Dawn of Ulos

• Designer: Jason Lentz
• Publisher: Thunderworks Games
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-90 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

For untold eons, the mortal races lived in separate planes, unaware of other worlds beyond their own. But now the dragon god Azema forges a new world by opening rifts to other planes…

Dawn of Ulos is an economic tile-laying game for 1-5 players set in the world of Roll Player and Cartographers. You compete in a game among gods of the planarverse, wagering on and manipulating the rise and fall of mortals.

Control the fate of Ulos! Develop a new world, invest in your favorite factions, and pit armies against each other. Choose wisely when to exert your influence. As factions rise and fall, will you earn the most favor with the world creator?

To set up the game, first construct the map by putting the six board pieces together in a 2×3 grid – you can put them in any arrangement you like so that the map in each game will be slightly different than the previous.  A rift tile is placed on each wasteland space on the map.  The group chooses five factions to play in this game – there are ten total to choose from.  The faction cards, camp markers and strength markers for each are fished out of the box.  The strength markers are all placed on the first space of the power track (a separate board which is placed near the map).  Each player gets their own board, 25 favor tokens and 3 development tiles.

The power track is where you can easily see the values of the five factions in the game.  The overall strength (and spoils) value of the faction is based on how much territory they have on the board.  When you buy a card of a faction, you must pay Favor equal to the current Strength.  Whenever you use a card, you get the Spoils value listed in the faction’s current column on the board. 

On a player’s turn, the overall flow is pretty easy.  First, the player must place a development tile on the board if possible. Next, the player may buy a card or use an ability on a card gained previously.  Finally, a new Development tile is drawn to replenish the player’s hand to three tiles.  Now in more detail:

When you place a tile, it must match the preprinted terrains on the map.  An empty wasteland terrain (one whose Rift tile has already been taken) can support any type of tile.  Each tile is a connected pair of hexes.  No part of the tile can ever cover water nor overhang the map.  In general, tiles do not have to be placed adjacent to anything (except in the first turn where you have to place next to a Rift tile if possible).  Possible events that can happen from a tile placement:

• Establish a Camp – each Faction has a Base Camp tile (with different footprints).  If you create an unoccupied territory large enough that you can place a Base Camp on the board, you do so.  That territory now is occupied, and the active player gets one Faction card matching the base just placed on the board.  Now, calculate the power of the Faction by counting all the visible foundation terrains of that faction in the territory.  Place the power marker of the faction onto the corresponding space on the Power Track.
• Change the Strength of a Faction – if you expand an existing occupied territory, you might change the strength of that faction; make the necessary adjustments on the Power Track.  If a faction tile should make it to the far end of the track, flip it over to the Legendary side – this is a permanent change and will make the cards of that faction more valuable in the final scoring.

• Collect a Rift Tile – if you connect a territory to an unclaimed Rift tile, you can take it and put it in your supply.   Rift tiles can be used at any point on your turn, though you are limited to one per turn.  There are twelve different possible effects and there is a useful player aid that summarizes all their abilities – but each gives a special ability or extra action.
• Initiate a Conflict – if you place a tile such that it connects two different Occupied territories, a conflict will occur.  The active player decides which faction is the attacker (it will win ties).  Then each player can commit cards to the fight, placing them facedown on the table.  You can commit as many as you like, and you can place cards of any faction.  Then, going clockwise, each player may use one Faction card from their hand with a conflict ability. Finally, determine the winner.  All players reveal their committed cards.  Any cards which are not in the fight are bluffs and are simply returned to their owner’s hands.   The two fighting factions calculate their conflict value which is their current Strength plus one point per card committed of their faction.  All players must return at least half of their committed cards (rounded up) to the supply, though they will get the spoils value for all returned cards.  At the end of the conflict, the stronger faction will win and take the entire conjoined territory while the loser will have their camp removed from the board.  Finally, calculate the power of the surviving faction taking into account all of the new hexes added to their territory.

In the action phase, the player has two options – either buy up to 3 cards or use a card from their hand.  If you buy cards, you must buy cards that are currently active (their base camp is on the map somewhere), and for each card you pay Favor equal to their current strength.  If you want to use a card from your hand instead (it must be a card with an action that can be used in this phase), you reveal it, gain Favor equal to its current Spoils value, and then resolve the action as printed on the card.  The card is then returned to the supply.  A player is not obligated to take either of these choices and can simply pass on this phase of their turn.

To end the turn, draw a tile to replenish your hand.  If you cannot draw a tile, the end game is triggered, and the current round is played to completion.  The end game is also triggered if two factions have reached Legendary status on the power track.

Once the game has ended, players calculate their scores:

• Favor collected during the game
• Each card is scored at its faction’s Strength Level, with a 2 Favor bonus for a Legendary Faction
• Unused Rift tiles are worth 3 Favor each

The player with the most Favor wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player with the most unused Rift tiles.

My thoughts on the game

This is a very intriguing game that has a lot of “old-school” feel to it – it is like a mashup of Acquire and Tigris & Euphrates set in a fantasy world.  Though it doesn’t look like it – Dawn of Ulos is really a stock/financial game, albeit one where the stock certificates each have special abilities printed on them.

There are a lot of things to consider as the game progresses.  You’d like to buy faction cards when the price is low, and then sell them when the value is high.  There is always the possibility of the share price busting (if the faction loses a conflict), so you’ll want to pay close attention to the map and see who might be close enough to start a fight.  Sure, you can use your cards to defend your faction – but if you do, you end up losing half of the shares in the fight; so that’s not as easy a decision as you’d think it would be!  And, of course, don’t forget that each faction card has an action on it – and there are times you just want to have access to a particular action, and that’s the primary reason for wanting one in your hand…

Your tile selection obviously determines where you can play, as you generally have to match the terrain art on the board – if you don’t have the right tile for your ideal placement, then you’ll have to scan the board to make the best of your options.  This has the downside of taking a bit more time as there are a lot of places to look – but it also helps you from focusing on a single territory – because you’re never going to be assured of being able to expand in the exact location that you want.  

The hotel merger bit is also fascinating.  Oops, I mean the conflicts.  Thankfully, you don’t have to keep track of whether it is an external or internal fight, but it does feel a lot like E&T as players can each contribute to the battle.  Again, as mentioned above, supporting a side in the fight will cause you to lose cards; but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, there are times where you might want to throw cards into the fight only to maximize your returns – as one of the factions will be (temporarily) removed from the board when it loses.  There are times when I might even throw in cards for both sides trying to leverage what Favor I can out of the fight.  It’s tricky to figure out when is the right time to commit cards, and when is the right time to just liquidate everything – but that should improve with increased experience.  Of course, you also have to factor into the equation the fact that cards played during your turn provide you spoils AND an action, while in the battle they only give you the spoils.  

The map is pretty large, and it is not uncommon for a Faction to be reborn during the game.  In one game, the Ratfolk actually died and came back on the board in three or four consecutive rounds?!  Each time there is an unoccupied space big enough to support a base camp; that base camp is placed on the board – so spawning happens pretty often.  Keeping shares in Lost tribes usually is OK as they will more then likely make it back onto the board (until near the endgame at least).  

There are ten factions in the game, and you only use 5 each time – and obviously they each have their own special action, and they interact differently with the others.  There is a starting five set recommended for the first game, and I appreciate that as it is a good way to learn the structure of the game without overly complicated card actions.  All of the faction Actions improve with higher strength; so the cards become more valuable both in the monetary (Favor) sense as well as the action sense as the faction’s territory grows.

The Rift tiles add another wrinkle to the equation.  They give you either VPs or an extra unexpected action; and they give you reason to expand an occupied territory that you might not otherwise care about or to cause a fight between territories (just to get the tile).  However, some of the tiles feel a bit unbalanced/random.  In one game, the Redistribute tile cost me at least 12 points and I had to randomly give up a card (the most valuable one in the game) and I ended up getting back a card for a tribe that wasn’t even on the board at the end (thus worth zero).  For me, a bit too random for a strategy game that doesn’t have many other random aspects.  Were I to keep playing this, I might house rule this tile out of the game by “losing” it under the insert…

As far as the components go: the map pieces fit nicely together and all the tiles are of a decent thickness.   I suppose that if you needed variety in the map, you can piece it together however you want – but man, as you’re drawing random tiles out of the bag anyway, not sure that it really matters to me.  The cards show all the needed information, and any needed clarifications are easily found in the rules.  The box insert is also well done – with a nice cover to hold everything in place. .   The miniatures (base camps) look great – but, umm, they really failed for me on usability.  They are all grey primer in color, and the only way to tell which race they are is to compare the shape of the head on the mini to the artwork on the card.  I spent much of the game continually cross referencing the mini to the card, and then having to figure out where its marker was on the track.  And, the track isn’t big enough to display all the tiles, so they’re often stacked, and this makes it even more difficult to figure out the level of a tribe when you need to know it.   The luddite gamer in me would have preferred cardboard chits, each with a color border around it – matching a border found on the cards and the score chit.  Or… the cards each have an icon representing the tribe in the corner; this shape could have been repeated prominently on the mini and the chit for ease of recognition (though this still doesn’t help the issue of the chits needing to be stacked).

Our games have run a bit on the longer side (70-90 minutes) but some of that might be due to inexperience – every game I’ve played so far has had at least one newbie in it.  At that length, it’s a bit long – I mean, I could play two games of Acquire in that time frame… but, I have heard from other OG folks that the game settles in the 40-60 minute range with experience, and that would be perfect time for this type of game for me.  It’s a game that feels familiar in many ways, but definitely brings some new ideas to the game table in its meshing of these familiar concepts.  For me, probably not enough to best Acquire – but then again, Acquire is one of my top 10 all time games.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark J (4 plays):  Unlike Dale, Acquire and Tigris & Euphrates are both games I can admire for how they advanced the hobby but have no desire to play either one of them again. (In that specific stock/merger genre, I’d rather be playing Shark [the Ravensburger edition].) 

For me, Dawn of Ulos occupies the least interesting corner of the Roll Player Universe – a collection of games unified by their setting. For the uninitiated, that universe began with Roll Player – a dice drafting game where you were creating a RPG character… then expanded into Cartographers [a clever flip’n’write map-making game], Lockup [a bluffing game about fantasy prison gangs], Roll Player Adventures [a cooperative RPG/paragraph game with gorgeous production], Goblin Vaults [a goblin card game], and Stonespine Architects [a card-drafting game about designing dungeons]. Dawn of Ulos (as Dale noted at the beginning of the review) is about the origin of Ulos and the various tribes/factions.

While the theme is not particularly strong here – yes, the powers of the factions echo their fantasy reputations – I actually enjoy the gameplay. As Dale outlined above, making the decision when to use cards for their power + sale value or when to hold onto them for use later in battles and/or final scoring is key… and I think that it will take most players a couple of games to get the feel for how they want to play these situations.

I haven’t seen the swingy-ness of the Rift tiles that Dale notes… but I can see how it could occur. We’ve typically held onto Rift tiles for their score value unless the play was substantially better. And it may be that I’m more of miniatures guy than Dale, but I wasn’t as frustrated by the cards/base camps/trackers issues, though I’ll acknowledge that they are there.

There is a functional solo mode – but it’s actually the weakest of the solo modes in the Roll Player universe. Some of that is due to the need to internalize tile placement rules for the bot.

Dan B. (1 play): I like Acquire and love Tigris & Euphrates so I was very interested in trying this. And it’s interesting, but I’m not sure it works for me. Late-game conflicts seem like an issue: cards from the losing side are likely to be worthless, or nearly so, so if you have a bunch from the side you expect to lose you might as well commit them to the battle. Of course then they might win, so if you have cards from the other side they might be worthless… If few people have cards from one or both sides you might be able to make a reasonable guess as to the outcome, but if not it’s a crapshoot and it seems as if the smart play will often be to just commit all cards from both sides.

The lack of any equivalent to Acquire’s majority scoring also makes it less compelling to me than it might be. That being said, I’d be willing to try it again, especially with a different mix of races that might allow some more interesting plays.