Having had the chance to try a 1969 game before the official release, i'd like to write a review for it. Please bear in mind that this is my first review on BGG, and I only had a chance to play one game.
Any comment, suggestion or criticism is kindly appreciated.
The game
1969 is a worker placement game with a risk/reward management component for 2-5 players. Playing time is about 1-2 hours, depending on the number of players.
Overview
In 1969, players are the directors of the space agencies of five nations (U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Canada, France and Germany) during the 1960s' space race. Each player tries to build the most technologically advanced rocket by assigning funds to various research branches, sabotage their opponents through espionage and launching training missions, with the final objective to send Man on the moon.
Missions award a certain number of Prestige Points, based on their difficulty (with the Moon mission being the hardest and most rewarding one). The player with the most Prestige Points after 7 turns wins the game.
Components
The game consists of:
- The main game board, displaying the mission tracks, slots to place the scientist pool and Espionage deck, and the Prestige Point track along the border.
- 10 Research sheets (5 Rockets and 5 Ground Control, one of each per player)
- 40 Flag tokens, 8 per player, used to track attempted missions and Prestige Points on the main board.
- 5 Rocket tokens, 1 per player
- Scientist cubes, in 5 colors (40x white, 10x each blue, black, red and green), bought by players during the game and assigned to various tasks on the Rocket and Ground Control sheets to gain bonuses.
- 10 Bonus tokens, used to represent stolen information via industrial espionage
- A deck of 39 Intelligence Cards, bought and used by player to increase their chance to succeed on a mission or to sabotage their opponents.
- 5 custom dice, used to determine the outcome of missions
- Paper money notes, used to buy scientists and cards.
Gameplay
The game is played over seven rounds, each divided into 4 phases. Players act in turn, executing their actions in each phase before passing to the next player. 597
When everyone has completed a phase, the next one begins.
1 – Income Phase
During the Income Phase players collect a fixed amount of money from the bank and, starting from the First Player, have a chance to sacrifice some Prestige Points (i.e. Victory Points) to gain extra money. This action can be done once in rounds 1 and 2, twice in rounds 3 to 5 and three times in the last two rounds.
2 – Purchase Phase
In the purchase phase each player may spend money to hire scientists, represented by wooden cubes, and/or to draw Intelligence cards from the deck. Unspent money can be kept and used in later rounds.
Scientists are assigned to specific tasks either on the Research sheets. Scientists on the Rocket sheet give the player bonus successes on missions displaying the same icon as the one on the task they are assigned to, while scientists on the Ground Control sheet give special benefits to the player:
Radar: allows one "no effect" (blue) result on the mission die roll to be counted as a success (green)
Robot Arm: allows the player to reduce the cost of the first scientist bought every round by 2M $.
Computer: allows the player to re-roll one mission die.
Propaganda: reduces the cost to launch missions by 2M $. (Exception: the Moon Mission cost may not be reduced)
Intelligence: allows the player to draw an Intelligence card for free at the beginning of each round.
Insurance Policy: grants the player 3M $ for each failure (red) result rolled on the mission die
Each benefit on the Ground Control sheet is allowed once per round for each scientist assigned on that task.
Each task can be occupied by up to 2 scientists, which must be of different type (except for white, see below).
Scientists come in 5 different types:
- Basic scientists (white) cost 5 M$ each. White scientists are the only exception to the "no two scientists of the same color on one task" rule.
- Famous scientists (green) cost 9 M$ each, and give the player 3 bonus Prestige Points at the end of the game.
- Rookie scientist (blue) cost 3 M$ only, but the players gets -2 Prestige at the end of the game for each one he or she has.
- Genius scientists (red) cost 11 M$ each, and count as two scientists on the task they are assigned to, while only occupying one slot. 597