To avoid single color strategy you can use a house rule that give 5 or 10 poimt for set collection building. In this way you are incentivated to buy all 3 color.

One mitigation variant you can try is to allow a re-roll, but it'll cost you an energy/money. Perhaps if it's a polluting roll, it costs you two. A bit of push your luck

I see a lot of similarities with Terraforming Mars, the events like Prelude and the Nations like the Companies. Thanks for the video!

Wow great review! You hit on some very good points, and I don't think you were being nit-picky. Maybe an expansion can fix that "single-color" strategy, but who knows if they'll release one anytime soon

Fantastically presented review. Kudos. For those interested, though, I think his conclusion is, um, quite different from most :). His biggest criticisms are single-color, solitaire repetitive gameplay and strategy but he doesn't recommend the game with more than 3 players? That's really odd to me! It is precisely why 4 and 5 player variants are preferred :). With more players, you interact much more and you depend on tactical flexibility much more, including non single-color engines. His concerns of down time? Also bizarre to me! What great 4 or 5 player game has less down time than this one? Equally long or longer, off top of my head: Power Grid, Le Have, Viticulture, Amun Re, et al. Each have their down times, and I actually think Energy Empire is faster. A good 5 person game can finish in 90 minutes. We just did it this weekend, with new players. Informative review, but the group think is right on this: 4 and 5 players is when this game shines, and refusing to play it with 5 is an unusual stance with his other critiques.

Great review. I really like this game - like, a lot - but I think many of your criticisms are fair. Especially around the UN - it feels like a must-play in all games so far, and on the flip side, it feels like you can only luck into synergy in achievements, so you can't build a strategy around achievements. I feel like they should be capped higher, like at 10 points, to encourage you to really go for it with achievements. Otherwise, achievements are very meh. Agree greater variability would be good too. One thing you didn't mention - maybe you don't play it this way - you can parallelize turns by doing your tableau actions while the next player takes their board placement turn. I played a 5 player game where 4 of the players were new, and it finished in under 2 hours. It's a lot like bottom of the board parallelism with Scythe. Don't wait for each player to do their tableau. The game can play wicked fast that way. Also, at higher player counts, the game really changes, because it's so rare for a board spot to completely clear up by your turn, other than dumb luck. Workers are always out there in some capacity. Definitely forces some harder decisions with how to spend energy (e.g. to make a stack) instead of just ramming it all into your tableau. I think your analysis of the mono-color strategy is valid in terms of /potential/ effectiveness, but I'm not sure that it's OP - which I think is what you're claiming by calling it a negative. If you are able to get synergy within that one color, it can be powerful, but if you don't happen to whip up that synergy quickly, you can get screwed due to the inefficiency of having to play outside of your mono color to get what you need, and can't play anything in the tableau when you play off-color. I think it'll take more plays to really get a sense of whether it's OP or not.

I’m not too phased by the dice. The mitigation is getting the “clean” dice.

That's a shame to hear. I was seriously considering this one after watching your playthrough. I'll have to think on it a bit more now.

Just played this last night. Some interesting comments there, though I don't fully agree with some of your neutrals or the one big negative. I agree the nations could have been more interesting (much like they were in both Project Manhattan 1 and 2) with a more unique ability. I also agree that the Nations track could be more exciting than it is. I thought the events offer plenty of change to warrant their inclusion in the game. And those 2-3 points over the 6 event cards do add up (that is a potential 10-12 extra points over anyone not really paying attention to that). As for your negative? I built a multicolor building strategy and I was only 4-5 points behind the person who won, who focused largely on one building type. And I had some inefficient turns that had nothing to do with the engine I put together, but areas where I definitely could have made some better choices to make up the gap (I also had 5 achievements at the end of the game, including all 3 of the building based achievements. So if I could have purchased 1-2 more buildings, I could have overtaken the leader). I'm not sure making it harder to build more of the same colored building is necessarily a good or bad idea, but I think there are plenty of options in the game as it is.

Hi Jon! I really enjoy watching your reviews and playthroughs. They are well structured, detailed and much more informative than the most other reviews I've watched on KZfaq. I only have one question about your rubrics. why do you haven't got a rubric in which you discuss the quality of the rule book? I hope that you will go on with your channel and I want to thank you for your good work. greetings from Germany

To avoid single colour strategy, you could potentially cap # of buildings of a single color and/or only allow building more of the same type if you hold the same # of another type. e.g if the rule was imposed at 3 buildings, if you have reached 3 commerce, you can only build a 4th if you have 3 of another type as well.

We love the game too and need to play it more, but single color engines do seem better. I think the game finishes pretty quick once you get running, but yeah, it gets built and run a few times. I think there is a great about being rote though, it's interesting.

bit over explained in the review but still a good review.

Here's a blast from the past... Jon, have you played the expansion: Cold War? Do you have an updated rating on this one with/without Cold War?

good stuff

I agree here. The game was fine, but other reviews made me feel like I was crazy or somehow missed the boat. I was ready to sell my original Manhattan Project with expansions, but now I'm holding on to it. Not bad,u was just underwhelmed.

I like this game a lot overall. I kind of wish the 2 achievements that didn't get picked cycled out, giving 3 total new choices to the next pick. I've mostly played 2 player so take this with a grain of salt, but I've seen games where there are 2 "bad" tiles that just sit there and clog up choices. Kind of defeats the point of having 3 choices.

This review surprises me. I can't help but wonder how many times you've played. Or if you've played with diverse groups and player counts. I wonder if you experienced a bit of group-think in your play-throughs ... I'm pretty sure I've only ever played it with 5. Maybe 4 once - and loved it every time. Maybe it's better with higher player counts. The dice are highly normalized, sure there is a slight bit of luck - but not more than most modern euros. The criticism of the event cards just doesn't make sense to me! They drive the whole game! The UN track is a race! IMO racing is always interesting... I think it's cool that there's a race mini-game in a well designed euro! "Not thinking about endgame" because someone takes the spot you want and forces you to use energy (that you might be saving for an achievement) is a pretty silly thought - isn't it?! If you're not thinking about the end game then you're not trying to win, right? Especially since this game isn't especially long and end games comes up quick - you should be thinking about it from turn one! I also agree with other commenters that a 1-color strategy is not a good idea. Best to go into two colors. The middle being pretty much essential for all players because that's were you buy more power dice ...

I thought the event peeking was pretty useful in my one play. Otherwise I agree with your points

I'm just going to throw this out and leave it. I literally never have a single colour engine as I noticed that when I do I consistently score lower.

Nice review. These types of tracks like the U.N. one are something I dislike in games. If they are are well integrated great. If they are just sitting on the side/bottom of the board such as in Scythe and this game then bleh they are annoying.

Dont really see your #1 Neg as a neg. You spend the game min/maxing and then capitalize to generate points....weird complaint

The sound seems very tinny in this video