Hyperborea?

Anyone still playing this one? Was thinking about picking it up because most of the early reviews seemed really positive. Is it still holding up after repeat play?

I hope so.

I did just buy it on the strength of recommendations here. In transit as I type.

I've only played it with two, which isn't optimal, but it was enough that we both wanted more. Very eager to try with 4.

Outstanding game. If you like DoaM hybrids (Cyclades, Kemet, etc.) this will be a total victory.

If you do the search, there was another thread about the game a month or two ago, some people had good comments.

I have several plays of this under my belt with 3-5 players. I think 3-4 is the sweet spot . 5 is too slow and you get an asynchronous map.

Before you dive in though you should be cautioned that the game was FAQed over by the designers. You can read the ensuing shit storm that followed on TOS. Basically, some nerd figured out how to break the game by getting repeated bag resets on his turn or..... An endless turn. So they FAQed that instead of being able to leave cubes out on your board when you reset, you must clear all cubes and drop them in bag. That ruling really makes a significant difference in where you assign your cubes and how you are going to efficiently cycle through the bag.

I don't follow the FAQ. I think it lessens the game. I have simply house ruled that you can only reset once on your turn.

It is a great game though, when I brought it up to Nocal to play with my old gaming buddies it was 3 turns in they were fighting over who would buy a copy of it to play when I left town.

Wow, didn't know that, thanks for that info...

I never bothered to read how it is, exactly, that you can get an endless turn. I suspect it is through use of Diplomats technology (that allows you to pull 3 cubes mid turn) combo-ed with something else. All in all, a fairly rare game state, one would imagine.

Seems like people are pissed they didn't catch it in play testing before it was released. Strike one. Then they ripped a significant chunk of meat out of the game in an over-reaction to fix it. Strike two.

If you clear all cubes on reset it likely slows the game down. Makes resets less frequent, makes you use all the cubes without being able to focus on a direction. My fix of one reset per turn really works well and doesn't mess with the original intent as much as their correction does.

Don't let this be a deal breaker for you unless you are super-anal about your rules!

It's pretty simple and it totally breaks the game. You just place undesirable cubes out and partially complete actions you don't want. It lets you thin your bag. Everytime your bag resets you can go back into Ruins/Cities. Imagine resetting every single turn (even if just once) and you can basically do 1 solid action and hoard tons of stuff from Cities/Ruins.

It's better with the FAQ, which is a pretty simple change IMO.

Great game! We've found that more than 4 players causes excessive downtime. At heart this is a deckbuilder with loads of cool features tacked on.

Re the game breaking feature - I had always assumed that skipping so many turns due to resetting would create a bigger lead for you opponents. Apparently the cities are even more powerful than I thought!

When you reset you don't skip a turn. So you can basically get your bag to just the cubes needed to do one Move/Attack action and reset on the same turn. So every turn you can move and attack and then benefit from all the cities.

Thanks for reminding me I need to get this back to the table in the near future.

I was on the fence about purchasing this game last month. I love 4x / dudes-on-a-map types games but my primary game group is more of a Euro crowd (i..e less conflict/negotiation heavy games) so this seemed like a good fit. I'm glad I waited, because Scythe (by Stonemaier games) is the game I've decided that I'm going to get to fill this void. Kickstarter starts in October.