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Date Played: 8/24/2006 Reviews for Conquest of Pangea : Reviewer: The Barrister Subject: Reviews forthcoming. Review: Our Thursday night group just played this game a few hours ago, and reviews will be posted as they arrive over the next few days. Reviewer: Andrew Review: Fresh out of the cosmic oven comes Pangea; a super-continent that breaks apart as the game progresses. I must say that I was impressed with this game from when the box was opened till those last suspenseful moments. The creators of this game obviously spent some time on this game and made some great decisions about how it should look, how the game should be organized, and how the game would be played. Right off when the game was opened I suspected I would like it very much just by the way it looked, and the construction of the board and the pieces. The various land masses are quite colorful and they all have divots in them to hold the population markers, and terrain types while the world shakes and shifts (what an AMAZING idea! I wish more games did this!). I really appreciated in this game that no matter how many pieces we had on the board, or how many land masses were separated from each-other it was always easy to tell who had what where. There was no guessing and absolutely no "I swear I had three markers in that territory!!! It must have gotten knocked somewhere else...". All the pieces stack and have their own little divot that they sit in (I'll say it again...Brilliant!). Another cool thing about this game are the Power cards. I think this a great way to deal with expansion, offense, and defense aspects of Pangea. I thought this a very versatile way to give the players more options with how to conduct their turns. Will they blow everything and be super aggressive? Or will they save their cards and thwart their opponents aggression? That kind of versatility is what I like to see in a game. I like multiple things to do with any given object. It makes the game a little more unpredictable and makes sure that everything in the game is useful. There was only one thing that kind of bothered me about Pangea: it was that one person in our group of three ended up with their power base in-between the other two which made it much harder for him to expand as he was constantly being attacked from two sides. I'm not sure if this is normal for the game or not, perhaps it was just a fluke. I would assume that adding a fourth player would solve much of this, but like I said it might also just be a fluke.
All in all, a fantastic game. It has lots of elements that work well
together as well as some things that really set it apart from other
games. I'm still replaying our game in my head and trying to think of
different things I would like to try on a second playing of it. So
needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Out of the box this game is beautiful. The quad-fold board and the continent pieces are vibrantly colored pieces of art. I like the two sizes of game cards which indicate different things for the player. Comine that with the "bits," a term used by hard-core gamers to refer to the miscellaneous pieces, card and the like, and this game was thoughtfully designed. My only dislike was the wierd organic shape of the "leader" piece versus the geometric design of the species markers. The stackable plastic species markers are abstract and functional. The cards are clean and easy to read, and are still appealing to the eye. I particularly like the continent images on the bottom of the card visually indicating which continent the action stated on the card will affect. Some even have a flow diagram, if the effect passes until it finds a suitable place to "land." (pardon the pun) All in all the game looks and feels like a quality production. The bits are solid, the board is sturdy, the cards are on good stock and felt great in my hand. As for the gameplay itself, I was a bit distracted during the teaching of the game. This was no reflection on the excellent instructions given. That said, I like the random setup of terrain types, and the way we pick spots that we like on the board in order. That is much like Risk or Shogun type games. It creates a different game every time, and that appeals to me. I did not like that the person who places first inevitably gets one more placement than anyone else. But this can be fixed if you leave that "extra" space unoccupied at the start of the game. Otherwise, it could mean the difference between having an extra power card or contiguous area (three adjacent areas of dominance). While others struggle to earn these things, the first player not only gets first choice, but possibly a slight lead. For example, it took me half of the game to acquire my fourth Yellow Power Card because I could not gain dominance in two of those areas easily. I never did get the fifth one. The player who started had his card of that type from the start, and I inevitably had to spend much of my resources to take control of two areas from him and gain that card. The game is about controlling terrain types. Battles ensue for control, and there seemed to be quite a bit of fluctuation in the amount of points which a player has accumulated because there is a give and take of control in areas throughout the rounds. The fact that there are a static number of points on the board is hard for me to accept in this genre of game. It means that a player must try to desperately maintain their assets while gaining new ones. That can be draining. Better explanation in the rules would also have helped me. There were a couple of points where we had to have arbitration to determine what the event card was saying. In each of those cases the card did not take into account a special situation where those conditions were not met perfectly. We were also unsure about all of the uses for a boat as it related to migrating a species marker. I misunderstood how to do an "internal" battle within a space (maybe I should play more Tigris & Euphrates) and never used that option. I liked the continental drift which occurs based on the time deck. In our case the game dragged on at the end because of random events. It may have cost one of us the game, because the extra rounds saw shifts in control and a focus on the leader. That is the random nature of this sort of game, though. It will never be the same twice--so my impression of that part of it is rather limited. The aggressor is rewarded in this game. Hence, the name CONQUEST of Pangea... Honestly, I do have a bias against games which involve such agression toward opponents. Mostly it is because I react poorly in some cases, because I am so passionate about winning. So I would not recommend this game to anyone who "takes things personally" during gameplay. It seems like adversity can be rebounded from fairly quickly, but if a player does have a compounded run of bad luck from event cards and battle losses, it could be incredibly frustrating. Kindof like the besetting troubles in the game Advanced Civilization, but without the eight hours to recover. So, this game is a bit like a concentrated version of the epic battle games, with a more whimsical theme and colorful package. I would like to play it again, but with a better understanding of the rules this time, and a better attitude. I too, had a little bit of an emotional response to the battle-effects in early gameplay. But those who know me well will roll their eyes and wait for me to get past it. I did, but still lost.
I would give this game a thumbs-up for those people looking for an entry-level
conquest-style game and have "thick skins." It might be a perfect bridge to wargames for
some of the players of other Eurogames. And I just think it is really beautiful... if
nothing else, set it up and look at it! Pros: The game itself is simple, once you learn the rules. It's a pretty straightforward, and interesting, setup; basically allowing for a different game each time it's played, which is something I like in games. After setting up the board, it's all a matter of keeping and holding your territory, while with every turn, there's a chance the playing area will change in various possible ways - due to, of all things, continental drift. Definitely unique. Cons: Learning the rules seemed somehow more complicated than it should have been. Each section was clearly marked, but I seem to be more of a learn-as-you-go type of player, and this didn't really seem to allow for that. On top of that, after drawing a Time card later in the game, it was discovered that the effect text of the particular card drawn made little to no sense in the context of the game and our particular understanding of the rules. A search of the rules seemed to turn up nothing to help clarify the problem, either, and we had to interpret things as best we could.
Like I said above, I like this type of game, and because of that, I will be
playing this again. But I don't know that I'd recommend Conquest of Pangea
to anyone unless their group playing will have someone involved who has
played the game already at least once.
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