Barrage

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 9.5 out of 10

   4Corners

   Yes I went all in on the kickstarter and got taken for a ride, and no I'm not happy about it! It left quite a bad taste in my mouth. Fortunately...this is a great game. The game is about being a water dam baron so to speak, and its played over 5 rounds, playing 2-4 players. The goal of course, is to get the most points, and there are a variety of ways to do this, although a lot of your focus should be on building dam infrastructure and generating hydro electricity/energy. At it's heart, it's a worker placement game, which also has some vague similarities to Terra Mystica. You start the game with a fixed number of 10 workers, a unique player power, and a unique player board (on which you have your buildings that once built, can unlock income immediately and every round, as well as another unique player power that needs to be unlocked). On your turn, you do an action and there are a large number of placement spots, some of which are in your own player area, and some actions require more workers than others, so there may be an unequal number of turns in a round. At the end of the round, you see who has generated the most energy, and that player(s) scores points and generates a higher income, but turn order is reversed (and its good to go first). You also can score for a given round category (similar to Terra Mystica) depending on how much energy you generated. At the end of the round, water flows downhill and hopefully you are able to capture some of it in your dams, or at least access it from non-player dams. This is a very interactive euro, as players are building their infrastructure on a shared map, and there is competition for important spaces, but you can actually sort of work together potentially and quite easily screw each other over. The layout of the water and the non-player starter buildings varies from game to game but the map is static otherwise. This is a heavy, deep strategy game that is very strongly and uniquely themed as well. Own the [boardgame=263711]Leeghwater Project[/boardgame] expansion , which is easy to implement and is excellent as it opens up an even greater variety of paths and strategies. Also own the [boardgame=304453]5-Player[/boardgame] expansion, the [boardgame=366469]Nile Affair[/boardgame] expansion and the [boardgame=318018]Executive Officers Pack A[/boardgame], [boardgame=304458]Executive Officers Pack B[/boardgame], [boardgame=346071]Executive Officer C[/boardgame] and [boardgame=363533]Executive Officer D[/boardgame] promos . My game of the year for 2019.

2. 8.75 out of 10

   actiondan87

   Very thematic, perfectly tight for my tastes, and the AI is excellent considering the types of decisions it must make. I would've liked to see more artwork on the management board. The amount of cardboard tiles that could have been cards instead is baffling, but ultimately forgivable. Solo play can be a bit onerous because you really want to play with two AIs. Things can get pretty fiddly since you're constantly moving little bits around.

3. 1 out of 10

   Akiles Strike

   IComponents are not as good as described in KS, and they came with imperfections, sometimes making game experience unpleasant (picking up the water drops tokens, using the wheel, etc.) To much expensive for a Deluxe Edition, which in fact is not deluxe (i.e. cardboard is too thing in most of the components, the edges of the board are not protected). They did much better when publishing and selling directly to shops. To make more money, they have lost gamers´trust on them, and damaged their company and authors´ image. They use to be my favorites authors. It´s a pity.