Forged in Steel

EvEvanstar4,6

This is a really exciting city building game that feels like a cross between the card play of Twilight Struggle and the tactical logistics of Urban Sprawl. Essentially, each player gets a hand of cards. They set some of those aside for future rounds, keep some and discard 1. Then they draft 1 more card. Each player also gets to chose 1 or more jobs, which gives them special powers for the round. Then, players simultaneously select a card to play, and reveal from lowest number of printed action points to highest number. The city is represented by this interesting grid and the structures are these cool wooden buildings. The game also allows you to punch the leader by stealing or removing buildings, but doing so can result in risk for you, as if players are too aggressive with their actions too often, it sets off a disaster event that targets the player who was the most aggressive. That being said, there is no shortage of take-that actions in this game. This game definitely subscribes to the game design philosophy of dialing up the power of cards to 10, and letting the fact that everything is insane be the balancing factor, which I think is a wild ride but I can see how it might be a tough curve. It's possible for a player to luck into some insane combos, and then it's up to other players to use the board to punch them enough to balance things out. Whether this is a strength or weakness of the game is taster's choice. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting :Nostar: Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment