Utopia in about 3 minutes

hello and welcome to utopia in about three minutes it is a game for two to five players there is no official solo mode playing time is around 60 minutes it's a relatively simple game well the box says this game is about the wise king of utopia summoning great minds and thinkers from human history and getting them to work together to create a great utopian state but the truth is something far different none of these visitors ever leave this utopia and everything in it is built by consuming those visitors the Utopia is nothing more than a sinister sacrifice factory with the idol powers-that-be steel people from history work them into the ground to construct monuments and debate about which culture is so hot right now like they are fashion items the winner of this game is to play who scores the most victory points these are gained by building wonders sacrificing people and having monuments that are currently in fashion with the elite of the utopia the game ends the turn a player passes 50 points competitive only one player can win this game area control each player is try to control as much of the kingdom of utopia as possible set collection groups of cards and groups of tokens are the key to victory plan turn player orders determined by victory points with the leader going first and so on the first thing you will do is grab three visitors per player and assign them to the island matching their background each visitor represents one of the five cultures in this game sailing with the first player you will take one of these tokens and replace it with your own token at the same time you then place it in any spot on the matching island repeat this until all visitors have been claimed then each player draws five cards the leader must discard two cards and all other players except the person in last place must discard one the first player does all their card actions and so on until the last player if you ever have one of each token on an island you can build that islands wonder and claim six VPS you also gain VP's equal to the values shown in the region each time anyone builds a monument there if you have three of the same tokens in a region you can build a monument you can use one card to move up to two tokens via ships or vile and you can use one card to spawn a matching token at a monument and one card to consumer token add its matching monument for victory points you can use thread integral cards to spawn a new token of that type you can use one card to boost one cultures monument in the scoring track or two cards to send one culture from the top of the track to the very bottom points are scored each round by how popular each culture is so changing this track has a huge swing on points when the last player has finished their turn check to see if anyone has 50 points otherwise it is a new turn why would you like this game utopia is a quick and fast paced game that is a fair bit of trickery and cleverness in it it's similar to a lot of area control games but has just enough going for it to make it stand out a little part of that is the monuments and wonders it has a grander feel than most area control games it's also much more of a race than other area control games because once you have locked down an area you cannot lose control of them and this game has some of the strongest catch-up mechanics I've seen the single best thing about the game is playing a game about a utopia as old as something more sinister with sacrifices and the elites fickle fashions being the drivers behind the game however the color palette iconography and visuals of this game are a bit of a mess and makes it far harder to scan information than it really should be it's also far bigger and over producing it really needed to be it's a simple yet clever area control game presented like it's something far grander than it really is many people consider our grande to be the best area control game ever made so I recommend checking that out I also think Tammany Hall does most of what utopia sets out to do but in a far more consistent way if you enjoyed this recap please like the video subscribe to the channel and check out our patreon the next game we'll be covering is riot lockets the ancient world [Music]