Anunnaki: Dawn of the Gods – Kickstarter Edition

The Kickstarter Edition is huge, awkward, and a bit carelessly put together: components that seem to have been packed before they were fully dry, plastic suffering from bent-sword syndrome, and card stock that does not inspire much confidence. The rulebook is seriously incomplete, and there is no useful guide to what the four mini-expansions are for or where their material belongs. Rulebook grade, in passing: bring a pencil.

Then you play it. This is a modified 3X game with no extermination — not even a fly dies — driven by an elegant action-selection system. Every choice becomes a small solitaire puzzle: what you need now, what you must leave for later, and how to squeeze one more useful move from the plan.

Except it is not only your puzzle. The map sees proper fighting, powered by divine abilities and the kind of presence-and-pressure that gives a dudes-on-a-map game its spark, without leaving you feeling that someone has simply tipped your evening into the bin. You will study your turn like a spreadsheet while watching for the player preparing to ruin your neighbourhood. That is where it bites.

The end-game scoring brings the earlier work together neatly, and the pick-and-mix of expansions, variants, and houses offers considerable replayability, though expecting every extra module to be as balanced as the base game would be optimistic. At least try it once; if it gets its hooks into you, you will be making room on the shelf for that wretched box.