by zolobolo

We have been on the search for the ultimate 4x sci-fi board game with my group since TI4 came out in 2017 introducing us to high quality but accessible 4x board games: It had everything from narrative gameplay, trade, tech upgrades, ship upgrades, ship variety to excellent production values: art, insert and still the highest detailed and best quality ship mini lineup imo to date but it also came with a long >4h game time and lots of reading (which increases processing time, minimum playing age and makes identification of effect at distance and wrong angle difficult).

Instead of carbon-copy competitors came a series of games that each improved and expanded upon certain elements of the genre:
Star Trek Ascendancy came out in 2016 (a year earlier) that we only found out later and still has the best exploration and a unique fleet mgmt mechanic
Eclipse Second Dawn came with 45min per player playtime, neutral enemies, random loot and unique ship upgrade mechanic
Warpgate boosts 30min per player playtime thanks to simultaneous turn order and AI opponents to fight SP or even coop with some light modification as well as tactical card based lighting fast yet meaningful combat.
Arcs+TBR innovated in emergent storytelling, box insert efficiency and component count streamlining

Findings
Andromeda's Edge falls in nicely with the above lineup in my opinion with some notable points where I hope it will be improved upon in a future releases
We are playing with the regular edition as the Deluxe Edition seemed like it suffers from some bloat but some of the findings I had might be related to the KS heritage of the game:
- Core gameplay loop is worker placement with a nifty worker/ship recall phase that ties into a modular economic engine building mechanic based on tiles that can be attained for the player base: Simple elegant, quick to learn hard to master chain of mechanics without reading. In most games investing in ships is resources spent in vain if not used to win battles/take resources from neutral enemies or other players but here players build more ships to gather more resources and buy new modules to gather even more resources when the ships return and be able to buy more ships

This loop feels amazing and I can see future games expanding on this mechanic a great deal
- Combat is much more complex: It is detached from the economic engine building game relying on dice, ship attributes and makes frequent use of damage/shield, tactical cards to be played in different phases of a turn and have plenty of text and can also trigger the expansion of the map and new enemies. It slows down the core gameplay significantly and contains most of the complexity of the game and likely take the most time to process
- Beyond the core gameplay loop and battles there are a lot of other small mechnics in here like faction powers, ship upgrades (TI style) or one-off structure powers: neither destract much from the overall experience nor add much to it imo to offset the added complexity but they are there for those looking for variety
- Victory Points are counted on the edge of the map, partially in the top halp of the map and many different elements flow into it at the end too: since player tracking discs can stack on each other, management of this aspect is fiddly and its not really feasible for players to have an overview on who is leading the game by how many points even though the necessary information is theoretically available to calculate: A bit over half of all the VPs are likely not found on the outer edge tracking route by the end of a typcial game and will be added in to the final score at the end
- Artwork is excellent on the map, planet tiles and iconography but raider cards are visually cluttered and the standees do not stand out well on the galaxy map especially since player ships are models (mobile) and stuctures are standees (static)
- Ships are detailed and are of excellent quality. Leader pieces have great weight to them and grip fitting for their importance
- Insert is ok for cards and ship upgrade tiles and has some minimal hold area for the map itself but otherwise everything else is in bags
- Buildup and tear down time is ~15min each which is notable
- Improvement standees for development are a great fit: they are storage space efficient and stand out thanks to the way they are slotted into player ships: its practical and functional
- Some improvement are much larger then others though which feels odd sometimes
- Box is very efficient in its size and dimensions and has a strudy good quality to it: fits perfectly into our shelf and is considered small compared to the competition which helps a lot in keeping it close to the table and taking it out for future games
- Damage markers are a bit too small for quick and reliable grip and identification (most likely to roll off the table and get lost too due to their size, shape and Opacity)
- Tablespace usage is good overall with a two player plus AI game just fitting onto a desk 74x118cm

Recommendations:
- Planetary development tiles to have same or roughly same surface area (+-20% max)
- Use ship models instead of standees for raiders: this is where the extras for the game seem to be worth it though I don't know if the ships would then still fit into the very efficient box though cutting down types of raiders would help there
- Depict the ship models directly on the Raider cards with high contrast to the background to have appearance be more consistent across the game components (possibly using the same coloring as the plastic)
- Reduce raiders to 3 types: S, M, L with S type coming in with two new units each time as is already the case but have S type be 50% of the cards and contain 6 small ships. This is to reduce amount of models have a more graudal buildup of raider strenght over time if not checked and reduce amount of text. Benefits provided: S: 1 Platinum; M: 1 Gold; L: 1 Free module
- Either track all VPs on the side of the board or only count them up at the end (reduces admin and potentially board size depending on the direction taken). Eclipse is an example of end of game accounting while TI4 of an in-game accounting: either is fine but splitting up the workload casues complexity without comparable payoff while leaving actual stance of the player opaque and dependent only on willingness of players to crunch the numbers in game (relying on uninterest of players to know the state of the game)
- Consider either using only tactical cards where iconography is enough to convey the effect or not using tactical cards at all. In our games I am only using tactical cards where iconography is sufficient and has been working very well so far and there are already enough of them for variety (no reading and less card play slowing down player turns and combat)
- Replace damage market with cardboard tokens that provide good grip and contrast to their respective background (Discover discs are ideal in material size and format just the overall shape would need to be adjusted a bit): in case of damaged modules the cards can be flipped over as a workaround
- Considering how full the already optimally sized box is there might not be much that could be improved upon here but I do use my standard storage box from Seven Wonder Architects here too (just like for a lot of games and some other space 4x games): that box design is the best I saw so far accommodating a ton of bits in storage space efficient manner as well as having a slot of cards. For AE I use such a box for the resources and moons so at least these bits do not need to be bagged in out and for each game.

Overall I am happy that AE exists and hope it will keep developing further learning from the other games in this genre as well as other games learning from it.
As far as lesson learned the core gameplay elements warrant it a place among the big names and for now at least it has replaced Eclipse games for us thanks to its engine building game via modules similar in feel to the ship upgrade minigame of Eclipse and excellent ship call back mechanism which feels very satisfying to pull off efficiently.

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