Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia

I was delighted to receive Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia just in time for Christmas in December. I had heard great things about the game, including its status as a Mensa Select winner, and I was eager to get it on the table for play.

The first time we opened the box, we were appreciative to find the components were nestled neatly inside GameTrayz. How thoughtful and practical is that? Kudos to Stonemaier for including the handy plastic organizers with the game.

In Euphoria, we take on the role of labor managers, trying to keep our workers dumb and happy so as to avoid them quitting as we work to gain enough influence to takeover the dystopian society we are all members of. A bit of a dark theme, even though the gameplay is fun. This is a classic worker placement game with some area control and set collection thrown in for good measure. It’s also a tense race to a point marker finish line (in this case 10) and it features the signature Stonemaier twist – almost every action you can perform in the game potentially benefits at least one other player. You can’t really help yourself without helping others as you visit markets, build tunnels, and construct new markets with your workers.

Euphoria doesn’t generate much analysis paralysis, so the running time tends to closely adhere to the time frame listed on the box. There’s a lot of options each turn, but almost always one seems to stand out as the obvious best choice.

What’s rather unique about Euphoria is how it uses the value of the dice (which are your workers) as a representation of your workers’ intelligence and punishes you if the total intelligence among your collection of idle workers (that is, the sum of all dice that aren’t in play on the board) becomes too high. The consequence is that you must lose a worker; the highest numbered die is returned to the dice pool and is out of reach for you unless you put in the work and pay the cost to activate a worker again. It’s a very clever way to introduce some chaos.

Speaking of the dice, they’re quite lovely. I appreciated the custom design and the bright colors. What I did not appreciate was the break in pattern for the ratio of pips to white shapes on the dice. The die faces for numbers 1 through 4 feature a design where each individual pip is surrounded by a white shape. However for the numbers 5 and 6, all of the pips are grouped together inside one white shape. Several times this tripped up my gameplay as I mistook a 5 or 6 for a 1. I can’t be the only person that this has happened to.

The rest of the components are as sturdy and well made as the dice. There are wooden tokens, some cardboard tokens, cardboard markets, plastic coated playing card sized decks of recruits and artifacts, and the main board. Everything should hold up well, even under frequent use.

The rulebook is well written and easy to follow. I’ve just got one minor criticism here –I would like to see a picture of all the components instead of just a written description to aid first time players in identifying components.

Beautiful artwork is usually necessary to draw me into a board game and then great gameplay sustains my interest. The illustrations and overall graphic design in Euphoria are functional more than exquisite, so some who approach games as I do might pass the game by. Don’t. It’s an engaging and addictive board game that plays well at all the player counts we tested and I will pick up any expansion Stonemaier releases for this title.

Bonus: my husband Christopher, the film aficionado, points out that for lovers of great literature and film, there are plenty of little Easter eggs hidden throughout the game.

Win condition: reach 10 authority points before any other player

Inputs: allegiance track progress, market construction, market visits, ethical dilemma scoring, and Nimbus loft visits

Strategy Tip: bump your own workers off single user locations repeatedly to create an efficient chain of actions

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Stonemaier
Players: 2-6 (We played with 2 and 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 70 minutes
Game type: worker placement, set collection, dice rolling, area control

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Board Game Review: Lost Cities Roll & Write (A Comparison to the Original Lost Cities)

I really love the card game Lost Cities , designed by Reiner Knizia. When my husband Christopher and I were first getting to know each other, we used to meet up at Starbucks sometimes and play games. Lost Cities was one of our frequent picks. It’s a head to head, two player game in which both players are trying to outscore each other by laying down ascending runs of card suits on a small board between the two of them. There’s a theme laid over the mechanism (completing expeditions in the lost world) but it’s basically pasted on and so that is the last we will speak of it. So there we were, newly in love, eyeing each other across the table, smiling and flirting, and doing our best to beat one another at Lost Cities . It was awesome. And now, with the roll & write genre having made an impressive rebound a few years ago (let’s not forget the mechanism has actually been around since the 50s with Yatzee ), Knizia has ported his award winning game Lost Cities into this format, releasi

Board Game Review: Hues and Cues

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind and Wavelength. In Hues and Cues , players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream). On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one. They are in the

Board Game Review: Brass Birmingham

Here’s a story of a lovely lady (spoiler: it’s me) and her pride and how it has led to the discovery of the single greatest board game I have ever played. It’s probably also a good primer for other reviewers on increasing your reach. At GenCon this year, I was perusing the wares of the various booths and my eyes caught a glimpse of two beautiful game boxes. Each had crisp metallic lettering with an old world feel and artwork that radiated European class. I made my way to the booth and waited patiently to speak to to the team manning it as there were many buyers lined up to purchase the games. I didn’t know anything about the games (Brass Birmingham and Brass Lancashire), or the publisher – Roxley Game Laboratory – but I knew I wanted to review one or both of the games. Almost every board game love story I star in in can be summed up this way: I am seduced by the artwork or theme and then I stay for the right mechanics. When the lead rep spoke with me, he gently rejected my request. He