Hyperborea

Anyone try this yet? It looks...interesting. It almost seems like a combination of Mage Knight and Eclipse, although a bit simpler than both.

The game's gimmick is cube building, where you add cubs to a bag you draw from each turn. These cubes may then be used to perform certain actions or research technologies. There's a large list of technologies and many viable options.

This reminds me of Mage Knight in that you have to make due with what you've been dealt, however, there seems to be less options than in a typical Mage Knight turn (normally 3 cubes as opposed to 5+ cards in MK). You also move about the map like Mage Knight, destroying things, exploring and fighting bad guys.

It's got the Eclipse/Cyclades Euro hybrid thing where there's conflict but you can definitely win without committing any violence. It's also very mechanical like these Euro/AT hybrid games and the mechanics don't always jive with thematic reasons.

I'm a huge hybrid fan (Eclipse, Cyclades, Kemet, Mage Knight, Sons of Anarchy are all great in my opinion) and this game recently caught my eye as I think it's something I may enjoy. Another selling point is that the listed time is only 90 minutes, which is damn good for a Civ game.

Anyone seen/heard anything about this? Not much hype for whatever reason.

Asmodee is sending me one...looks interesting.

I saw this and read about its "cube building" engine. I thought that would scare most of the people around here off, which is almost a guarantee that I'll like it.

Pointing at Josh with mouth open, high pitched scream emanating from mouth aka The Donald Sutherland Stance.

Josh Look wrote: I saw this and read about its "cube building" engine. I thought that would scare most of the people around here off, which is almost a guarantee that I'll like it.

Well, cubes get grief when they replace miniatures as units on a board. They don't do that here as they merely represent actions. They replace cards and it looks like the game takes advantage of the cube thing by offering different combos based on color, which sounds intriguing. The game actually has around 80 miniatures I believe.

This is definitely more of a Cyclades than an Caylus when it comes to its cube-pushing Euro factor.

The cube building mechanism sounds pretty similar to Yggdrasil, which I found to be a lackluster imitation of Shadows Over Camelot (which I find to be just an okay game). In Yggdrasil, you can try to recruit some Vikings to help you in combat, by drawing from bags with varying populations of Vikings and giants. A Viking gives a one-shot +1 to your combat roll, while a giant is just discarded as a wasted draw.

The problem is that this mechanic is so central to the game that it subtracts from the theme. Instead of feeling like you are playing a Norse god fighting in the apocalyptic battle of Ragnorak, you instead have endless tedious discussions about the bags. Should we clean the blue bag? Should I draw from the black bag? Oh no, the bad guys just put more giants in the green bag. Bag, bag, bag. Should have called the game Bagnorak, the Final Battle of Bags and More Goddamn Bags. Bag, er I mean bah.

The game itself looks interesting. I don't have a ton of faith based on the designer (who's only other accomplished design is Kingsburg). The hype surrounding this at Gen Con got pretty big.

To me this feels similar to Eclipse in that it is trying to be a game that takes on the feeling of a well known AT style game...except you know in less time. There will probably be backlash from the AT crowd...I eagerly await the first negative review titled, 'HyperBOREa'.

I'll probably take the wait and see on this. Luckily a few people in my group have a boner for it, so I'll prob get to try before I buy. I will say that the production values look pretty damn high.

Yes, that's why rolling a die or flipping a card captures so much more of those kinds of themes.

Egg Shen wrote: To me this feels similar to Eclipse in that it is trying to be a game that takes on the feeling of a well known AT style game...except you know in less time. There will probably be backlash from the AT crowd...I eagerly await the first negative review titled, 'HyperBOREa'.

thurot.com/2014/09/17/hyperborea/
Close enough.

Michael Barnes wrote: Yes, that's why rolling a die or flipping a card captures so much more of those kinds of themes.

No, I think that it's the builder part of the mechanic that detracts from theme/setting. Whether you are stocking a bag of cubes or tokens, building a deck, or supervising a dice pool, you are spending too much of your attention on managing the mechanical aspect of the game and not enough on experiencing the theme/setting. I mean, I love Arkham Horror, but I admit that the hassles of the Mythos phase can sometimes drag down the experience.