Age of Wonders Planetfall: Board Game Review

Overview

Planetfall is a card drafting and set collection tableau builder based on the 4X strategy videogame of the same name. You play as one of six factions sending expeditions to various planets to obtain resources, technology, and power. The player with the most Empire Points at the end of the game wins.

You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!

I’m a huge fan of the Planetfall video game, and its expansions, having reviewed all of them favorably. The board game adaption has a few things going for it. It’s quick to learn, fast to play, and easy to set up. It does, however, severely squander the IP it’s based on.

There’s almost nothing in common between the video game and the board game beyond the names and artwork. That obviously won’t be an issue for anyone who hasn’t played the video game but for fans like myself. It’s impossible to ignore.

Gideon’s Bias	Planetfall Information
Review Copy Used: Yes	Publisher: Hobby World, Arcane Wonders
Number of Plays: 10+	Designer: Stepan Opalev
Player Counts Played: 2, 3 & 4	Player Count: 2-6
Fan of Genre: Yes	Genre: Drafting, Set Collection, Tableau Building
Fan of Weight: No	Weight: Light
Gaming Groups Thoughts: Enjoyed It	Price: $44.99

Presentation

Planetfall comes with an operation board, a stack of cards, six character boards, and a handful of tokens. The artwork is taken straight from the video game, so it’s both excellent and consistent throughout the entire game.

Planetfall is a light game that’s even easier to learn than most, thanks to the clear rulebook and crisp iconography. The overall visual layout of the cards is nice, clean, and easy to understand.

I also particularly enjoy the wooden pieces, I don’t see wood used all that often, and I generally prefer them to plastic. Each faction also has a unique ship token, and that’s a nice touch.

One issue I do have is how easy it is to mess up your board. You use cubes to track your resources and empire points, and it’s all too easy to bump, nudge, or in my case, completely scatter them. It’s at least 40% my fault for being an uncoordinated ape who forgets he has limbs. But my love for inset boards will never die. It would have been nice to have inset player boards considering how little the game actually comes with for the price.

Now, I fully believe in buying a game for the gameplay, not the pieces, but the lack of components can negatively impact that gameplay. That’s something I’ll dig into a bit later.

On the other hand, Planetfall has some of the fastest setup and tear-down I’ve seen outside of games that fit your pocket. Unfold the board, shuffle seven small decks, and you’re done. It’s that fast.

Taking the Initiative

Planetfall consists of 7 rounds, each dictated by a small deck of planet cards. You play through the planet decks 1 to 7 in that order. Cards from each planet deck are dealt into three rows that dictate the various costs or rewards on the cards themselves.

Players draft these cards in an attempt to gain resources, and Empire Points, and ideally work toward the end game goals dictated by one of 8 goal sheets that are chosen at the start of the game.

In particular, Planetfall’s initiative system stands out to me. On a player’s turn, they choose to place their ship on the card they want. Cards on lower rows are usually cheaper or offer better rewards. However, once everyone has placed their ships. They resolve from left to right and top to bottom. When you resolve your chosen card, you place your ship on the next available initiative slot.

This means that players who choose cards that are higher up and further to the left usually have to pay a bit more, but they get to choose earlier next turn. Each player only gets up to two cards per planet, so factoring in your initiative is important for getting the cards you want.

The actual mechanics of resolving the cards are straightforward. Some cards require energy, others require strength, and sometimes you can substitute one or the other depending on the card. Unit cards are more expensive if your leader’s experience is lower than the required amount.

Cards usually reward you with some of those same resources. Energy, Strength or XP, and many also grant Empire Points. Others grant you ongoing bonuses, and some are worth additional points when you collect a pair of them.

The game flows exceptionally fast as players are really just picking the cards they want and can afford, and then they simply move their resource cubes up and down the tracks on their player boards. There is a degree of strategy in outdrafting your opponents. This is especially true at higher player counts as the available cards get tighter. Sadly most of that strategy ends up overshadowed by the blatantly obvious paths that certain faction and goal card combos should take.

Operational Failure

In addition to drafting, you can also forgo choosing a card at all to perform operations, which essentially allows you to gain an amount of XP, Strength, Energy, or even Empire points split how you choose.

Operations cut two ways. On one hand, it means you always have options. If you get locked out during a draft, you aren’t forced to spend resources on a card you don’t need.

On the other hand, in many cases, it can be more effective to simply sit on operation spaces each round to gain victory points or to meet the conditions of a goal card. This is especially true for certain factions. Playing that way completely disengages you from the main game and is incredibly boring, but at times, too effective to ignore.

I feel like the operation system is the game’s own simplicity eating itself, and it’s not the only example. A lot of your decisions are more or less made for you based on the random goal card and your chosen faction. For example. If a goal card awards a player points for having the most pickup cards, and you’re playing as Jack Gelder who gains two strength whenever they claim a pickup card. Guess what cards you’re going to be drafting for most of the game?

Some leaders have clear advantages toward certain goal cards too, which gives the player who is choosing their faction first a pretty big advantage. The factions are double-sided, which essentially gives you twelve factions to play as, but they all suffer to some degree from that same kind of programmed decision-making.

To top off this unfortunate string of criticism is the lack of components I mentioned earlier. You feel it most with the planet cards. 98 cards might sound like a lot, but they are split between 7 decks, just 14 cards each. Those decks are used in a specific order from one to seven.

With four or more players, all but two cards from each planet deck are used during that planet’s round. This means in most games, you see nearly all of the cards from the last game become available at the exact same points throughout the next game. Combine that with the clear advantages and preprogrammed decision-making presented by faction abilities and goal cards, and you have a game that to some extent, plays itself once you have the hang of it.

It’s not every turn of every game, but often enough to severely undermine the gameplay and make me question the point of playing at all. Planetfall desperately needed more cards for more variety.

In Name Only

As a fan of the Planetfall video game, I’m most disappointed at how very little the game represents the source material at all. The video game is a deep 4X strategy game with a large focus on tactical grid-based combat. You had unique factions with their own units, tech trees, strengths, and weaknesses. You had to explore the planet, take over territory, and constantly engage in diplomacy and war with other players.

Close to none of that translated over to the board game. In fact, your only interaction with other players is through drafting. Distilling a complex 4X strategy war game into a very lightweight point salad tableau builder doesn’t sit well with me at all, especially because I’m confused as to why it uses the Planetfall name.

It’s clear that the IP is simply painted on to give the game mechanics a theme, but most games I’ve seen that use its source material haphazardly do so for name recognition. Planetfall and the Age of Wonders series are very niche. It isn’t a mainstream video game series at all, so you aren’t getting any name recognition there. Those who do recognize it will be fans of the video game, who are very likely going to expect something deeper than what the board game delivers.

The board game uses the names, art, and iconography from Planetfall, but as mere window dressing for a game that shares no similarities with it. It would be like taking the Witcher and making it a game about brewing the best tea. Could you do it? Sure, rebrand the tea as elixirs. Would it be what anyone would expect or want upon seeing the box? Probably not. As a Planetfall fan, I’m really bummed out.

Verdict

The amount of games competing for your shelf and game table is constant and fierce. While Planetfall does have some strong points, its flaws cast a rather unfortunate shadow over it. To be fair, I personally find that plenty of lighter games simply do not hold up against scrutiny when it comes to gameplay mechanics. Yet, they seem to be quite popular regardless.

But despite that, given Planetfall’s price point and the plethora of games, even other lightweight ones that can be found at that price. I simply can’t recommend a board game adaptation that quite literally adapts nothing from its source material and ends up with a preprogrammed decision space as often as Planetfall does.