More thoughts about Voidfall
Voidfall is a huge sprawling and complex game. It has a book that tells which parts of the other book you should read as you start out. 😅 But I’m here to show you around, so let’s take a look under the hood!
First of all Voidfall isn’t a complete 4X game ☝️ - you will eXpand into new sectors, eXploit them for resources and eXterminate enemies; however there is no eXploration. You just set up tiles from the scenario book, and only some tokens will be randomized. This is a bit of a bummer, because exploration is often the most fun part. 🫤
Everyone has a deck of 9 focus cards, some of which might be unique due to the asymmetric factions. These contain the actions that you can do on your turn. 🧐 A game consists of 3 cycles, and in each cycle an event card will decide how many turns there are - usually 4-6.
On your turn you play a focus card and choose 2 out of its 3 depicted actions to perform, potentially paying their costs if they have any. There is actually a bit more to this: if you have a trade token from a previous turn you could use it to do the 3rd action as well, and if you have an agenda card with a matching icon, you can perform the agenda card’s extra action. So you don’t always just perform 2 actions. 👍
Actions do all sorts of things: building guilds to increase resource income or producing resources, building installations like shipyards or defenses, constructing fleets, going up on your 3 civ tracks, removing corruption, raising population, inventing new technologies, invading sectors, etc. There is a lot to do, and it's up to you to choose the best course of action.
The game does a good job of guiding you along: event cards show 2 end of cycle objectives that you ideally want to achieve, and agenda cards you play out will also score each cycle. So you always have some short and long term goals to work towards. What faction you play as and what technologies are available for the current game will deeply influence your strategy.
Playing a game of Voidfall takes really long, but it’s also super fun! 😁
I feel like there is so much more to talk about this game, but for now this will have to do. 👋
