Evacuation

After the slightly disappointing Woodcraft, Evacuation persuaded me that Vladimir is back on a strong run. The suitably odd premise of a dying planet and compulsory resettlement sits surprisingly well with a rules framework that is intricate without feeling arbitrary. Its achievement is not one isolated clever mechanism, but the way each part appears to lead naturally into the next.

You have four years to leave your collapsing world and establish yourselves on a new one, and that deadline gives the decisions their shape. Each round asks not merely what you will do, but how much of the round you intend to play. That variable pacing is the heart of the design: unlike the familiar euro in which you are expected to spend every available action, stopping early can be exactly the correct move.

Player interaction comes chiefly through that shared pressure of time and through different appetites for risk, rather than any simple aggressive gesture. The mechanisms mesh cleanly and difficult decisions keep arriving; the interesting decision is whether one more action is worth the time it costs you. This is a design that wants to be revisited, not merely endured on a first outing.

My reservation is with the finish. The designer himself seems not to have settled on one definitive best form, so there are two principal variants, points and racing, alongside several ways to configure the game. Basic and advanced actions in particular alter it enough that the choice is not merely a difficulty setting.

Our first play used basic actions and points, while other groups who tried different combinations also had a good time. That is encouraging, but for a group that cannot readily return to the same substantial game, the opportunity cost of choosing one version over another is real. Even so, Evacuation is one of the stronger games of the season, and I suspect a second play will raise it further in my estimation.