Barrage

Barrage made a strong first impression for the right reason: it is a heavy worker-placement game in which the map is not scenery but an execution ground. You can deny someone the drop of water they need and watch their plans dry up in stages. The upgraded production asks for more money and half an hour of sorting before it asks for thought.

At its centre, the game has players placing workers to make use of water and build their output on a shared map. Water is not a private concern: every move changes another player's options, and the best move is often the one that leaves someone else staring at the board with no useful way out.

The asymmetry supplies different directions and, in theory, depth. In practice it can produce very strong combinations, while the worker-placement spaces do not scale with player count. The pressure therefore does not always feel like a hard but fair contest; sometimes it feels as though the game decided early on who would be watching the others play. The expansion at least gives a player something to do after falling out of the running.

My first impression was very positive, because the cruelty on the map looked like a design virtue. On the second encounter, the same game showed its other side: a fair amount of fiddliness, questionable balance, and a structure that does not make losing enjoyable, even when the loss is entirely my own doing.

Updated session

With the expansion, the game was more forgiving to anyone left behind early, but it did not solve the central problem. My initial opinion has dropped markedly: Barrage remains impressively hostile, but its broken combinations and non-scaling spaces make it a tolerable investment rather than the heavy euro I want to return to willingly.