New Angeles Overview and Review

today I'm taking a look at a game that's very different it's a Cooperative game and it's a competitive game it's negotiation and backstabbing and deal making and the production is fantastic so I'm very happy for my review game to be new [Music] Angeles in new Angeles the players take the roles of Mega corporations in the cyberpunk setting Android these Mega Corps are competing with their Rivals to make the most Capital but also working together to ensure the federal government doesn't mobilize and take over the city of New Angeles each player selects one of the six Mega Corps and has dealt a rival card the Rival card tells you which of the other players is your target you must have more Capital than your rival at the end of the game to win if the threat track ever increases to 25 the federal government will take over new Angeles and all the players will lose the threat track is increased by illness spreading workers going on strike power outages in districts crime bosses musling out your production punks with hammers causing a rockus and of course not meeting the product demand of your consumers each round of the game there are a number of asset cards placed in a track showing how many turns the round will take these assets will be claimed by the who enacts their proposed action for the turn assets are always key people that the corpse use to their benefit the active player selects an action card from his hand and proposes this action these action cards will help the City by moving security robots to get rid of bad dudes in your District curing illness repairing power outages building developments that'll help production in your city and all sorts of other productive things the other corporations around the table have the opportunity to prep ose a counter offer using the cards from their hands once two offers are in play the other players around the table have the opportunity to lend support to either of the actions proposed whichever action has the most support gets enacted every corporation has all sorts of reasons to enact these different action cards each player has an investment card that will gain them capital for focusing various things like for example generating technology also each Corporation has individual interests that will increase their Capital when certain actions are carried out at the end of each round districts that have Androids stationed in them will produce their goods you have to check to see if the district has any problems that will inhibit the production like power outages or crime bosses stealing your goods also at the end of each round you'll draw an event card that will tell you all the issues in new Angeles that will increase the threat it will also add new problems to the board that the players will have to deal with before the next production phase every few rounds there will be a demand phase in which the players will have to spend the resources that they've been collecting to meet the demands of the people if you fail to meet the demand the threat will increase and take you closer to government takeover after three demand phases have been carried out the game will end and each player who has exceeded their rival in capital wins the game oh and there's one other rival card called the Federalist and he wants the government to take over so he's always up to no good I gu guess you could call him the traiter as I mentioned at the beginning this game is very strange in the fact that it is a Cooperative game and it's a competitive game at the same time a lot of the time it feels like a Cooperative game fully a Cooperative game as there's all these problems on the board you know there's crime and there's there's illness breaking out and there's people going on strike and everybody as a group has to come together to deal with that so the federal government doesn't come in and take over meaning that most people are going to lose the game so really it feels like a Cooperative game yet you're constantly paying attention to your rival and what they're up to and making sure that they don't make money and you're making money so that you can exceed them at the end of the game and actually be a winner of the game so really there's a dynamic to this game that's just terrific it's it's just really well done in that respect and of course before I get too much further I always have to mention the components just because this is Fantasy Flight the fantasy flight's always going to put out some of the best Productions you're ever going to see I mean look at the Miniatures in the Box there's no reason for Miniatures in the Box it could easily be a token that's put on the board or cubes on the board whatever yet they put Miniatures in the game so that your experience is that much better they just go the whole nine yards with their Productions and it's beautiful it's colorful the card art is great I just love everything about the production of it so getting past components let's talk about gameplay from a gameplay standpoint this game is just different you know a lot of people are saying that it's Battlestar Gala Galactica 2.0 they're going that far as to say that I don't see Battle Star Galactica in this game anywhere I mean yes there is kind of a hidden Traer in there and there's some rivalries and that kind of thing but really there's mostly open information it's all negotiation based there there's no BSG here uh that's the thing that you have to pay attention to initially if you're coming into this game and you want to know what it's like to play this game and if it's right for you the one thing you have to keep in mind is this game is going to live or die by the players in the game and when I say that I mean the the game mechanics are all really well done I mean it's it works it's great it's a cool Cooperative game and it's got that competitive aspect but the game very very strongly relies on negotiation deal making backstabbing fast talking you got to be a car salesman in this game to get your actions through you have to be lying and you have to be helping you have to trust people you have to make Alliance with people if the players aren't engaged in that level where they're going to be talking a lot they're going to be trying to convince other people that their plan is right and that that other plan is not right this is not going to go well and let me tell you my very first time playing it how it went uh for about the first 30 minutes of the game I was like was disappointed man like I was like this game is just one card after the another and then we just move some pieces boring but after the first demand phase we start Ed to like kind of get into it we started to sort of realize okay we really got to be pushing to get these things done and we got to get our stuff done so that we can make money and beat our Rivals so we started wheeling and dealing we started you know making deals we started trading assets we started trading Capital between each other and it really started to get ruthless that's when the game got fun and if your group is really not into that this is going to fall totally flat cuz the game is boring if people are not engaged in that capacity I think that's really important to know going in so if your group's not like that don't get this game the concept of the rivals is really interesting because really you're only most times only competing against one other player if there's four people at the table or six people at the table whatever it is you have one card that says I'm trying to beat Chris across the table that's all I care about I don't care if Steve or Tony make any points at all they can make a thousand points more than me I don't care all I want to do is beat Chris that's interesting because there you never know where the alliances lie you're sometimes you're dealing with somebody that might be you might be their rival or you might have to deal with somebody that is your rival but you're still trying to mitigate their points and around the table there's always that Federalist who is trying to win by himself make the government come and take over and everybody's pointing fingers saying oh that guy must be the Federalist because what he's doing is wrong you know and that just makes for a lot of it's It's a dynamic game in that capacity everybody's accusing each other of everything and another interesting concept that throws another wrinkle into it is that if you get your own rival card you have to beat two or three other players depending on player account and that makes it even harder for you so sometimes the game is extra hard for you because you got your own rival you just want to be the best in the biz um so there's a lot of different things going on in the game I dig it now it isn't without things that I find strange to let's talk investment cards investment cards are how you make capital in doing the various actions on the board you know sometimes you're going to get Capital if there's a lot of illness on the board you know and you could get one of those cards randomly and you know you always get two and you can pick one so there's a choice there but if you get stuck with one that the board State just doesn't work for you're not going to get a lot of points that turn and someone else could just kind of fall backwards into something that gets them a ton of points and that felt a little bad to me I I didn't like that aspect to it I almost feel like there should be something a little different where you can engineer what you're investing in to try to get points it's difficult to say if that would kind of break the game or not but it did feel almost a little random that all of a sudden you know Steve across the board was making a whole bunch of points off of something we didn't really even deal with that turn you know it didn't even really come up that much so that kind of felt strange to me regarding player count and the length of the game The Box even says this game could go up up to 4 hours and that all comes from that negotiation uh that could that could get long in the tooth real quick four players takes about two hours but if you get to six players it could push four hours if there's a lot of table talk happening um and it isn't the game that makes that happen it's the players that make that happen so I think even the game could work well with a timer like all right we have this amount of time to make these deals or the just the main offer goes through if you want to cut down the time a little bit or keep it constrained um I think the game is very well done but I'm not sure that it's 4 hours well done so to summarize ultimately I really like new angelist even with a couple of those little hiccups with the investment cards and maybe a little bit with that duration with with a high player count I really like it and what I like most about it is the dynamic at the table the table talk the negotiation the wheel and dealing the backstabbing the trading of goods it's just very interactive it's an interactive game like it's probably the most interactive game that I have at this point so new Angeles really really really dig it all right well that is my review of new Angeles I hope you enjoyed it and if you're interested in any more board games card games Miniatures games discussion please check out the secret cal.com and iTunes for our audio podcast and if you would be so kind please subscribe to the secret cabal's YouTube channel just below all righty till next time see you later