Age of Wonders: Planetfall

• Designers: Stepan Oralev
• Publisher: Arcane Wonders / Hobby World
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 12+
• Time: 20-40 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Arcane Wonders

The heyday of the Star Union has come to an end. Setting off massive gravity bombs designed to create spatial rifts to new worlds led to the Collapse, and many planets were cut off from the rest of the Empire. The surviving factions began gradually rebuilding civilization and rediscovering lost technology. Being once part of a single state, they will have to meet again and find out who is worthy of succeeding the great power.

In Age of Wonders: Planetfall, you are the Commander of one of the six surviving groups that have set out to explore the once-abandoned parts of the Star Union. Your expedition will explore seven planets in search of valuable resources and technology, battle hostile units, and seize landmarks. Will you be able to create a new world from the shards of the old Empire?

The game is played over seven rounds, and a new planet is explored each round. Each player may conduct two explorations on every planet. The players will gain Empire points by defeating units, studying technology, claiming landmarks, and running operations on those planets. At the end of the game, players score Empire points for meeting certain conditions listed on a particular goal sheet. Whoever scores the most Empire points wins.

The seven decks of planet cards are shuffled separately to set up the game.  The Operations board is placed on the table and one of the 8 goal sheets is randomly chosen (each providing different end game scoring conditions).   Each player is given a Commander sheet – one side is the basic side while the other side is for advanced players and includes unique abilities for each leader on that side.  There are four tracks on the sheet,  a VP track around the outside, and three rows for Experience, Strength and Energy.  A marker is placed on the starting spot for each track.  Player markers are placed on the initiative track of the Operations board, with the lowest initiative value getting the earlier spot in turn order.

The game will be played in 7 rounds, each one exploring a different planet, and there are five phases in each round:

1] Discovery – deal out cards to the three levels of the Operation board per the chart in the rules (number of cards in each row changes on player count).  Each card has a little chart on it which shows the changes cost/reward depending on which level of the board it is dealt to.

2] Income – gain income for any annexed actor, then resolve Technology card Income effects and then any Commander Income effects

3] Exploration 1 – in turn order (shown on the track on the Operation board), ships are moved from the turn order track onto one of the cards or Operations slots to the right of the cards. Each ship must be placed on an unclaimed card/spot.  If you place your ship  on a card, you must have the necessary resources to defeat it.  Then, going left to right, top to bottom, the ships are activated.  As the card/slot is activated, the ship on that location goes to the highest available slot in turn order.  If you activate a card, take that card and place it in your player area. The different actions will be described in a bit.

4] Exploration 2 – Do the exploration thing again, now using the turn order established from the selection of actions in the previous exploration phase.  There will likely be fewer cards to choose from as no new cards are dealt to the display. 

5] Migration – really should be called cleanup. Take any unselected cards and discard them to the box.

OK, so let’s talk about those actions for a bit – there are 5 kinds of cards, and the chart on the card tells you the cost of the card or the reward from the card based on what level it was dealt to…

• Fighting A Unit – consult the chart to see how many strength points must be spent.  In addition, check the experience level needed, and spend additional strength points for each experience level you lack.  Some cards will offer a diplomacy option where, if you have enough experience, you can spend energy instead of strength.  Regardless of how you defeat the card, the rewards are found at the bottom.  You can increase the markers on your tracks on your player board accordingly.

• Claiming a Landmark – consult the chart to see how many energy points must be spent. Alternatively, some can be overcome with aggression where you spend strength points instead.  Again, the rewards for the card are shown at the bottom.
• Studying a Technology – spend energy points to claim the card.  In rounds 1-4, you will earn a special ability in effect for the rest of the game.  In rounds 5-7, you will get access to an end-game scoring condition.
• Picking up a Thing – all of these offer an instant bonus, or some can be ‘annexed’ where you get nothing now but instead get a card that provides income in each later turn
• Running Operations – here, you don’t get a card but instead get a number of points to spend to buff your VP, Strength and/or experience tracks.

Repeat the process seven times.  At the end of the game, there is a little bit of endgame scoring.  All players score for the three scoring goals shown on the goal sheet, and each player scores and individual technology bonuses they acquired in rounds 5-7.  The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of being highest on the turn order track at the end of the game.

My thoughts on the game

Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a quick playing tableau building game which has been enjoyable in its first few plays around here.  It is apparently based on a video game, but I’ve never played it (nor honestly heard about it at all) – so I can only judge the game for how it plays.  The system is easy to setup and learn, and with a total of only 14 action choices in the whole game, it really makes you make the most of each turn.  

Each character has a unique ability – and I’d definitely recommend leaning into that as it may give you an extra half-action as a result; and that can turn into a significant difference if done multiple times over the course of the game.  The eight different goal panels reward different strategies, and they obviously should not be ignored.  The three scoring criteria on the goal sheet provide a sizable portion of the overall points to be scored at the end of the game.

Each of the planet decks has a similar composition (as far as distribution of card types), but each game will play out quite differently based on which cards are dealt to the table and which never see the light of day.   The Landmarks have a high payoff if you are able to get a pair of them; however, they have to be available in order for you to even have a chance at that bonus – so you’ll have to weigh the risk/reward for those as they come up.

Similarly, the endgame bonus cards can surely be helpful in your quest to win; but the right one have to appear in rounds 5-7.  I have found that I really prioritize turn order for the start of each of the final three rounds so that I have the best chance to buy the endgame scoring bonus Technology that I want.

I often find that I choose between getting cards that build a resource production engine versus playing a game where I take the Operations action more often as a way to restock my resources.  I also have found that an early Operations action can get my Experience up to a sufficient level that I can then take on the bigger unit cards – and this often pays itself off with higher VP rewards and larger resource bonuses.

Components – the Operations board is a bit thin, and unfortunately, mine split at the seam, though a little bit of double sided tape fixed it up nicely.  The iconography is easy to follow, though I wish it was easier to find the number of cards to be dealt out in the Discovery phase.  There is plenty of room to include this on the board, and it would have been nice to have it there as opposed to having to refer to the rules.  Sure, you’ll remember the numbers soon enough – but why not put it somewhere more easily seen and remembered!  The other thing I’d mention is to be careful around your character board – it is a single piece of cardstock, and I would have liked this to be a double layer board with an inset track.  (Sure, I have no idea how much this would have added to the cost of the game, so it might not be fair for me to ask this)..  But, with the current board/cube situation, it’s pretty easy to accidentally jostle the cubes and then lose track of the actual location of the cubes on the track.  The artwork has a great sci-fi feel to it, and I assume that these graphics are taken from the videogame that spawned it.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall will likely take no more than half an hour to play, especially once everyone is familiar with the rules.  The variable goal scoring, the randomly distributed characters and their differing special abilities, and the luck of the draw in which planet cards come into play will keep players on their toes and will force you to evaluate each game differently for the winning strategy.  It’s a lot of game to pack into that short time window, and as a result, it’s been a game that I’ve been wanting to introduce to other gamers this winter.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Justin Bell (3 plays): I do agree that AoW is quick, and my third play with four players took about 30 minutes. The game is breezy and the B-side player boards extend the life of the game. However, I was surprised how quickly AoW faded from view after those first three plays. I didn’t think about it, other players never wanted to play it again, and I never felt intrigued to dig this out again. I’m more curious about the video game now, but the board game was ultimately just OK.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it.
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. Justin B
• Not for me…