Circadians: Chaos Order

Circadians: First Light was a decent dice-drafting game. Chaos Order, its thematic successor, chooses considerably more dangerous ground: asymmetric 3X area control without exploration, a category full of games with something to say but no reliable way of saying it. Here, thankfully, the ambition survives contact with the table.

At its centre is a fresh, very clever action-costing mechanism. The flow of play keeps asking what is worth paying for now and what can wait, while the area-control contest maintains the pressure. The interesting decision is not merely which actions are available; it is that their cost gives each choice real weight.

The factions are meaningfully asymmetric and, more importantly, none feels obviously broken. Player interaction is direct: there is plenty of fighting, but not the familiar snowball that turns one player into a spectator early on. That is the awkward balance many games in this space promise and rather few actually deliver.

It is not a light game, and four or five players will take some time. But it produces demanding, satisfying tension and has enough depth to reward repeated plays. The graphics are its one slight weakness, not the production quality. For a group that wants to hand out a properly designed slap now and then, Chaos Order is an excellent acquisition.