If I am not mistaken, this game came out more or less around the same time as Pipeline. As they are both (rather) heavy economic games that reward efficiency, I always end up comparing these. For me, Barrage came out a winner. What is your preference, Joel? Which one would you rather play? The punishing limitations with regards to the tech tree in Pipeline was distinguishing.
I like Pipeline better than this, partly because I'm very unsure of the balance between the nations and the different XO's. And I've won several games of Pipeline without ever taking an upgrade, so I don't really care about getting those blocked off very often. Barrage is excellent though, my third favorite game of last year (with City of the Big Shoulders in the #2 spot).
RedEyedGhost , an extra incentive for me to bring pipeline to the table again. Last time i had an easy win due to heavily investing in upgrades. Next time i'll try a different route. I do agree on City of the Big Shoulders. Also in my top three. My number one, and biggest surprise, was Circadians. An amazing dice placement game. :)
@@jellevancamp7190 I'm a big fan of Vital Lacerda's games, and Pipeline reminds of a slightly less heavy version of those (if I had been able to play On Mars last year it probably would have cracked my top 3). I usually go pretty hard after the valuations, and the Contract one seems to keep coming up in my games, so I'm a big fan of taking contracts for the "free" action of selling to them. I haven't had either the Order or Upgrade valuations come out randomly. Might have to seed those into my next game to give them a try. CotBS would have easily been my #1 game, but there's just a few too many small things that have a dramatic affect - specifically a high appeal company being able to buy all but one of the resources from each of the three supply chain spots and absolutely cripple a company lower down the appeal track (that has slowly become the meta of my group). I definitely won't be playing without the drafting variant for the buildings in the future as well - I've seen a couple of games won solely by lucky draws there. I passed on backing Circadian's because I found the art too off-putting. I'll keep on eye out for a demo copy at my FLGS (they have most of the other Garphill/Renegade games).
@@redeyedghost1406 Late reply, but imo Circadians doesn't really have a lot going for it that differentiates it from other euro-games. As euro-veterans, we played it once, it was nice, no major criticism, but it also didn't really make us want to play it again. I'd rather invest in one of the more unique games in the genre imo (unless you're looking specifically for the small box/neat footprint).
Great review. We also thought that some of the company abilities were pretty strong. But one thing that we played wrong in our first (and only) play was that the special abilities on the company boards are only available after the player has built their third Powerhouse. The rulebook is not super clear about this restriction (it might only be in an appendix) but I think that it'll make the game go over much better next time.
Awesome. Hope you enjoy it. I’ve not tried it yet. It still seems like a bridge too far for my feeble mind. We’ve played it another 3 times I think since this review over Tabletop Simulator and it’s hard enough on there :)
Completeley agree on that front, I've played online a couple of times, but especially on the more brain-burny games I noticed I got massive headaches, so I'm sticking to offline 2-player-games as lockdown allows. :)
