Andromeda's Edge - First Playthrough
Overview
This week I was able to play Andromeda's edge with 2 other friends and immensely enjoyed it! It utilizes the same foundation from Luke Lauries's games Cryo and Dwellings of Eldervale. Andromeda's edge is by far my favorite iteration of this play style, the integration into the epic space odyssey the interplay between the monsters, events and the small map where all players have their own agendas and are trying to build their own developments worked out really well for me. I felt that the battles were fair and not too punishing and the factions are unique enough where there isn't one common way to win.
Actions
Luke Laurie's series of games that I mentioned in the overview have a similar interface to interact with the game. On your turn you have the ability to take two actions.
- Place a ship on a space that is available and within range of your other ships! This allows you to take the action on the planet you are on which will either give you resources or the ability to buy modules to add to your player board. The engine building and figuring out how to sync with your factions ability was a lot of fun.
- You bring back the ships you have out on the map to your player board and you can place them on the right squares to take that action. You can buy modules of that type to add to the row of the same color so when you bring back a ship you can potentially take up to X actions based off of your player board!
S Monsters
We played with the deluxe version of the game so the monsters were painted in a gold pattern with stands. Since the map at the start of the game is small, it's hard to not have to fight with these monsters. Something that makes battle not as punishing is the fact that if you lose a battle, you can get a tactics cards that can give you a range of benefits; additionally, if you pick up a resource token place it on your player board on a specific slot, anytime you lose a battle you can get that resource instead! Which can lead to very interesting dynamics if your ships come back to your player board if they happen to perish in battle. :)
The monsters have differing ranges of targeting, strength and abilities that make it fun to interact with. Something I appreciated in this game is that once the monsters are defeated, they do not randomly appear again. They appear only when an event card is drawn.
Events
Event cards are completely managed by the players actions, if players land on specific planets, take specific actions they move a counter up towards a rotating track until a event card is drawn. Not only do can you see when the event is going to happen, you have a multitude of ways to alter the event deck so you can modify it to your benefits as when event cards are drawn, not only do you get a new monster but you score points based off where you are on the track for the specific category of card that is drawn and usually get a positive benefit for all the players. From my play through, you can alter the deck by either looking at the top two events and choosing which one to put at the bottom of the deck and which to keep on top. This allows users to pick the benefit or which category will be scored. There are four categories: science, engineering, currency and civilization. There are multiple ways of increasing your standing in each track but the main way is by buying modules of that type and adding it to your player board for triggering using action #2 of returning your ships back to your player board.
Conclusion
