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Lead the Netherlands into the Industrial Age in the latest version of the cooperative classic! It is the dawn of the Industrial Age in the Netherlands. For centuries, the country has relied upon a series of dikes and wind-powered pumps to keep it safe from the constant threat of flooding from the North Sea. But this system is no longer enough.
blueatheart
Two plays in: Surprised at how much I enjoy this game, the small tweaks on the Pandemic formula works fantastically here. The water flow mechanics and sea level rise combine to make the game continuously tense and interesting. I wouldn't recommend playing with just the base 4-color game, it really opens up and feels like it's meant to be played with the population/objectives "variant" (and 5 objectives feels like it should be the standard). Mayyybe play the base way once if all players in your group are new. Second game, we had a situation where everything looked great, we were on a great path to get our four objectives, getting half the population put in place in the red/red/yellow/green 9 population objective, barely any water on the board...and a single storm raised the water level to 3, half the dikes broke in the northsea, and all but two water cubes were suddenly on the board and we're fighting for survival. Taught us to plan ahead for the storms better.
-xXx-
Like it but the game has some design issues which keep me from loving it. Everything about this production is beautiful, except they filled a map with tiny regions that are not very user friendly. Gameplay is either a walk in the park or ridiculously hard. There's no middle way, and this my main complaint about this game: it doesn't have a steady build up of tension. Rather, there's no tension at all and then all of a sudden you lose. Just like that. The reason for this: - Basic goals are very easy. - Extra goals are extremely hard, especially if you draw more than one. - Water cubes run out very rapidly. I've had games where we lost on turn 1 because too many cubes had to be placed during setup! - You rarely run out of cards, hence, no tension. - The balance between cube management and card management is distorted. Still, I very much like all the 7 roles, all of the events, the water flow, the pumps etc. If you can finetune the difficulty, look past the map and don't mind losing on turn 1 once in while, this game is very solid. Otherwise it's either boredom (too easy) or frustration (too hard). Despite its shortcomings, I find it more interesting than Pandemic but less pleasant than Fall of Rome.
balexia6
I quite enjoy the flooding mechanism and the ability to change up the objectives. I think we have only managed to win once so far.