Empires of the Void II

EvEvanstar4,6

In this game players fly around space trying to grab up whatever points they can. There's a lot of variety in what you get asked to accomplish in the deck of secret objective cards and action cards. Some will ask you to complete a pickup and deliver quest, others will ask you to attack another player when they are in specific places, others will demand you go to a specific planet and pay a cost. The game is fueled by a central action board at the top of the map. Each round the starting player moves the action pillar and chooses the action for everyone to resolve. If a player doesn't want to resolve it, they can pay to do whatever action they like, or reset and collect their income. It's important to keep an eye on other players and be in-sync enough with them in terms of being able to resolve actions so that you can benefit from their choices, otherwise you'll fall far behind. Downtime is quite high with 4 players, and with 5 players it feels like you don't get to do much before the game ends, despite the long playtime. The iconography is also not ideal. The event cards are marked as such by them not having a printed power number as opposed to some text that says "EVENT" which causes new players some trouble when they draw one and don't realize it. Additionally, the cards at times refer to components by thematic name rather than by picture. The rulebook is serviceable but feels poorly organized when I need to go back and reference something. The game could also really use faction specific player aids that explain how some of their techs work. The way the game timer works, and the fact that there's no creation of borders in this game, leads to a bit of a feeling like you can't prepare for or react to other player's moves. Particularly with the game clock running out. There's a lot to like here, but it feels like you only get a tiny sliver of the potential for gameplay in a given session, leaving me feeling unsatisfied. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ☆ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment