marketing purposes.

I felt disappointed for several reasons mainly:
– Zombie image cards have poor drawing variety;
– It doesn`t matter witch player card you choose, it doesn`t make a difference, the effects are all the same.
– the twist on the Nimmt mechanic doesn`t suit well ( in my opinion)

The game is a derivation of the Nimmt – a game that i enjoy – but instead of winning by gathering the least points possible, you do the opposite, try to get the most points. Everything else, except the player cards, are the same. The character cards give a small twist, where you can play them for a bonus, and that’s it, it doesn`t matter which character you choose, its all the same.

This game adds nothing, in fact the reverse of the score it kinda ruins the theme – are we trying to kill the most zombies because it is a competition to get more zombie heads? There was also a different type of game that i did not try, so i cant review it, but it felt that they where trying too hard to justify this game existence, and failed. From my understanding the survival mode was the reverse scoring and plus some other stuff that sincerely i wasn`t inclined to play.

When i bought this game i wasn`t expecting much, but the game disappointed me with the marketing lie. But it was my fault i was mislead by myself and my feelings of liking the Nimmt game.
If you can overlook the card details and are a diehard fan of walking dead and like a somewhat flawed Nimmt game, go ahead, otherwise run from them like the plague.

Replay – Plenty if you enjoy and dont get bored by the same images over and over again.

Components – The cards seamed decent but the deja vu, ruined it for me. One can argue that the cards of the Nimmt game are also repetitive, but the kind of style ( not being fotos of people ) it softens your perception and the minimalism is nice.

Advice – research closely before you buy!! ( dont do it!!! )