Stonemaier Games Euphoria Build a Better Dystopia Board Game

Product Information

On your mention of Skat that is similar to the game 500 (pretty common in New Zealand and Australia and the Northern US and Canada from what I hear - well, at least in the 70s & 80s) where there are... If you’re looking for an interactive worker placement game with innovative gameplay elements, Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia is a great choice. Versions & Expansions Leaders of Euphoria: Choose a Better Oppressor

Euphoria doesn’t stand out with its component design, neither in a good nor bad direction. It’s got that Stonemaier quality and practical approach that works nicely in a game that’s all about map awareness. How to Play Euphoria This discussion is over. A transcript of this dialogue has been sent to the proper authorities. Hail Hydra!” You also have 2 elite recruit cards at your disposal. One has pledged allegiance to you, but the other needs some convincing. You can reveal and use the reticent recruit by reaching certain milestones in the game…or by letting other players unwittingly reach those milestones for you.You may have noticed that I (Jamey) am not the designer of the expansion. That may seem a bit odd, as I designed the original game of Euphoria. Didn’t I have ideas for ways to expand it? IGNORE that previous comment. I just looked through my paper copy and realized they ARE the same. Thanks! Throughout the review, I’ve intentionally shortened the name to Euphoria. Now, I’d ask you to look up the game board artwork, then come to the review. A Dystopian Utopia There are enough spaces on the board for two players, even with a full complement of workers, to place them without really interfering with each other. There were very few times that either player felt compelled to risk raising knowledge by placing their worker alongside another in a specific resource. They could always go after a different resource given that so many were in such demand. When more players are involved, real estate becomes a much more prevalent issue and player strategies will have to evolve to handle the risks that come with placing workers alongside others.

One-Time Use: These spaces belong to the construction markets. Each one can hold a single die and requires a resource to be payed first. These workers stay on their space until recalled (usually a bad idea) or until the market is constructed. We discussed this issue in great detail and approached it in different ways with various versions of the expansion. In the end, we decided that we wanted to retain the feel of the original game, as one of the things that make the Icarites fun is that they’re a little different than the other 3 factions.

Ignorance Is Bliss Expansion

Retrieve any/all workers. Workers are actually 6-sided dice that get rolled to see what their current knowledge level is. If you ever have doubles, they will work in pairs. When I first opened the box, I was pleased with the quality and number of bits that you get with the game. The art is very easy on the eye and the theme is one that interested me. I was a little put off by the board and how daunting it looked but there are plenty of videos online that got me through the setup and a few turns. To place a worker, a player places one of their 6-sided dice (workers) onto any available space on the board. There are 3 types of spaces:

The dystopian setting and “take that” oppression of the other players are a thematic breath of “fresh” (probably recycled, possibly laced with emotion suppressing drugs) air. Sure, the base resources are water, energy, bliss, and food and they could easily be grain or sheep. But I have swallowed the theme and, in the process, taken the red pill. We also added a double-sided reference card to be placed on the board: One side for ongoing rule reminders and the other for setup reminders. If a player has one worker with high value in reserve and uses another to recruit, the recruiting worker is a prime target for bumping off, as you’ll force them to have at least three workers in their reserve. Pros & Cons Pros:

Euphoria: Ignorance Is Bliss

There’s one interaction that we’re leaving out, though, and that’s filling up territories, so that others can’t place authority tokens there. Getting the Automas to adapt to territories being filled up required extra rules in the subsystem that’s by far the most complex and we felt that this interaction isn’t important enough to make up for that. So, in addition to having the Euphoria Automa affect human players we wanted human players to be able to affect the Automas using the same game subsystems as against other humans. This means that:

You can also visit the worker activation tank, where you can recruit an additional worker and increase morale or reduce knowledge, depending on the resource used. Additional Mechanics While Euphoria has an interesting theme, it doesn’t resonate in gameplay. It’s a nice placeholder and it can give you some sense of what you’re doing, beyond just gathering resources and victory points. Aside from that, it doesn’t really tie in with the gameplay all that much. Trade-off decisions like that are core to our work on Automas, because we want them to mimic all interactions perfectly, but we also want Automas that don’t crush the fun under the workload of handling them and we want a low barrier to entry that allows most players to enjoy them.Having a bit of lighter fun with people at the local club playing Forgotten Waters. The only disappointment is that because there's around 20 people playing different games in a pub's function room...