SILOS (Secret Interlopers From Outer Space)

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Bitewing Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 45-60 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3IzHzl7
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

It is the year glork-too-vleep, or mid-20th century according to Earthling time. We recently stumbled across this planet called Earth and discovered intelligent, albeit primitive, life. The most intelligent and valuable of these specimens are the creatures known as cows. Alas, for our galactic goals we must settle upon the second-most intelligent form of life on Earth: the human being. These creatures are just intelligent enough. Their brains appear eager to be molded, and their civilization perfect for our siloing.

Aliens have come to silo humans — brainwash, steer, and preserve human civilization — for their cosmic purposes! In SILOS (Secret InterLopers from Outer Space), players control competing factions of aliens who abduct and brainwash humans and cows while secretly invading their community. Players tussle for majority influence in the key locations of this small town as they seek to activate location powers and control human specimens for societal power.

Players take turns repositioning their alien figures and activating an event card. The objective is to collect a complete set of humans: politicians, government operators, influencers, and professionals. A complete set will earn a player a societal power emblem, and the first player to earn five emblems wins the game. Cows are particularly valuable and thus count as wild tokens toward forming a complete set. SILOS is a remastered edition of Reiner Knizia’s Municipium.

To set up, place the board on the table, and then place one human under each location (the colors should match) as well as one cow on each Cow Abduction space.  Put the rest of the human meeples in the bag and then draw one random human for each human abduction space (on top of the locations).  (If you are playing the advanced version, you can use any/all of the alternate locations – with the numbers marked with asterisks).  The UFO starts on Location 4 (News Station)

Each player chooses a color, takes the aliens in that color and puts a hat on one of them to designate it as the leader.  The three faction tiles for that color are also placed face up in front of the player.  A starting player is chosen (and given the starting player token), and the players place their turn order markers in clockwise order in the Town Hall location.  Finally, in turn order, each player places one of their alien figures onto any location.  This continues until all players have placed all their aliens.  There is no limitation on how to place the aliens.  

At each location, someone will have the most influence – this is the player with the most aliens there. Leader aliens (with the cowboy hats, of course) are worth 1.5 Aliens.  Later, you might have Distinguished Aliens, with a mortarboard natch, and those are worth 2.0 Aliens.  Ties are broken by Town Hall Ranking.  Town Hall Ranking is determined in the usual way (by number of aliens).

Now, the actual turns start – and the first player is the one who was given the turn order marker in setup.  On a turn, the active player may first make up to two moves – transferring one of their Aliens to a new location via the paths on the board.  Second, a card must be activated; either one of their face up Faction cards (each can only be used once ever per game) or flipping up the top card of the Common Deck and doing whatever is revealed. 

Depending on what happens, there are three general types of events that could occur:

UFO Abduction – whenever the UFO moves to a new location, the player with the most influence at the destination gets the cow from the cow abduction space, and the player with the second most influence gets the human.  Any unclaimed humans are returned to the supply.  Then, the two spaces are refilled as necessary as in setup.

Mind Control – when a focus group is filled – with all 3 spaces being filled with humans; the player with the most influence chooses 2 of them while the second-most influential player gets the remaining one.  If there is only one faction, the unchosen human goes back to the bag.

Power event – when a card states that powers are to be activated, the powers at all locations indicated by the card are done one at a time, usually in rising numerical order.  

• 0 – Town Hall – re-do the order in Town Hall, thus affecting tiebreakers
• 1 – Sheriff’s Office – move all meeples of one color from a single location TO the Sheriff’s office
• 2 – University – Move all your figures from the University to Town Hall in order to make one of those meeples Distinguished (put a mortar board on it)
• 3 – Shopping Mall – draw humans and place them in focus areas, but you must stop as soon as a Mind Control event occurs
• 4 – News Station – trade in any 3 humans/cows for a VP marker
• 5 – Church – take one human from any player or focus area
• 6 – Bus Station – you may reposition any/all of your figures on the board

At the end of your turn, you check whether you must take a VP token.  If you have a full set of four different colored humans (or cows which are able to be substituted for any), you are obligated to turn those in for a VP token. 

The game continues until the end of a round where a player has at least 5 VP tokens. The player with the most tokens wins. If there is a tie for most, the player with the most remaining humans/cows is the winner.

My thoughts on the game

SILOS is the first in a series of three Reiner Knizia games to be released by Bitewing Games – all with an outer space/alien theme.  This one happens to be a remake of Municipium, a game originally published by Valley Games in 2008 and one that went largely under the radar for many people.  I had always liked it, but honestly, probably hadn’t thought of the game since about 2010.  When this new version arrived, I was quite excited to try it and see if my fond memories of the game still held true.

Now that I’m reacquainted with the game, I find that it is still a wonderfully challenging game.  The new theme might not necessarily be my thing (as I do adore all things Roman), but it works just fine.

The game makes you enter into a number of area-majority battles – you certainly can’t win at every location on the board, so you’ll have to pick and choose based on which powers you want to be able to execute.  In addition, there is a nice speculation game going on at the same time because you’ll want to be in control when the UFO abductions happen there or when the powers are activated; it doesn’t really matter at the other times.  

As the game progresses, you’ll see which cards have already come out, so you can try to predict what is coming next… Or you can choose to use one of your Faction cards for a sure thing.  Just remember that you can only use each of these cards once though, so make sure the timing is optimal!

And, I guess I will admit that while I don’t necessarily like the theme better – the whole idea of human and cow abductions by UFOs is really well done, and maybe I’m just being grumpy about new shiny things :)

OK, so back to the game – let’s not forget that there is also a set collection game going on here.  For each set of abductees, you’ll get a victory point.  And you need 5 sets to win the game.  Of course, if you work at the News Station – you only need sets of 3 humans to get a VP, so let’s not forget about that!

I also should mention that the game offers a bit of variety as you can use alternate actions at each of the locations – so should the game start to feel stale, you can change up the possible actions at the locations to make people re-think their strategies.

The production quality is great, and everyone who has played has loved the wooden meeples and the screened art on them.   For a multitude of reasons, I feel like Municipium never got the credit it deserved, and I do thank Bitewing Games for bringing this one back to the market.  Silos is a tense game with many interwoven mechanisms that is definitely worth checking out.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (1 play, but also a few of Municipium): I thought Municipium was interesting but didn’t get it played very often. Bitewing fortunately didn’t change the game very much (mostly they just added alternate and extra things which can be used or not), unlike what they did to Beowulf in EGO, so it’s still interesting. It just doesn’t grab me for some reason. It’s probably my fault, as the game has an unusual flow which I am not sure I have gotten yet. I’d play again to see if I can get it.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3IzHzl7