Xia: Legends of a Drift System

BaBalleflassstar5.0

Good production quality. Messy rulebook. Dice rolling for everything which makes it very swingy and a tad boring.

MeMestremutenstar6.0

Rating: 3/5 Production value: 3/4 Is the game in my collection/Love to have?: 0/1

EvEvanstar0.9

This is a pickup and deliver game in a similar vein to Merchant of Venus, but is significantly more random. Most of what you try to do in this game is based on die rolls. Roll low on your D20, and the consequences could ruin your next few turns. Roll high, and you get some benefit. The components look good, but I'm not certain the ship abilities are balanced with each other. I would like this game a lot more if rather than upgrading a ship part from rolling a D6 to a D12, instead you upgraded a D6 numbered 1-6 to a D6 numbered 4-9 or something of that nature, because it's frustrating to fail your rolls after paying for upgrades. Additionally, combat needs some work. In general, you are only really vulnerable to being attacked by other players when you are already in trouble. Then, for destroying you players get both points, and you drop your cargo for them to snatch up. This seems odd since you retain everything else. If you upgraded your ship, you also lose a turn. So, in effect, you can spend several turns gathering cargo, fail your movement rolls, run out of energy, be destroyed by another player easily, they get both your cargo (to turn in for money and points), and they get a free point. I can't emphasize enough how much randomness plays into this game. ★ 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