Circadians: Chaos Order

I thought First Light was merely an okay dice-drafting game, so I approached Chaos Order with restrained expectations. But this entry attempts something far riskier: an asymmetric 3X without exploration, with area control and enough weight that the easy comparison to Scythe almost makes itself—except the gameplay here has much more bite. And, to the considerable detriment of every attempt I have made to quit Kickstarter, this is one of those rare cases where the experiment works almost everywhere.

At its core, the game rests on a fresh and very clever action-costing mechanism. I do not treat my options as a simple list of available moves: their cost forces me to judge when it is worth pushing, when to hold back, and where I want to invest my effort. That gives pace to a game with considerable depth without making it sluggish.

Around that, the asymmetric factions play differently without any of them feeling broken, while the area control creates frequent and meaningful clashes. There is plenty of fighting, as there should be, but I did not see the familiar problem where an early defeat turns into an uncontrollable snowball or leaves someone out of the game from the start. The interaction is harsh, yet it remains a game for everyone until the end.

It is not a simple game, and with four or five players it takes its time. The artwork is not its strongest point either, though I had no issue at all with the production quality. Those are small complaints beside the tense thrills it delivers: after several plays, I consider it an excellent addition for a group that wants to throw a proper punch or two across the table now and then.