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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.
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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.
AFallenApple
This is actually my favorite iteration of Pandemic, but the board is a huge problem. Trying to go the historic route sounds great, but the names are too long, and the regions are too clumsy for all the pieces. Stacking dikes in the small clustered regions is a super pain. Also, because the names are so long and take up most of the space in the smaller areas, you have to cover them with the pieces--it becomes a challenge locating them. Lastly, the regions themselves are overly complex making it hard to quickly see what flows where each turn.
chillenniumfalcon
Another Pandemic-branded co-op where you're trying to prevent floodwaters from overrunning the Netherlands. I have more fun with Iberia, but this gets props for being tougher to win.