EGO (Extraterrestrial Greeting Organization)

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Bitewing Games
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 14+
• Time: 40-80 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/4nnnGgn
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

We are not alone! It is the 23rd century, and proof of alien life has finally been discovered beyond our solar system. In fact, recent developments in technology have triggered a cascade of discoveries throughout the galaxy; intelligent life and advanced civilizations are now known across many planets, moons, and asteroids in the Milky Way. Now the race is on to establish interstellar relations with the aliens. The only chance we have of reaching alien life is by pooling our resources to build the required Super Ship. In an unprecedented, albeit uneasy, co-operation between the planetary governments, the peoples of our solar system have finally built the first of these Super Ships. Now, the coalition known as the Extraterrestrial Greeting Organization — EGO — is now ready to launch our first mission.

In EGO, players proceed through a sequence of major and minor events including auctions, drafts, risks, and more. Risks and egos are the lifeblood of this game as players will frequently find themselves in a game of chicken with their rival ambassadors as they try to impress various alien civilizations and earn political power. At the end of the game, players earn significant bonus points or suffer serious penalty points depending on how offensive the aliens find them to be. Ultimately, the ambassador with the most prestige and respect will earn a seat in the Galactic Senate and be crowned the winner of the game.  EGO is a drastic reimagining of the strategic, push-your-luck auction game, Beowulf: The Legend

To set up, set up the five boards of the journey, starting with the Solar System board, ending with the Arrival board, and putting three random boards in between. One priority piece per player is put near the board as well.  Also, depending on the player count, get out the correct “player count piece” if needed.  Shuffle up the power card deck as well as the tactic card deck.  A display of 5 power cards is dealt to the table. Decide on a first player.

Success tokens are placed in the supply as are the credit tokens.  Interestingly the credit tokens are valued 1, 2 and 3 – and you are generally not allowed to color up during play unless the supply is empty.  There are times that you will use these chits for their value, other times for the chip itself.  The alliance tokens are placed in the bag – these can provide either success (1-3) or credits (1 – 3).  When drawn, they remain hidden until they need to be used.  Finally, the Offense tokens are placed in the supply – these are negative tokens which will be used in the final scoring.

In general, play will move through the five boards, going left to right – and if a particular column has multiple events in it, then top to bottom.  Types of events that you will encounter:

Option events – all players in turn order can choose to do the option shown (example – discard 2 cards and then draw 2 new cards)

Risk events – these are easily seen as they have a huge yellow triangle in the background. Flip over the number of cards at the top, and then see if you succeed in matching the icons shown just beneath:

• Full success – all cards have icons that match – take all the cards into your hand
• Complete failures – NONE of the cards have icons – simply discard all the cards (no other penalty)
• Intermediate success – if at least one card matches, but not all – you still get the matching card(s), but you also have to take whatever penalty is shown at the bottom of the triangle

Prepare events – reveal cards and then they are chosen one at a time in player order and taken into player hands

Supply Events – everyone gets to choose any one of the options shown in the box

Negotiation Events – these are the large round wheels – at the start, place the player count piece so that it obscures the most clockwise wedges.  Now, starting with the start player, players can either play cards or pass.  If they pass, they take the highest numbered priority piece.  If they play, they must play a card from their hand that has one of the two icons shown at the top of the top central wedge of the circle.  They must play cards until they equal or exceed the previous player’s icon count..  Each time a player has a turn in Negotiation, they can choose to do a risk event, but if they completely fail, they are immediately forced to pass.  Play continues clockwise until only one player is left, this player gets the #1 priority piece.  Now in order, starting with #1, place the priority piece on any visible wedge and gain what is shown.  Some of the outcomes are bad, so higher numbers will obviously end up with those.  Whenever a player passes (or wins), their cards are discarded.  The winner of the negotiation also takes the first player marker.

Bidding Events – here, players secretly and simultaneously select cards from their hand – hoping to match the icons on the top segment.  Highest number of icons gets first priority, tiebreaker in favor of the player who played the card with the highest tiebreaker number in the top middle.   All cards bid are discarded.

When you get to the final board, there are two special events

Last Word event – one-time use options to trade in cards with icons to gain points.

Reckoning Event – gain or lose points based on how many reckoning tokens you have 

The winner is the player with the most success token points. Ties broken in favor of the most credits remaining.

My thoughts on the game

Per the publisher: EGO is a drastic reimagining of the strategic, push-your-luck auction game, Beowulf: The Legend and introduces many innovations by:

• Revamping the polarizing risk mechanism while preserving its excitement and drama
• Increasing the set-up variety with a randomized sequence of interchangeable civilization boards
• Streamlining the endgame push-your-luck token system in which players can score big or suffer immensely
• Introducing exciting new features such as currency cards and transmission events
• Balancing the bidding tie-breaker system with the simple solution of ranked cards
• Speeding up the playtime with a condensed and focused sequence of events
• Doubling the number of unique special cards that can be drafted as rewards
• Spicing up the risk events with varying rewards and penalties
• Sharpening the endgame hand management decisions with tempting rewards following a climactic final auction
• Broadening the appeal of the theme and presentation with vivid galactic artwork by Marie Bergeron

Interestingly, I don’t think I’ve ever played the original, or if I have, I just don’t remember it.  But, for those that have played Beowulf: The Legend, that list above may be a quick and dirty review for you.  

For someone who played the game for the first time…. Each game was pretty chaotic – where it feels like EGO played me, rather than me playing EGO.   From my standpoint, a lot of the game was drawing/flipping random cards from the top of the deck.  If you had luck on your side, you’d do well in the game.  As you might guess, this sort of mechanic leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Maybe that’s just because I apparently suck at flipping cards for Risk events and end up with all sorts of penalties while everyone else just gets free cards.  Shrug.

But you really need to have lots of cards (and the right cards) here because you’ll want to be fully armed for the showdown of the Negotiation or Bidding events.  Play goes around the table in the Negotiation events and each player tries to outdo the previous high play.  If not, you are forced to drop out and get low priority on choosing a reward.  The Bidding event is essentially a closed fist auction, but again, you’d like to have enough cards in your hand to at least make a run for the prize.    In most of these, try not to come in last place as there is almost always a penalty associated with that.

I did learn that one change from the original is that now you can turn in cards at the end for some points -and this keeps people from just dumping everything into the last few bids.  It also, I think, makes things a bit more interesting near the end because players might actually have to consider not bidding their max possible bid as they are then possibly giving away points in that final conversion.  Tricky things to think about for sure.

The art design here is colorful, and maybe a bit busy for my liking – but it’s easy enough to see the path that the game takes, and lets you try to play out the best way to trade or gain cards as you go.  The order of the boards is different each time you play, so you’ll have to come up with a new plan each game.

The folks that I played with had played Beowulf before, and all felt this was an improvement.  I didn’t have that previous knowledge, and I was whelmed by the game.  Neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed, just whelmed.  I didn’t flip over cards well and took lots of penalties when I was taking risks.  The other players reveled in that sort of risk/reward.  It’s not really for me.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson (3 plays of EGO; 10 plays of Beowulf: The Legend): The new edition (EGO) cleans up some of the ticky issues with the original and adds more variety to the game structure. My only beef is that Dale is not wrong about the art being a little busy. It’s definitely for me.

Dan B. (1 play of EGO, more of Beowulf): I agree with Dale that the art has issues – everyone in my game had problems seeing important details at some point. I have issues with the game beyond that – I don’t think most if any of the changes are improvements. While I suppose I might be willing to play EGO again, I’d much rather play Beowulf, which is not a favorite game of mine but is one I like enough to pull out occasionally.

Larry (1 play of Ego, 2 or 3 of Beowulf):  Like Beowulf, it’s still an exercise in risk management, so if you disliked that aspect of the original, that won’t change.  I like both games because they’re so different from anything else out there, although you have to be able to accept the luck aspect.  This is probably a slight improvement over Beowulf.

Mitchell (8 plays of EGO)  I never played Beowulf so I have no context in that regard. I played EGO several times at 2 players, twice at 3, and 4 times at 4. I enjoyed it at each player count, but it is best at 3 or 4 as the bidding is more dynamic. The multiplayer gamers were with non-gamers, folks who were just graduating from Ticket to Ride. They enjoyed it very much. And I did as well. No question that the luck factor is huge, but the fun factor is high, and there are some interesting decisions to make throughout the game. EGO is reasonably simple to teach and if you enjoy push your luck situations it’s certainly worth your while. But if the luck factor annoys you, steer clear. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Mark Jackson, Steph H
• I like it.  Larry, Mitchell, Craig M.
• Neutral.  Dale Y, Dan B.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4nnnGgn