by dijoist

I don't actually know how I found out about Storm Raiders. I had totally forgotten I pre-ordered the deluxe edition (I late pledged). Last week I received a shipping notice from a place I haven't heard of (and doesn't show up in my email) and when it turned out to be Storm Raiders was a pleasant surprise. So I opened it the game, read the instructions, and played 3 solo games this weekend, which fueled this review.

Unboxing
I have the deluxe edition, so I do also want to mention the components. The resources are painted wood tokens and very pleasant to play with (and again remind me of the Expedition corruption pieces - which is a good thing as I really like those too).

The character standees are really awesome looking. They are acrylic I believe, and come with plastic coverings you have to take off and put into the base yourself (and they're a tight fit with the base - they give you notes to please watch a video before you attempt to put them together and I highly recommend watching it), but they may be the most gorgeous non-mini standees I've ever had (I'm not a great photographer so the picture doesn't do them justice). The colors are vibrant and just look great. I am also a big fan of the theme so that probably helps too.

And as always, I LOVE dual layer player boards where the bits fit into the board and stay put. So thank you to the designer and Arkus for including that!

About The Game
Storm Raiders, at first glance, is a post-apocalyptic themed pick-up-and-deliver game. In essence, you move around the map (using 1 of 3 vehicles each turn) picking up resources, delivering them to fulfill contracts, utilizing crew members when appropriate to help out a bit, and avoiding the storm mini (as it damages all of your vehicles once if it catches you).

I say at first glance it's a pick-up-and-deliver game because after scoring the first game, I realized that yes, while this is a pick-up-and-deliver game, focusing solely on picking up and delivering won't necessarily help maximize your score. Each time you take at least one resource from a location, you increase one of 3 prestige dials (character, mod, or medal)...which increases the amount each of these counts towards your prestige (victory points) at the end of the game. Sometimes taking resources to increase a prestige dial pays off more in the end that completing a contract will.

So the second game, since my character that increased my mod prestige dial twice (each character increased the prestige dials 3 times, but which prestige dials are increased vary per character), I focused more on increasing my mod counter and getting mods (causing me to focus on waiting for the dark side of contracts, as contracts have 3 phases, the first phase where rewards are more likely to be medals, the second phase where rewards are more likely to be mods, and the third phase where rewards are more likely to be mods but one of your vehicles takes a damage if you complete a contract).

Your 3 vehicles are a trike, plane, and submarine, and they can hold fewer dice each in that order (trike holds the most dice, submarines hold the least). Damage your vehicle takes take up a dice slot, so the more damage you take, the fewer movement dice you can place in a vehicle. Damage is taken if the storm catches you, or based on certain actions (which vary per vehicle), such as taking one weapon resource (which is wild) or if a plane/sub taking two resources at once. You can collect mods which can be used to cover up one of the 7 rules to take damage when gathering resources, to further reduce your chance to take damage. Mods also score points at the end of the game based on the number of mods you have times the value on the mod prestige dial.

You can take a turn to rest, removing some movement and damage dice (depending on which dice you take for the "rest" active), which you will likely have to do at least once during the game unless you are very strategic (and lucky) in how you play. Damage causes you to lose points at the end of the game, but like medals, cred cards, and mods the amount is based on the health track value times damage. So if your health track is at one, damage doesn't hurt too much, which the value of your health track doesn't matter if you don't have any damage (a health track value of 5 * 0 damage still equals 0 negative points). This is key critical as there are times that taking damage can only result in moving your health track (if you vehicle has no open spots for movement dice / damage counters), so if you can manage it so that the health track only moves up and you end the game with no damage, viola - no negative points for damage.

There are 8 of each type of vehicle, and each had unique powers. For example, one trike lets lets you remove 1 die and 1 damage from any 1 vehicle after fulfilling a contract (which I made good use of to avoid having to take the "rest" action one game), while another says "if salvaging only 1 resource, refresh 2 different crew" which would let you re-use crew without having to take the "rest" action (as normally you need to "rest" to refresh a crew member). The different powers of the trike, plane, and ship you get can REALLY cause alternate strategies.

This uniqueness of the vehicles and the trade-off between increasing your prestige dials and completing contracts makes the game much more enjoyable to me than a simple optimization plan to complete the most contracts. Other than Storm Raiders, I've really only played pick-up-and-deliver games, one of which I liked and two of which I did not. There is a lot more to the strategy of winning that "optimize to try and pick up as many contracts as possible (of which I think 6 is probably near the max)", as sometimes increasing a prestige dial by picking up resources may score you more points in the end than completing a contract, and figuring out how to balance those (which in my short experience, usually means focusing on maxing a single prestige dial and trying to get as many applicable things for that prestige dial (characters, mods, or medals)) is fun. It's really fun.

I tend to be illogically wary of dice games (even if their randomness is not really much different than drawing cards), but since both the crew cards and the vehicle powers let you manipulate the dice and the fact that you have to place dice in vehicles that are higher than the ones already there make dice a perfect fit for this game and add another fun piece to the game's puzzle ... and I like their usage.

The solo mode reminds me of Expedition's solo mode (which is great, as it may be my favorite solo mode). There are two pages explaining to solo mode and the solo opponent is pretty easy to control once you get the hang of it. After about 1 or 2 rounds of controlling the opponent, I had it down and no longer needed to refer to the rules. In short, the solo opponent rolls 2 dice each turn, 1 black and 1 white, that determine which color and number of dice it will take. Once a die is taken, it has a stack of contracts that it is looking to fulfill which determines which storm spot it stops at to grab resources, trying to fill as many of its contracts as possible. It's very simple to control, properly takes resources off the board to provide that part of the interaction, and is very easy to store at the end of the game. I did beat the opponent each time, so the rules provide some options to increase the difficulty that I did not try yet (but plan to next game). The opponent does start completing contracts more quickly than you usually do, so it made me nervous at first, but since he only scores based on contract completion, you start to understand that is okay and just because he gets going more quickly doesn't mean you're necessarily going to lose.

Summary
The solo mode in Storm Raiders is a fun puzzle-y experience dealing with build the right strategy based on hand you've been dealt (your vehicles) and making the most of the tactical situation (the resources on the board as well as the contracts), with crew cards as an option to help tilt the game more in your favor. The wide variety of vehicles and crew cards ensure that the puzzle is unique every game ... and helps the fun keep coming!

This game was interesting enough to me that after I played my first game, I immediately reset the board and played a second game. I set up the game for a third play, but it was late so I headed to bed...and first thing upon waking up started my 3rd game.

I will note that my cats also provide this game a seal of approval. They love batting dice and these wooden bits all over the floor. Luckily the game comes with enough dice that they I can put some to the side for them to knock off the table and around the floor while I'm able to keep playing uninterrupted.

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