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Game Overview and Mechanics:
The Waste of Parts is a cooperative strategy game for 1 to 5 players. You control the crew of a giant mech attempting to make its way through the Waste of Parts.
The game is played over a series of rounds. Each round, players take turns controlling their Crew Members in a rotating, progressive order, spending action points to perform various tasks such as moving between rooms of the mech, attacking enemies, or extinguishing fires.
Players can also use their unique, asymmetrical abilities to gain additional advantages. At the end of each round, a sequence of steps is taken to further advance the game state.
Enemies attack, and players draw and place new enemy cards equal to the mech's noise level. Players may also draw salvage cards, which provide equipment to enhance their Crew Members or upgrades to improve the mech itself. Some powerful room upgrade cards come with a noise penalty, forcing players to balance the risk of drawing additional enemy cards against the rewards they offer. If certain conditions are met, the mech will advance according to its current speed.
As the mech advances, more powerful enemy cards are shuffled into the deck, providing a scaling challenge that matches the crew's increasing strength over time. The game’s unique Scrap mechanic allows players to convert unwanted salvage cards into resources, repair the mech, or search for specific types of cards to mitigate randomness.
The game is won once the mech reaches its final space, but players can opt for an additional 'victory lap' challenge for an extra level of difficulty with their current run.
-description from publisher
- Unique cross-company collaboration with Vestige
- Cool industrial punk aesthetic
- Interesting action selection system
- Cooperative mech piloting gameplay
- Expansion requires owning the other game to be fully utilized if only one game is purchased.
- Survival and salvaging in a scrapyard
- Piloting a mech through a wasteland of scrap
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — An interesting action selection system where players have a limited number of action points.
- cooperative play — The game is cooperative, with players leaning into character powers and asymmetric abilities.
- Crafting and salvaging — Players are involved in crafting and salvaging components.
- Crew management — Players manage a crew, moving to different rooms, playing cards, and managing upgrades.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- September October November this whole set of it's we said it was going to be big and we were not wrong
- I do think that this last like few months of 2024 Maybe some of the biggest crowdfunding board gaming months ever
- I have not seen that kind of collaboration before it is really cool
- it feels more Tower defy so instead of exploding out everything is moving in along these channels towards the castle tower
- The Nemesis system
References (from this video)
- Gorgeous play mat
- 10 different crew members with unique abilities
- Neat player boards
- Metal cogs and cubes for dials
- Awesome salvage cards with many cool things to do
- Clear acrylic tokens and standees
- Engaging theme and mechanics
- Protective film on acrylic tokens can be a pain to remove
- Dials on player boards don't lock in place and can spin
- traveling through a wasteland to reach sanctuary, salvaging parts from destroyed mechs
- a wasteland
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- character abilities — Each crew member has unique special abilities that can be used during the game.
- cooperative play — The game is a one to five player cooperative game.
- Deck Building — Players draw from a salvage deck and event deck, and enemy cards are also used.
- Dice Rolling — Dice are used for various actions, including combat against enemies.
- Modular Board — The game uses a play mat that represents the wasteland, and the actual game board has indentations and parts that can spin.
- Resource Management — Scrap can be used for actions like reinforcing the hull, rummaging through cards, or fueling the ship.
- threat management — Noise level determines enemy card draws, and ship damage leads to inoperable or on fire states.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Baron, I think you'd be really excited for this game. You should give it a shot.
- So, this is given to me by the publisher. So, I just want that to be full disclosure.
- This thing looks gorgeous.
- We have, I believe, it's six or seven different ones. Let's see how many we have. Nope, we have quite a few. Nope, we have a way more than six or seven. Baron is uh totally wrong. 1 2 3 4 5 different crew members here and then we've got 6 7 8 9 10. 10 different crew members. That is awesome.
- The other thing is as you're moving around in this particular thing, you can only go up and down where there's ladders. So, you can't just run nilly-willy all over this place or really nilly, whichever you want to go.
- It's pretty awesome. I do like the fact that they're metal. So, they do have some weight to them.
- These look awesome. They're definitely going in. Why would you not put these in? These look awesome.
- So there you have it. That is Waste of The Waste of Parts by Skybound Games.