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The industrial age has come at last to the World of Indines! Use your ingenuity and the skill of your team of technomancers to cross the continent of Indines while connecting towns and building a vibrant trade network. Research new spells as you carve a path through the many treacherous terrains of the continent, using your company's unique advantages to outbuild the competition and secure supply lines for rare resources.
In Empyreal: Spells & Steam, technomancers use mana to build rails, and the amount of mana crystals required to cast a spell varies by terrain and by the potency of the spell. Mana crystals must recharge after being used, so your choice of when and where to use each spell will be critical to determining the efficiency of your construction engine.
The towns you choose to connect to your network will provide critical resources, and the value of these resources changes over time. Some become more valuable as they become more connected, while others become less valuable as their abundance increases. Thus, you need to be wary of what your competitors are building into their trade networks and adapt your strategies accordingly to maximize the value of your stock portfolio.
Reaching new cities first gives you additional benefits, and being the first to bridge the continent provides you with a sizable commission from your backers. However, those who build first are more at the mercy of changing markets. Time your construction projects to maximize your profits and the flow of mana.
—description from the publisher
- It's an engine building game with a huge decision space.
- Tailor-made for people who love to keep a lot of variables in the head and for those who love to experiment with different powers and abilities.
- The deluxe version is just damn good-looking.
- It's a wonderfully fresh take on a very tired genre.
- The board can get very busy as the game progresses.
- There is a lot to keep track of.
- There's a lot of icons to remember, and we found ourselves hitting the reference book to look up what each spell car and specialist did.
- Combine Steamworks and spell crafting to create a magical train company.
- Indines
- Auztralia
- Argent the consortium
- Ticket to Ride
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- engine building — This game is all about interconnecting powers.
- hand management — Reclaim any spent mana and gain one spell car from the available tray and place it on your board.
- network building — It's a train game so you build train networks.
- Pick-up and deliver — Choose a city thats network adjacent to you. Select any number of resources matching that cities demand from your network even in spaces you share and if one is available take a demand tile from the city.
- set collection — You want to deliver sets of goods to cities who need them.
- worker placement — Decide which main action to take: administer or move + activate.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Empyreal: spells and steam in about three minutes
- Empyreal: spells and steam isn't a regular train game
- Gold medal game
- Empyreal: ticket to ride over 9000