Evacuation – A Seamless Fusion of Mechanics and Theme

now this is a relatively complex and crunchy game so rather than doing entire rules teach let's take a look at this game by just looking at an overview of a single [Music] round this game has several variants and the objectives of each game can vary but the core objective is to evacuate all of your world sites which includes people and factories and build with the game calls stadiums because you know you can't have a game like this that doesn't require appeasing the masses and diverting their attention from the Frailty of humanity anyway my progress is indicated on this track as I move along it I will cross thresholds that represent my transition from the old world to the new world my progress is also represented by the buildings and population on the planets right now you can see I still have a lot of my factories and population on the old planet and one food factory on the new planet take a closer look at these spaces though you see the colors they have on the side that's relevant later a hugee defining characteristic of this game is that players have two inventories this side of the board is my inventory on the old planet and everything done on the old Planet needs to be paid for with resources over here there's a lot of resources over here because it's still relatively early in the game and all of the people and buildings are still producing for me on the new world side of my board I have just one food and one steel the food was produced at the beginning of the round by my one Factory and this steel was imported by the spaceship at the end of the last round you can see that my spaceship was able to bring over one resource and it also has the capacity to evacuate from yellow and gray spaces these are the colored Rings you saw earlier so I was able to evacuate this space to get two population and this space to get one energy Factory in this example I'm in the second round of the game on the left side of the round trer you can see the requirement for how many stadiums you need right now I can see that I only need one Stadium on the new planet by the beginning of the next round I will also need two food while not technically a requirement I also have population in my inventory just waiting to get settled so I won't get penalized if I don't settle them but once they're settled I Can Begin producing which is definitely something that I want to do so to understand a little bit more about this game let's look into the type of thinking involved in meeting these goals well here's one option I could use my first turn to take one of these two actions for the sake of Simplicity Let's ignore these effects for now the important thing to understand is that either of these actions will give me a free resource with two steel and one food I could use my second action to construct a stadium on the new world there's only one problem with this plan and that is I have so little inventory on the new world that if I spend these resources I won't have the necessary steel to settle this population I could use my third action to build this Factory but that would bring my energy production up and not my food I need the food in order to meet the requirement for the next round so I don't think this is the best plan let's try something else I could use my first action to construct this ship this ship would be constructed on the old world where I have plenty of resources to pay for it this ship also has the ability to transport a stadium to the new world I have a stadium in my inventory right now so in just one action I can meet the stadium requirement for the following round so if I do this I'll use my second action and I'll still take a steel resource but for my third action instead of building a stadium I'm going to use these resources to settle in the new world and claim this fantastic space that lets me erect my factory and settle both population markers I can only do this because I have the resources to pay for it this is going to increase the production for energy and steel and not food but that's okay as you're about to find out let's see how the rest of the round unfolds at the end of everyone's action phase we're going to start the transport phase as planned I'm going to be using two energy to transport using this ship I'll take one stadium and evacuate this space to give me two more population markers and for the resources I'll add one energy so this ship is going to move over here the energy is spent and everything on it is placed in my new world inventory for this example I'm going to skip turnover and we'll talk about the progress phase so I'm going to count up the value of my three actions the total is five so I'll move up Five Points here and one point here passing this threshold which once again is going to cause me to lose production on the old world again I'm going to skip the bonuses and cleanup phase but at the beginning of the third round when I earn my production for both planets for me the new world will produce one more food two steel and one energy so I'll pay the two food for my population and finally I'll check to see if I've met the minimum requirement for stadiums one is required and I have one so no penalty for me now what you just watched a single round of the game is my attempt to give you a sense of the game without taking all of the time to teach all of the rules so I'd like to hear a little bit of your feedback if that was right on would you please let me know and if you think I should have gone a little bit more into detail also let me know I'm trying to get it just right but anyway let's now talk about how I would evaluate this game so first on the game's design I've played four games from Vladimir Sushi uh Shipyard Woodcraft praga caput Rini and evacuation so from that set of games this game above all others hits that sweet spot between theme and mechanics because the mechanics of this game so perfectly are suited to to what the game is about I love this progress track and how the progress track shifts from uh efficiency on the old world versus increased efficiency on the new world increased production on the new world and then to have two inventories is is just it's thoroughly brilliant and gives you so much to think about and plan for so for me this game falls in the place that I most appreciate right in the middle where the game is Thoroughly about mechanics but the theme support the mechanics and make it more intuitive and make the game engaging for interaction though this game definitely leans into being more isolated in a lot of space themed games there's often area control or combat this game doesn't have any of that there is some competition for spaces in the new world some spaces are better than others there are also objectives that would motivate a player to claim a certain space so sometimes you're making decisions based on turn order in order to claim something before before somebody else could take it however the economy of this game is so tight that players cannot afford to take something just to spite an opponent if it doesn't help your own purposes you're not going to take it just to block what else somebody else is doing everyone really needs to focus on what they need to do and if there's conflict between those turn order is going to matter otherwise it does feel like a very isolated game so you know somewhere towards that end of this gradient for Artistry I would neither call this game restrained nor extravagant rather the pieces are purely functional if you look at the artwork on all of the cards and the player boards uh the players the human figures are always wearing masks so you can't see any facial expressions uh the artwork is rather simple the resources are just little cubes which is nothing against the game I I don't need uh fancy fancy resources and Miniatures and P pieces that are made out of wood and painted that that's not very important to me the map though the map is gorgeous and that the game board where you're doing all the actions and settling the planets that's where all of my attention is it's great that that's the most beautiful part of the game that's where the greatest amount of focus is and I appreciate that but this is a game where uh it looks good but all of the Artistry is mostly just functional and you know attractive with colors um but nothing to write home about the one thing though that is noteworthy is that the symbology on all of the cards on all of the tiles is very very clear and I always admire it when there's consistency in the symbols uh you will be Consulting the rulebook you'll be Consulting the appendex to understand what some things mean a few symbols are exceptional but where there are symbols the interpretation of the symbols is always very consistent and as you become more familiar with the game that'll definitely Aid play for strategy there is a high level of skill and especially longterm planning this is the kind of game where decisions that you make early are going to be the kinds of things that you will be cursing yourself for or very appreciative that you had such Insight I mean things that you do in one round are going to affect the turns that you can take in a in the following round there is a huge amount of planning that goes into this game this is way off on the skill end the only only degree of luck is that often times uh the decisions that you can make are going to be based on cards that come up and so if the opponent before you takes the card that you were hoping to get a new card is going to replace it and maybe it's great or maybe it's not great that is completely luck and if you're playing the advanced variant where instead of just playing cards as markers you're using cards for their effects uh you've got a whole lot of luck there as well now you've always got four actions on your board and you can always take those but you may draw a card that actually helps you maximize using two effects that you wanted to do anyway but using two in one single turn which is extraordinary um but that's luck so uh it's not a complete pure skill game at all but with the degree of long-term planning in this game this is a very heavy on skill requirement for complexity at the beginning of this video I called it a relatively complex game and that's exactly what it is because the rule set is not very hard I think I can teach this game in less than 30 minutes so you know among complex games this is a simpler one but there is a lot of complexity in the amount of thinking that you'll do this is almost overwhelming with how much there is to consider and think about so it's complex in the sense that you can get very deeply involved in the strategy but not so complex that the rules are are uh in very intimidating all right my final thoughts on this game so first a little bit of context for you this is a new game for me and I've played it five times which is neither an impressive amount but it's enough times that I've tried EV every variant of play except for a few of the um objectives so there's the basic introductory play there's Advanced module there's the race mode there's uh point mode and then there's solo play I've done all of these things uh and I I would say I've got a pretty good handle on all of the different ways that you can play this game and I still want to play it more I love the challenge of this game this is a game that I can play and I can have a terrible game where I'm really disappointed in the decisions that I've made and I was like oh man I could have done that so much better I could have done that so much better but at the end of the game I'm not sitting there going like well you know what it was because of the cards I the cards came out wrong I'm never blaming the luck I'm always feeling like you know what I could have done better is this I want to play again to see if I can fix it and I get so excited by games that do that for me games that make me want to try again so that I can test my efficiency machine and see how clever I can get I really enjoy that experience so this is a game that is definitely for me but when I'm making this recommendation to other people I caution them that the only reason you may not like this game is because game is so hard you could I could definitely imagine somebody who gets frustrated by the amount of planning that's involved and how a small seemingly small decision that you've made in the beginning of the game is creating problems for you later in the game and and for that reason saying no I you know that's not fun at all I love it that would be the only reason that someone would dislike it of the games that I've played from Vladimir Sushi I would say at least for now this is my favorite one um I also really like Woodcraft and I want to go back and play that one some more but the thing is I really really admire the art of Designing a game that is a Perfect Blend between mechanics and theme this one just lands for me and that's what I admire most about the game it is thematically interesting and mechanically brilliant the theme supports the rules it makes sense I think it's just a genius game and uh you know I love it hopefully I've given you fair caution about why you may not like it and uh I hope you enjoyed the format of this review again I'd love to hear a little bit more about your feedback thank you for watching and I'll see you next time bye-bye