Last night Ian Andrew and I crash-landed on a forbidding planet. With only hours before sundown, we had to get our crew to the relative warmth of the underground before the temperature plummeted to non-life-supporting climes and anyone still on the surface froze. Fortunately we had a platform from which to launch our drones, and a steady supply of lime-flavoured crisps. It was Cryo.
The ship has broken into four distinct and semi-functional parts: on a turn you can either assign a drone to go visit one of them (collect stuff/do actions) or recall all your drones. Broadly speaking the goal is to move your crew pods from the broken ship to the caverns, but there are some interesting wrinkles. For one, your platform isn't just a garage for drones: it also houses rescued crew, and allows you to build processing units that are activated by the recalled droids. Secondly, although the caverns are safe, they are also the scene of a show of force: having the most survivors in a cavern means you control it, which is good for getting points.
Finally Cryo is a game where you're racing against time, and the palpable desperation takes hold as factions that start peacefully coexisting descend into war as the clock ticks ever closer to doomsday: players can and will harpoon each other, sabotaging the ship and blowing parts of it up whilst other players still occupy it.
Allied to drone activity are a currency of cards, that can be used to upgrade your platform, represent vehicles (needed to transport your crew underground) discarded for scrap or played face-down as missions, for end-game points. The game becomes more tense as the final moments tick away, as nobody is entirely sure when the sun will vanish over the horizon until either the moment comes, or you choose to end it yourself. I foolishly forewent this option, thinking victory was safe, and allowed Andrew to sneak past me for the win: his mission got him a paltry 2 points, but he made drone hay whilst mine dawdled, recharging on the platform.
Andrew 32 / Sam 29 / Ian 23
Having established the new order, Andrew went home for an early bed, and Ian and I pondered what two-player fun we could have. We stayed in the cosmos with a double-blast of Quantum, where I took the first game with some dastardly upgrades...
And the second one as well, thanks to some more dastardly stuff but also Ian's appallingly bad luck on some early dice-rolling, that swing momentum my way in irrecoverable fashion.
We finished off the evening with a little-seen old favourite in (Extreme) Biblios. We were so rusty, we forgot what colours are.
Ian made me eat shit no less than five times, and remains King Biblios (the only player to have won all five dice) but last night I regained the Mr Biblios title with a 9-7 win as I snaffled green, orange and red dice. It was still early - 10pm! - but we wrapped things up there, with another chapter written in the annals of GNN. I'm keen to play Cryo again - maybe Tuesday...?
I enjoyed Cryo. Once the iconography clicks, it's pretty straightforward. Keen to play it again soon.
ReplyDelete