Atlantis Rising

Can you endure the wrath of the gods?

Having angered the gods by turning to science it is up to you and up to six other Atlantean councilors to cooperatively construct the ten component device to save your people from the rising waters. Constructed from a modular board, Atlantis looks like a star fish with six legs. Each of these peninsulas provide a different resource required to build your escape.

Those furthest from the center have a chance to bring more rewards (dice rolling) but are also the first to be flooded, and since you place all your "workers" prior to the flooding phase, it is a push your luck mechanic that sees if they can even attempt to harvest, or are sent back to your pool empty-handed.

Here's one game we barely won!

At least your leaders have minor special powers and by using them together you might scrape through to a win, though it totally depends on how good you can mitigate the dice rolls to your favor and what components you need to complete. Those "D" level ones (the hardest) are nuts! Special mention to the great artwork as well. Definitely gets a thumbs up, I give it four mystic barriers out of five.

Insight: Build something easy first, just in case the saboteur shows up.

Lords of Waterdeep VS El Grande

Who is the Grandest Lord?

In the battle between these two board games the similarities are plenty: both are competitive, both require tactics, both play the same number of players, both take a similar amount of time to play, and both have some really nice components and mechanics. Their methods vary though as El Grande is pure territory control while Waterdeep uses worker placement in a bid to finish more quests than your opponents.

En garde!

For me, the deciding factor is the "long game". El Grande's action cards (base game and Grand Inquisitor and Colonies anyway) are cool, but are quite limiting as you can't really plan too far ahead - meaning at best you only need to worry about this round and maybe the next.

In Waterdeep the long game is alive and well, where you can pull of Batman Gambits and must constantly be revising your strategy as people block your plans intentionally or not. It's because of this that Lords of Waterdeep is the winner in this match up, which is sad because I tend to always lose Lords of Waterdeep (my wife is too good), while I tend to always win El Grande. ;p