Review
Weather Machine
On our third game, with the rules finally fresh and correctly understood, Weather Machine delivered a reasonable playtime along with everything that makes it my least favourite Lacerda game. At four players it is simply tight in a bad way, and faulty cards at this price point are shameful.
- Published
- 2022
- Designer
- Vital Lacerda
- Publisher
- Eagle-Gryphon Games, CrowD Games, Delta Vision Publishing
- Players
- 2–4
- Playing time
- 150 min
Third game of Weather Machine, this time with the reassuring certainty that we were finally playing it correctly. It lasted about 2 hours and 10 minutes, so the playtime was reasonable, despite a rough start: we tried to save time with the setup cards and discovered that almost half of them were wrong or impossible to play. A wonderful way for a game to welcome you, truly.
The game relies from the outset on choices that shape your opening, with the setup cards supposedly speeding up that process. In practice, when those cards are incorrect or non-functional, the opening is not merely awkward: your trust in the whole framework of the game is shaken before it has even properly got going.
As the game unfolds, benefits, government subsidies, and cogs connect in a way that makes the initial choices matter far too much. The opening with a government subsidy for a benefit that gives another government subsidy without a cog felt completely, indefensibly unbalanced to me. It does not guarantee victory, but it grants such an advantage that you look at the rest of the contest and wonder why the game decided to treat you so badly. At four players, moreover, all that tightness simply becomes bad.
The rest of the group agreed: for now, this is comfortably my least favourite Lacerda game. And the matter of misprinted cards at a 160-dollar retail price? I should not even have to comment on it. Shameful.
Source: BoardGameGeek
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