At its heart, Wasteland is a game about truckin'. Grab some goods, honk that horn, and haul butt across the not-so-fruited irradiated plains. Sell where you can, and use that hard earned cash to buy more stuff, baby! This underlying foundation sets the stage for a long, meaty play session with the end goal of earning points through a mission-based win condition. Each round, players have a total of five actions to take. They will take turns performing one action (or maybe two - you can take a free action after a move): move, buy, sell, visit an outpost, or fight the roaming raiders. [First great thing about Wasteland: Down time is greatly decreased by this mechanic; rather than spending all five of your actions at once while everyone waits, you rotate, letting players engage quickly rather than sit for ten minutes.] Once every player has performed five actions, you reset your actions and draw an event card. Interestingly, all actions except moves are limited per round; for instance, you can only purchase goods once per round. It's a patent game balance mechanic that has zero-zip-nada basis in real life. However, it gets a huge pass from me since there is an event card actually references the arbitrary nature of the mechanics in an awesome 4th wall, tongue-in-cheek sort of way. You can earn goods to trade for money in two ways. First, you can buy goods. Certain outposts will sell you food, water, or weapons [with an emphasis on the "or" operator; it's one type per outpost] based on the supply tile at the outpost; this is a set price. Second, you can attempt to pillage raider trucks or raider enclaves for goods. Regardless of your method of choice, you then sell your goods at an outpost that has an associated demand tile, earning money based on a fluctuating market: the more demand tiles are on the board, the more an outpost will pay you. Importantly, whenever you buy or sell, the supply or demand tile is discarded and replaced with a new, potentially different tile. [Second great thing about Wasteland: the trading in this game is superb. Its simple, its fluid, and it varies after each sale so you don't just set up a static route and win. Extremely well done.] Combat is a fairly standard affair. You roll dice to determine hits. If you succeed, you gain goods or dodge the attack. If you fail, you take a stock one (1) damage. While the mechanics of combat emphasize that this is a trading game, not a fighting game, pillaging is very powerful. Fighting is absolutely a viable means to stock your larder, and pillaging occurs very frequently. [Third great thing about Wasteland: this can make the game nicely varied per player; where my wife is a negotiations guru, I can viably run around head-hunting raiders.] You use your hard earned cash to either buy more goods, buy mission required items, or purchase upgrades for your rig. The upgrades are all fun, varied and useful, ranging from extra combat die to more cargo space to one-shot "move anywhere" tokens. [First bad thing about Wasteland: Where you purchase upgrades is sometimes not intuitive. For example, one-shot temporary mods are bought somewhere other than the Mod Shop.] You can also hire allies to travel with you and give you a slew of different bonuses, though I found these are mostly gained from missions. Missions come in two varieties. First, there are "priority first class" missions. These give you points that win you the game. Second, there are secondary missions that give you rewards, mostly in the form to allies, money, and one-shot temporary mods. [Fourth great thing about Wasteland: The missions govern who wins the game, and they shine in this role. The priority missions provide unique mechanics, while the reward missions are often used to help complete the priority missions. The missions handily make this a game not just about accounting, but about putting your capital to good use.] ... Whew. Okay. If it wasn't clear by now, Wasteland is complex. This requires the rulebook next to you during play, as invariably you will run across something strange. For example, some missions say "deliver food to X outpost", when X has a supply tile rather than a demand tile. Turns out, you need to take an outpost action, not the deliver action. With that PSA, I did not find the complexity a deal-breaker. My wife is not the best with rules, but she hung with it and thoroughly enjoyed herself. When confusion did arise, it was quickly resolved and in a way that didn't hurt her strategy. I would define the rules as "nuanced," rather than "daunting." Lastly, the theme. Mad Max foundation meets Zombieland silliness fused with some of the best coloring in board games. Everything is off the wall: the art, the flavor text, the minis (oh yeah, each character gets a unique, custom mini to represent their rig). Wasteland just oozes theme. I didn't find myself laughing as much as being oddly but pleasantly disturbed, which is exactly what you want from a game where nuclear apocalypse is a thing. Oh, and there Game Trayz to keep the plethora of parts sorted and stored properly. Stellar job with the components! At $60, Wasteland is a great buy for adventure and trading game enthusiasts and amateurs alike. It's not for the faint of heart given the rule nuances, but its core is simple enough that it is not insurmountable. I'd recommend this for most game groups and couples that like medium-weight two player games and want something a little heavier on occasion. P.S. Wasteland just screams "house rule me!" I already have a draft ruleset to transform this into a co-op, and one to randomize the raider truck movement to increase the environment difficulty level. If you like modding games, take a look at this one... Weiterlesen
