In the Footsteps of Marie Curie

• Designer: Florian Fay
• Publisher: Sorry We Are French
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20-40 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In this family game, enter Marie Curie’s laboratory and help the famous scientist win her double Nobel Prize! Conduct experiments, improve your workshop and complete Marie Curie’s research before the other players. In the Footsteps of Marie Curie is a game featuring resource management and transformation mechanics with a card river and contracts. Resources distribution (Pitchblende, Uranium, and Radium) is done through a cube tower, and the retention or overproduction of these brings a set of surprises each turn. Players progress on a central board through Marie Curie’s life timeline. The game ends when players reach the end of this timeline.

To set up, place the board on the table and put the marker on the leftmost space of the timeline. This timeline shows the milestone events in Marie Curie’s life, and it also serves as the timer for the game. Put the cube tower near the left side of the board. Make a market of 4 activity cards, organize the thesis tiles by type and put the workshop corresponding to the player count in the middle. Each player gets their own personal board and a random Objective tile.

The game will be played in turns around the board until the marker reaches the end of the timeline – at that point, play will continue until the end of the current round so that all players have the same number of turns.
On a turn, the active player takes four steps: Workshop, Research, Experimentation, Rest. When completed, the next player takes their turn.
In the Workshop step, take the cubes shown under the marker on the Workshop tile and then thrown them into the tower. Some cubes should emerge from the tower onto the table.

In the Research step, players either collect resources or write a thesis. If you collect resources, take as many as you can hold from those available on the table (that fell out of the tower). You start with a max ability of taking 3 cubes, but this can increase to as many as 6. If you write a thesis, draw one from the lowest numbered stack that you do not already have. You may only have one of each type (I to IV). Reveal the back of the Thesis and gain the bonus shown.
In the Experimentation step, you can perform these actions in any order you want:

• Transform resources – following the chart on your board, trade in cubes for other cubes. If you have the Marie Curie tile, you can also trade 2 Radium for 1 VP
• Buy Activity Card – buy one of the 4 face up Activity cards paying the cost shown in the top left. Place it under your board in the corresponding column. Gain the bonus shown on the card (which depends on how many cards of that type you now have)

• Validate an Experiment – if you have an experiment tile, you can validate it by turning in the cubes as shown at the top. You may get a bonus for doing this, and then you flip the experiment over thus gaining either an increased ability to take cubes or an increased limit to cubes you can have at the end of a turn. For each pair of different experiment types, gain 1VP
• Validate your Objective Tile – show that you have met the condition on the tile, flip it over and score the VPs for it

In the Rest step, you must discard cubes down to your Erlenmeyer Flask capacity limit. Then move the Workshop marker to the next space on the tile (flipping it over if directed).
Again, the game continues until the Timeline Marker reaches the last space of the timeline. The current round is completed and then players add up their VP tokens. The player with the Marie Curie tile at the end of the game gains 1VP for it. The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most Radium left over.

My thoughts on the game
Given the designer, art direction and the title, I suspect that a lot of people will expect this to be like In the Footsteps of Darwin, and I’ll start out by saying that they are completely different games with almost nothing in common other than the designer/art/title. In the Footsteps of Marie Curie is a tight resource management game where lady luck (or cube tower luck) plays a big role in what resources you might have available on a given turn. As a result, you will often have to re-assess your plan each turn once you see what resources are actually available to you. Maybe the tower will provide you with the cubes you require to complete an experiment. If not, maybe you can instead buy an Activity card that will then provide you with the things you need…
Players should note that the scores in this game are fairly low. The rules example has a winner with 9 points, and I think we have yet to have anyone score more than 12 in our own games. Knowing this should help you see just how valuable each and every point can be – and this will help you formulate an appropriate strategy to gain said victory points.
The timing of the Marie Curie timeline track is another thing to work with. You’ll definitely be able to track when you get timeline moves based on the track on the Workshop tile. But, there are plenty of other events that can trigger movement, so it’s not entirely predictable. If you can figure out the timing, you might be rewarded with extra cubes or a timely transformation opportunity that will really help you along! Also note that the constant movement of the timeline marker limits the game length – and you might be surprised in your first few games about how soon the marker reaches the end of the timeline!
While I’m talking about the timeline track, I sadly need to mention that the rulebook is really poorly done in regards to the rules about the timeline track. The only place that it is mentioned is in the Overview section (which is generally not a place I would expect actual rules to be mentioned, and certainly not the only time), and the timing of when to apply the timeline movement from the Workshop tile is never mentioned – or at least none of the four members of my group were able to find it in our readings of the rules. I’m sure that this will be clarified online at some point, but it was something we had to agree on a house-rule on in our first plays.
As you gain experience with the game, you’ll find that there are really a few things to possibly do each turn, and it comes down to figuring out how to have the right resources to do those things. Scoring is very granular, so you’ll fight for every VP you can get. Like In the Footsteps of Darwin, the game becomes easy to grok due to the small number of things that you’re able to do – and I find this an elegant and pleasing design as a result.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…