AuZtralia
Designed by: Martin Wallace
Step into the Lovecraftian world of the Cthulu – a hundred years ago, war has decimated most of the planet and the survivors head to Australia to start a new world. But as your settlers spread across the land, the monsters within awaken…
In AuZtralia each player starts with a port and expands from there across the map: building rail to connect to new territories, building farms to harvest corn, cattle and sheep, and developing military units to protect their civilisation. How it all works is via the time track around the edge of the board – every action you take costs time (some more than others!) and whoever is furthest back on the time track becomes the active player. Taking an action involves placing a cube on your individual player board – there are actions to build farms, to mine territories under your control (for coal, iron or gold), to build track (which is what you need iron and coal for) or military units (cost in gold) and to add personality cards to your growing civilisation that give ongoing or one-off benefits. But – if you want to take an action you’ve already taken, you must pay a gold piece for every cube present! So taking actions gets expensive – until you take the return all cubes action to clear the board and start over.
For a while the game is almost bucolic, as everybody builds farm and track. But when you reach a certain point on the time track, the Old Ones – zombie monsters, basically – start to wake up and attack, blighting your farms – which will cost you points – and generally being a pain in the neck. And at this point players begin to work more as a collective, as they can fight together to defeat the Old Ones, using a simple card-drawing system that reveals what military units do damage, and whether the monster you’re fighting does as well. There’s a real luck-pushing sense here as just one more card could be glorious victory or abysmal defeat. Fortunately you can choose to retreat and live to fight another day…
When all players – including the Old Ones! – reach the end of the time track, scores are tallied with farms, defeated monsters and some personality cards scoring points. The Old Ones score as well though, and can easily win if everyone plays evasively – some aggression is needed!
Sam says
I do like games that tell a story, and absurd though it is, AuZtralia certainly does that: a story laced with tension and humour and push-your-luck temptation (because killing the monsters gets you points!) as well as tactical play. The monsters don’t just wake up – they move around, and potentially change the game’s outcome by blighting the wrong (or right, depending on your perspective!) farms. I wouldn’t want to play it with anyone who needs chess-like pondering over their every move – but played at a click it’s great fun: a quirky B-Movie epic, prone to narrative twists and turns.
-
Take That!
Players can sneakily nab resources or military units (there's a finite number) before each other - but most Take Thatery is from the common enemy, so despite the competitive vibe, you can find yourself cheering your opponents on as they battle some flying zombie beast from hell...
-
Fidget Factor!
It moves along pretty quickly, but it's worth bearing in mind that some turns (track-building!) are more time-consuming than others, which may give your opponents a turn or three before the action swings back your way.
-
Brain Burn!
It's not too heavy. The crux of the game is balancing the individual needs (score points) with the collective need to stop the Old Ones winning.
-
Again Again!
There's a randomised set-up and you're never entirely what Old Ones will be where until they awaken. It might be Cthulu, but then again, it might be a harmless kangaroo your jumpy sentries have found...
