Gaia Project - Playthrough & Review 

The great debate, Gaia Project or Terra Mystica... which do you prefer?

I was having such a horrible day, but this upload just made my day exponentially better. You're my favorite channel. Love your videos.

@1:23:01 when Monique took the advanced tech tile she should have covered a basic tech tile she owns. Good job guys, great gameplay!

What a fantastic play through - love the style of your play with commentary on thought process. The visual framing is great and the video length is ace - awesome stuff!

Great review! You really did a thorough analysis of the game. God job and a very pleasant way how you talk about everything.

Such awesome explanations, I love the way you setup the camera to capture the whole game.

I am so happy to have your videos. I am new to board games and there are so many games that I feel a bit lost. It helps a lot to watch specifically your videos because I can relate very well to the way you think about games. Also it feels very honest what you say ahout games. Thank you for your nice videos! Greetings from Germany (Btw I just ordered the game after watching this video)

Happy to see an upload from one of my favorite board game channels playing one of my favorite games. Also, Naveen's shirt is super cool!

This is BY FAR the best Gaia Project gameplay video on RU-vid! Could you please do another one with different factions?

Another great video! You guys are definetely my go to for learning and reviewing games now!

For any game I buy this is the go to channel. The best and thank you for such great produced videos

Great video on my favorite game and the game that got me into heavy games! Thanks guys!

This was a really fun video, you did a great job! I have been wanting to play this for ages but it's hard to get to the table (particularly of late!) so this was a good proxy playthrough. I would really like to play it even more after watching this!

I just love watching your videos. It’s so refreshing to watch euro games being played. There are so few out there and you guys do such a great job with them.

GG, guys! Thank you for the video. It was both educational *and* fun to watch! Keep it up.

We haven’t played terra mystica or Gaia project yet but this has me hyped to try this one for sure. Seems like an awesome game and the 2 player experience seemed rad. Great play y’all!

I just bought this last week! Perfect timing.

Hi Monique and Naveen! I just picked up Gaia Project last week and played it through once. I totally agree! Looks like a keeper for sure! Keep the videos coming!

This is a great playthrough! Could you please do another one - with different factions?

Bout time you playing this AMAZING game. Love your vids! Still waiting anachrony.

Awesome playthrough and review Monique and Naveen! Thanks for taking the time to film this one :-) If you had to choose between On Mars and this one, which one would be your favourite? Love to hear your thoughts! Take care both of you!

Great playthrough guys. What a close game.

Glad y’all are playing my favorite game 😍

Awesome - I literally just built the insert for this game last night and am ready to play my first game.

Thank you for video, I have to say you and Edward from Heavy cardboard are the best board game teachers I have found on ytb.

1:22:50 when you take an advanced tech tile, you state that you go up the track you took it from but you can actually pick any track you want (even though you picked the best choice at the time anyways. You also forgot your 5 bonus points for gaining a federation token when you went up that track and should have won the game by 3 points.

I don’t speak to much english but with you two i understand the game

Monique won! When she took the federation tile from the top of the tech track, she forgot to score the round bonus for forming a federation.

I have to teach this game this weekend to a few friends (who've never played TM) and will be copying the overall structure of your teach. Thanks and gj!

Holy s*! The scoring was super tense! Amazing! This was super fun. PS: I've been playing several rules wrong lol.

Oh wow! Just when the game released on Steam. Great timing!!!!

Wow I'm impressed!! I've watched a couple of your videos and it's always Monique that wins, this totally caught me off guard!!! Another great video guys! We played this a couple of months ago and your video made me want to play it again.

I just re-watched this video, one year later. Great playthrough.

TM is perfect for 4-5 Players. Gaia is perfect for 2 Player. 🍻 From Germany

I played this at one of the first Cons I went to. I was kind of nervous going to my first con by myself. I walked up to the table and they asked right away if I wanted to play, warning me That it is a heavy game. I said I play terra Mystica. The people in our hobby are so nice. They welcomed me to the table and I had a great time.

What a game! I love it when it's a tight race!

Thanks for the teach! Well done.

Excellent playthrough!!!!!

Holy crap this looks tough! But I still want to play it! Lol great tutorial!

Well I read the description of this game and thought it sounded awesome. Having watched your playthrough I realise its not a game for me! Thanks for video :)

Oh yea, I completely forgot about Gaia Project! I used to play rather frequently on the BGG Play-by-Forum forum with the extensively-scripted Google Sheets, but then I fell off at some point (and rather behind on all of my other asynchronous games on BGA and Snellman) and haven't returned until maybe the near future. This is reminding me to maybe check back in with the PBF community since I generally like Gaia Project more than Terra Mystica due to the Research tracks, tech tiles, and modular map setup, plus a generally better balance among all of the factions compared to TM. Great video!

Thanks for the playtrough! I am trying to decide on a heavy euro to splurge on, but since the nature of the gameplay I really struggle to get a feel if *I* will enjoy playing the theme, especially solo. Now this has nothing to do with your playthroughs, which are amazing and clear, and I love that you do the teach in the beginning, but it's like watching someone do calculations in Excel. However, I LOVE Excel when I use it myself, so... I know I will love a euro, I just have to decide which one to get :D

Whoa..! First time to see you guys play a big Euro!!

Great video, helped me a lot. Thank you :)

You missed out explaining the right half of the tech board, but it's understandable with so much to cover and explain with such a monster teach! You guys are my go to for rules explanations (and to watch the game to see if I'd enjoy it), Monique particularly is incredible at explaining games clearly!

Great Great Great playthrough!

Probably the best teach of this game I've seen yet, though would prefer you keep the clingon subtitles, as mistakes were made!

Hi, it was a great pleasure do look your gameplay, although you both made so many bad decisions... ;-) But nevertheless, you explained the game really good, and it was a very nice play. Because I was so convinced, that I could do better, I played yesterday the same game, with the same fractions, tech tiles, round booster, and round and end goals as you played, so it was only the tactics to make the difference. In the first turn, I choose the round booster with one terraform-cycle extra and 2 credits for Xenos and colonised the orange planet near the northern red starting planet, using the round booster and 1 QIC for covering the distance. And then, I build for both fractions very fast their governmental center. In the rest of the game, Hadsch Halla learned the technology of terraforming and navigation to level 5, and Xenos the technology of KI and Gaia-Technoloy. This was very different to your gameplay. At the end of the game, both fractions had 13 buildings and 10 satellites, so they both get 30 victory points for the end goals, and for technology, Hadsch Halla get 28 VP and Xenos 24 VP. But before, Xenos could made so much VP for tech tiles and alliance tiles, QIC Actions and the level 5 gaia-forming technology, that they won very comfortably with 175 VP to 157 VP. So I will agree, the charge of this expert game is to optimize your turns and made the best of each situation. A very great game and for me the much better game then Terra Mystica!

Your videos are great! (I am from Mexico City 🙋‍♂️)

Gaia is one of my few 10/10 games on BGG. I got rid of Terra Mystica after owning Gaia for a month. Such an amazing game. I'd play it anyplace and at any time. Great review!

Adding this game to my list of must owns. I always thought it would be too heavy for me to teach to my gaming partner but after watching this i think we could do it. Would love to see you guys teach/play/review Pulsar 2849.

I was so ready to turn on the klingon subtitles

i made a bet with my wife over how fast you two could explain the rules. Even with the minor edits, 20-25 mins seems very speedy to me.

For me this is probably the pinnacle of Euro game design so far. I've never sat down to play this and not gotten entirely engaged in the puzzle it presents.

can't wait to finish watching this! out of curiosity, any reason why klingon subtitles are no longer being used?

I have played Terra Mystica and not Gaia Project. After seeing this, I think I’d probably prefer Gaia Project! I LOVE the functionality of the tech tracks- they just seem so much better than the cult tracks haha. I want to try this one the next time we go to a con!

I love this game, but am so terrible at it, lol. Thanks for the play through!

I would suggest adding rules corrections in post/editing overlay if possible. Anyone watching on their TV apps (e.g. webOS TVs, ROKU) can't view the description.

Can you evaluate Terra Mystica too? I really liked that both analyze the games in an almost... math way! Very, very nice!

I like how the two of you can be nice yet competitive at the same time. I am super competitive which makes the nice difficult for me. Regardless of how nice I talk to people, I am cut-throat in the game. This can lead to bad feelings. Luckily, my friends that I play with are the same.

really great playthrough. I love terra mystica but didn't want to buy all the expansion so I got gaia project.

I'm pretty sure I'm subscribed to Naveen's Glossary of Re-named Terms. I always make up names for the mechanics in ALL games.

Big fan of your channel. Thank you for all the great content. During the game, I think you may have scored the Round Bonuses incorrectly. For example, I think you gave VPs for every mine you had on the board when you were supposed to only get VPs for the mines that had been placed that round. Since your game was only decided by 2 points, scoring the rounds incorrectly, easily could have swung the game. If I'm wrong, I apologize.

I watched another tutorial, played a game, was totally lost (both mentally and point wise) and now when I watch this video, a lot of things make sense.

Thematic Shirts, you're funny. I like it.

What an amazing explanation and playthrough! Monique should have won though!! As someone else mentioned, at @1:23:20 Monique missed a 5 point round bonus for gaining a federation token (no matter how you gained it).

Great review as always. I must admit, I chuckled a little bit when you said that you preferred Terra Mystica's theme to Gaia Project's theme, for the reason that "space is overdone". Terra Mystica is medieval fantasy, no? Isn't that, like, the MOST overdone theme in board gaming? :) With that said, I haven't played either but I actually prefer the look of Terra Mystica as well.

Great video! Question : there are differences between the Capstone and the Z-Man edition?

Definitely a top tier game for the hobby

Every gaming group comes up with their own terminology. For some reason, our group calls terraforming and power "dig" and "spins" respectively. Although, the manual also calls it dig at one point.

Just bought the digital version of this game.........with it's awful broken tutorial, hadn't got a clue how to play or what was going on, found your tutorial/playthrough.........didn't win but at least I can now actually play it, keep up the good work (you're certainly my top goto for tutorials/playthroughs now!)

1:23:17 not only 8 but also 5 more for the bonus round (page 24)

Not that it matters but the upgraded tech is suppose to cover a regular tech which yellow could do.

Always wanted to learn this game due to the very high reviews, but am intimidated by it. I bought Dune Imperium and that seems like a more chill version on this.

I was just wonderin whether to get the steam version, good timing with the steam release :P

For me this is just one of the best games ever made.... The repeatability is just insane.

Effortless high five to end a great game

Xenos starts with three mines as a Faction Appendix

Hate to nit pick but yellow forgot to charge when red build on the Gaia and red must charge his largest building if he choses to when yellow upgraded.

Have only played this a couple of times, but really enjoy the game. Looks like you have the foldedspace insert. How do you like it? If there's anything to help the setup time on this big game, I'm all for it. Been eyeing that insert

Gaia Project! Nice nice. But wait, this isn’t by Uwe at all. ;)

The one tip I've heard that I always try to factor in is: NEVER pay 3 for terraforming steps. Use the steps on the power actions, or use round boosters, but don't pay 2c1o + anything unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. Figure out how to get range, get onto some Gaia or home planets first round, but don't pay Ore, ever. Also, getting the Research Labs out first round can be really, really helpful, especially for the income tech tiles -- their value just compounds over time, so the later you take them, the less they're worth.

This game is soooo good

Rules question: in the last round when Monique took the federation tile from the research board, should she have scored 5 points for round scoring or did that not count?

Gaia Project is on my shelf of shame. Looks like the game just dropped on Steam, so I think I might learn it there first before I try to teach my game group :)

Timestamp 42:06 is incorrect in the description

My first (and only game) I was so out of the game by halfway it just sat for another hour doing near literally nothing…should try again

At 12:50 the explanation on how to recharge power is wrong, the power you can recharge depends on the player that is leeching power, in that case when an opponent constructs something and you have a mine in range since that mine has only 1 power the most power you can recharge is 1 spending 0 VP points.

love Monique shirt (is the spelling of the name is correct? sorry if not) I realized it after the first round and it made me smile :D

29:09 covering an orange space, isn't it the 7th action? I mean don't you have to build at the next round or its not considered as an action ? @BeforeYouPlay

THAT WAS SO CLOSE

I have played, and owned, both. Terra Mystica was my introduction to heavy games and is still one of my all-time favorites. For me, it's the meanest game without direct player conflict, and I love the tension that creates. I agree with a lot of what was said at the end of the video. I greatly prefer the look of Terra Mystica, but the tech track is so much more interesting than the cult track as a mechanic. While I prefer Terra Mystica overall, I enjoy Gaia Project in the solo and 2 player counts, and Terra Mystica for me is pretty much a 3-4 player game only. For that reason, I own Gaia Project because it still gives that same feel/experience of Terra Mystica, but it doesn't end up stuck on my shelf.

Gaja obviously)

gaia project vs on mars vs kanban ev??? i wanna buy one but not sure which one is better

Those boxes look like Folded Space Insert for your pieces, is that correct?

Monique, is your shirt available online anywhere? I’d love to buy it for my wife.

#TeamNaveen

How... did you get this down to 1.25hrs?!? That's insane...my wife and I take at least 2.5-3hrs...that's some impressive editing. Also, love love this game. Favorite ever at this point. Regarding heaviness, it's in the strategy. It took me...ten? Games of Terra Mystica to break 100 points, but now I rarely score below 140. And better players than me regularly score 160+... there's a lot of depth there.

Hi...I Klingon. No more understand favorite videos cause no subtitles. So sad I cry :(

I definitely prefer Terra Mystica. It's a tighter design with better board play (I'm not really a fan of track games). That being said, it's not worth playing at 2.