We quickly buy cards. Age of Wonders: Planetfall Game Review

 Age of Wonders: Planetfall (2022, Arcane Wonders) is a board game based on the video game of the same name. The video game (available on PC and all major consoles) is a 4X-style civilization game; As part of the Age of Wonders series, Planetfall is a version of this family of space exploration video games. I'm told the scale is grand — I haven't played the video game — and Planetfall does what all great "civilization" games do, allowing players to lead empires into space battles, conduct diplomacy with other species, customize leaders and units, and do a whole a bunch of other stuff that seems epic to me.

 Age of Wonders: Planetfall (Board Game) is so incredibly simplistic that it should be applauded for its simplicity. The tabletop version of Planetfall is a 20-40 minute card collecting game with European-style scoring and small bonuses for each playing faction if they make certain types of cards.

 “The cover looks pretty epic,” my wife joked before our first two-player game. And the cover REALLY looks pretty epic - it seems to depict a game that looks like it's going to be Mass Effect for desktop.

 It's not, but I think Planetfall achieves what it's trying to achieve. I'm not sure you'll want to play this game after the first few times you get it on your desk.

THERE IS SO MUCH OF EVERYTHING

 Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a card drafting game for 2-6 players (well, mostly) that consists of 14 turns over seven rounds.

 Each player takes on the role of faction leader with tracking of player score, experience points, power and energy. The last two tracks are expendable resources, so you'll be moving these trackers back and forth as you play. Experience points never decrease and range from 0 to 10 points. Experience is useful mainly in the fight against enemy factions, presented here in the form of cards.

 After a small market of cards is created for each round, the player first in the initiative order places their spaceship token (essentially used as a betting token in Planetfall) on one card in the market. When each player draws one card, the market is resolved from top to bottom, left to right.

 There are four suits of cards. Units must be fought or negotiated; Tech cards grant permanent powers and then scoring conditions at the end of the game. Landmarks encourage players to adopt a specific collection strategy, while Pickup cards offer one-time energy or income bonuses that can be claimed at the start of each round.

 If a player doesn't like the cards in the market, they can choose Operations instead, which is the transfer action in Planetfall, but a little juicier. You can spend "Operation Points" on things like victory points, power points, and experience points to make trades and prepare for better actions in future turns. Operations aren't that interesting, but it's a necessary evil in a lot of games because it's hard to keep wasting other resources without touching one or both from scratch on the player mat.

 The rounds are divided into planet decks. Each of the seven rounds has a different deck of planets with cards progressing in difficulty and rewards. You'll see most of the deck each game (especially with more players), so there's not a lot of replayability in terms of the differences between these decks. A deck always contains 14 cards, and the breakdown of the four suits in the deck is always the same: four unit cards, four pick cards, three technology cards, and three landmark cards.

 The turns are cool. Depending on where a player draws their card, they return to the initiative track in that order, meaning if you pick first, you pick first again the next round. The value of the cards is higher if the cards are in the top row of the market table, so this is a counterbalance to the player who tries to always choose the card first.

 My Planetfall games have always lasted less than an hour. My two player game lasted just over 30 minutes. I believe that experienced players can complete a game like this for four players in about 20-30 minutes.

ALMOST PERFECT

 Planetfall plays fast. The game is easy to learn. Scoring is open, so it's easy to see how your opponents are doing. Planetfall is quick to break down and quick to assemble.

 I just wish it was more interesting.

 My wife realized this after our first game; from turn to turn the decisions are somewhat interesting, but there is usually a clear "best" choice regarding the action. A lot of cards and all Pickup cards feel like that for a reason. Often Pickup cards are exactly the same, with the same card name and the same rewards. If there are scoring milestones in the endgame that encourage players to draw certain types of cards, they always will. And when in doubt, I often find that I usually play the card that scores the most victory points, regardless of what the milestones say.

 The fast game time is its best asset. I also like how the cards are broken down by value based on the level of the market they are currently at. Some of the purple tech cards have interesting bonuses that make them attractive no matter what you're going to do. Income seems to be a bug in Planetfall - taking Pickup cards to get a single energy boost seems like a waste. But I've found that tech cards often have a reasonable value and consistent income benefit, so I grab them when I can.

 The most troubling part of the reviewer's Planetfall experience comes late in the game. No matter what I did in each of my games, I was about 10 points ahead of the other players. This could mean that the game is extremely balanced. It can also mean that it doesn't matter what you do in a game that screams "scoring salad" because you're going to score 70-80 points no matter what.

 I mentioned earlier that Planetfall is mostly a card-matching game. One of the factions has a bonus associated with the performance of operational actions. Operational actions result in the player not taking a card from the market. In one of our games, a player won with only five cards in the entire game (ie only five cards, while the rest had 13 or 14).

 The rest of the time he would perform Operational Actions and use some of his Operational Points to gain victory points as one of the expendable actions. (This will pay off well later in the game, as you can always score points equal to the current number of rounds.) Combined with getting a tech card that boosted his ops points even more, and a final milestone that scored points for his remaining resource power, it became a powerful combo. Even then, the bills were tight.

 I've never had a bad experience with Planetfall, and other players who have joined me in individual games have told me the same. You might have a clever twist or two, but nothing that screams "I'm a genius!" My wife and I both commented after our game together that the game might be too short. It looks like a more strategic affair with potentially important decisions, but by the time you realize it's not, you're dealing the cards for the fifth round of a seven-round game.

 Planetfall falls into that hard-to-review category—it's an average game, everything about it is good (including the design and rules), and it's a game that I started to forget about almost as soon as I finished writing this review. For fans of the video game, I wonder if Planetfall is a more interesting experience because those fans might recognize some of the enemies or images. Otherwise, there are many great options in the map/open projects category that provide better gameplay.