Civilization: A New Dawn – Terra Incognita

The fish stinks from the head: I open a 50-euro expansion and find a flimsy insert that cannot even hold its contents. A wonderful opening handshake from classic FFG: high-quality components, a good presentation, followed by the inevitable feeling that someone delivered the rest of the product on a Friday afternoon. The rules have gaps, there is plenty of clutter, and the overall package promises more than it ultimately delivers.

At its core, A New Dawn has a very specific design lock in the way it is played and expanded. Terra Incognita tries to operate within those narrow limits, adding new ideas rather than tearing out the framework that already constrains the base game. Some of those ideas are genuinely good and, for a moment, make you think there may be an interesting future here for this kind of FFG design.

The problem is that the new ideas do not decisively change how the game comes together at the table. The expansion adds things onto the existing system, but player interaction and the game’s progression remain tied to the same abstract, restricted foundation. So rather than curing the base game’s drama, it merely decorates it a little better. Congratulations: the blah now has a few nice details.

For me, the final result remains abstract, broken, and generally meh. I would not seek out another play. If your group already liked New Dawn, it will probably like Terra Incognita a lot as well. If, like mine, you were waiting for the expansion to somehow save the base game, prepare for a heavy “um... blah.” Heavy enough that, although we had time for a third game, we preferred talking about TV series while drinking nuclear negronis. Thankfully, the next day, a playtest by a group that has been working on an ambitious design for some time reminded me that things can improve — and that the community always has its spicy gossip, too. I hope their game goes further.

“Le bourreau tue toujours deux fois, la deuxième fois par le silence.”