Eclipse, Mage Knight, Cyclades, and Kemet. All of these are top-shelf titles that combine focused and streamlined Euro mechanisms with Ameritrash conflict and gumption. These are pretty boys who exude smooth yet possess unyielding bite. They’re <PERSON> of the cardboard jungle and their kingdom just got a little bit smaller with the arrival of Hyperborea.
Hyperborea sets out to be a 4X game like Eclipse, albeit one set in a sprawling land-locked Fantasy world as opposed to the vast black sea of space. The vast majority of civilization games in this genre are bloated, unwieldy, and take all day to play. Hyperborea accomplishes a similar feat in a streamlined 90 minutes while still remaining substantial and mentally engaging.
The engine behind this Ferrari is the cube bag-building mechanism built on the foundation of deckbuilding. You will be acquiring cubes throughout the game and adding them to your bag much like a player acquires cards and adds them to their deck in Dominion. On your turn you will draw 3 cubes and place them on various tracks on your player board in order to either complete actions or build towards completing an action in the future. Actions such as moving your units on the hex map or acquiring a new Technology have different colored cube requirements. For instance, if you wish to push the attack and beat down your enemies with brawn you will need primarily Red cubes. Tailoring your bag towards your long-term strategic needs is key and the soul of this title.
The depth in this central mechanism is widened due to a key difference from its deck-building forefathers – the need to acquire additional spaces to place cubes in order to fully utilize an expanding bag. On the basic player board, you will only be able to perform a single set of Moves or Attacks and are quite limited in your ability to repeat or focus on a particular action. This allows for strong diversity and options in starting play but it enforces the need to nab Advanced Technologies from the public offer in order to enhance and manipulate your cube economy. If you want to perform a massive string of attacks you will need to research the Advanced Weaponry or War Mounts so that you have an additional space to place cubes and perform actions. This sort of two-step dance provides an ebb and flow in gameplay that requires thought and decisive action.
If the cube economy itself is the heart of the game, the Advanced Technologies are the brain. 937
The quantity of cards is quite large, and only 8 are visible at any one time. This provides for an intelligent bite size sampling as players only need to focus on what is currently available and don’t have to sift through enormous tech trees or understand all of their options from a huge list straight from the get-go. This is, of course, borrowed from Eclipse and it is my absolute preferred method of Technology acquisition. It simplifies learning and provides exceptional variety with a very slick mechanic.
As emphasized earlier, choice is absolutely impactful in this game. Decisions require careful thought and weighing of options as you can often do as much harm as good by not respecting the game’s intricacies. Acquiring Technologies does not shirk this common theme as the decision point is not as simple as grabbing up Techs that suit your playstyle in rapid fashion. Each Advanced Technology adds a Grey cube to your economy as soon as you acquire it, which represents waste and slows your efficiency. These cubes are useless when drawn unless you have acquired some of the Technologies which can manipulate them in varied ways. The end result of having to deal with this waste is that a greater emphasis is placed on being picky about what Techs you go for and making sure they feed into your optimized engine.
A wide array of technologies offer vast choice and strong variety.
One of the main strengths of the cube economy is the games penchant for rewarding specificity but also tolerating diversity. Each set of actions on your main board has two choices, with one being typically stronger than the other. The stronger choice will require a more precise cube recipe in order to reap the greater benefit. However, instead you may opt to trigger the slightly weaker power and it will allow you to place a cube of any color as part of the combination. This provides for great tension and nuanced decision making as you draw a Red cube along with an Orange and must now decide whether to trigger your one strength attack ability by placing the Red and then the Orange in the multi-colored slot, or you can bite the bullet and place the Red cube on the stronger line waiting to trigger the effect until later in the game when you will draw the required Green cube out of your bag. Wait too long and your opponent may swoop in and clear out the Ruins you were gunning for. Act now with a weaker effect and sacrifice efficiency for instant gratification.
While efficiency and bag management touches every part of this game and will be the driving force behind victory and defeat, there are a number of additional layers which provide interaction and flavor. 403