Diplomacy, voting and trading

🚀 Brink is a game of trading, voting and diplomacy in the 🌖 Moonrakers universe, with many other euro elements such as worker placement, hand management and set collection. Normally I am not big on trading and voting, but the way the game works is quite fascinating, so I suggest giving it all a deeper look! 😉

The overall structure is relatively simple: 👉Players place all 3 of their starships in a round, then go into voting to score some points (mostly) depending on the location of their ships - repeat this 3 times, and go to end game scoring. There are some juicy nuances to it all of course. 😊

You have a small ship that goes on 1 hex tile, a medium ship that goes between 2 hexes, and a big ship that goes on an intersection of 3 hexes. There are 3 important things that happen when a ship touches one or more hexes. 🧐

1️⃣You can generate the depicted Resources, which are either cubes you can put into your supply, or Favors that are cubes you have to trade with others or else you lose them at the end of your turn. This is a clever way to force out some of the interaction from players.

2️⃣If there are Actions depicted on the hexes, you can perform them. You can draw Action cards for tons of useful effects, play Rider cards to change up the voting at the end of the round, recruit Ambassadors for set collection and ongoing abilities, and build Ship Upgrades to increase the efficacy of your ships. 

3️⃣Finally, for every hex you touch, you generate Power with those color factions. This is important for the end of round scoring. Which brings us to the voting!

At the end of a round, players secretly bid their resources to decide which 2 colors’ Faction Power will score in that round. This is the primary way of scoring points, and this is why the worker placement is so exciting all the way. 🙃 You keep considering why people went where they went, and try to guess what colors they’ll bid for. 

With the constant haggling, and strategic positioning on the board, there is a lot to love here! It’s even fun for me, even though I am more of a multiplayer solitaire kind of player! 😁