AuZtralia

AuZtralia is a board game for 1–4 players. It plays in 30–120 minutes and is meant for ages 13 and up. Ludoya players call it best with 3. It is rated 6.1 out of 10 by 35 Ludoya reviewers. The cheapest copy in stock is $51.94 (United States).

Set in an alternate 1930s Australia after a devastating global war, players explore and settle the outback while strange ancient entities begin to stir. Players build infrastructure—ports and railways—develop mines and farms, recruit personalities with special skills, and raise military forces. Actions consume a shared time resource, and at a predetermined moment the surviving Old Ones awaken and begin to move and reveal their influence as an automated antagonist. Gameplay mixes exploration, resource management and tactical combat, with semi-cooperative scoring by default and an optional fully cooperative variant for group play.

Players: 1–4 best 3
Playing time: 30–120 min
Age: 13+
Complexity: 2.9 / 5

6.1 on Ludoya from $51.94EconomicFantasyNetwork and Route BuildingHexagon GridAction Retrieval

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About the game

Design: Martin Wallace
Art: James Colmer
Publisher: SchilMil Games, Ltd.

Expansions

See them in Ludoya

AuZtralia: TaZmania2022

AuZtralia: Revenge of the Old Ones2022

AuZtralia Big Z Box2022

AuZtralia: Promo Packet 12022

Where to buy it

Shop prices and second-hand copies, checked every day.

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On Ludoya's tables

Full stats in Ludoya

162
Plays logged: 189
Players: 1h 41m
Average play: 53
In collections: 12
On wishlists

6.1/10

from 35 Ludoya reviews

Evan4.6
This is another really cool Wallace game that has some great ideas, but ultimately misses it's mark in terms of the endgame. Essentially, the game is run on a time-track, where you have a board of different actions you can take, each costing a different amount of time points. The next player to take an action is the player who spent the least time so far. Generally you are building a little rail network, and placing farm tiles which are worth points at the end of the game. To do this, you have to collect resources from a depleting supply on the board. At the midpoint of the game, a new player enters in the form of an AI monster player. The monster marker starts to reveal and control monster tiles, which come and try to eat your farms away, so they score for the game instead of the constructing player. You can prevent this by picking fights with the tokens before they activate, and killing the monster tiles produces some number of points. Generally, I love the balance of needing to farm vs the need to build up your military. The monsters also rest in numbered spaces so you can see what their order of activation will be and plan accordingly. The combat system is a little wonky. You flip cards that have a little chart of which types of units deal damage with each flip. In each battle you have a little budget of sanity tokens, where if you run out you lose the fight. This serves to put a bit of a hard limit on the push your luck element of the game. This brings me to the disappointing element of the game. If a player is eliminated by either a monster devouring their home base, or by this sanity token metric, the game just ends, and then most points at that moment wins. This leads to some anti-climatic abrupt ends, particularly when you've time-budgeted out your next few actions. ★ 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
Balleflass6.5
Swingy. Low interaction. Cool theme and nice components (KS edition). I was mostly disappointed by that you mostly get resources by taking them from the map and that your buildings only get you 1 gold on completion. The combat is ok, but swingy and gets samey in the long run as bad draws will ruin your economy and VP scoring.
Mestremuten6.0
Rating: 3/5 Production value: 3/4 Is the game in my collection/Love to have?: 0/1