The Breach

The Breach arrives on the table with the confidence of a full set rather than a mere game: cyberpunk and Tron-flavoured visuals, miniatures, and clear plastic that makes the whole thing feel like a lit-up network without asking a tired adult to pick up a paintbrush.

At heart, it is a tableau builder. You assemble your own engine in order to breach the central database, and the underlying mechanisms are not especially forbidding. They are wrapped in enough theme, however, that an action feels like a move through a hostile system rather than another card being placed in a row.

The pressure comes from countermeasures appearing to fry your plans while everyone pursues their own route into the database. It is not a clean little puzzle; it has that familiar, slightly over-equipped CMON-scale feel, with a straightforward core surrounded by considerably more apparatus than the core strictly requires.

And there is a great deal of apparatus. The all-in material brings extra Breachers, Avatars, rooms, enemies, cooperative scenarios and a campaign: enough content that most collections will never see all of it. A five-game campaign is unlikely to be finished by many tables, but the abundance is not just storage-box excess; it gives you reasons to return, change the scenario, and try a different line of attack.

**Updated session**

Later plays with different scenarios, extra material and a campaign attempt improved my opinion of it. There are small irritations in the rules and errata, but they do not spoil the picture; the base game now seems rather meh on its own, while the full The Breach is a very fair, quietly excellent choice for anyone willing to spend proper time with one box.