So I backed this little beauty a while ago and the other day it came through my front door. I was pleasantly surprised as not only did it reach me before schedule but it also came in a lovely little box. The artwork is gorgeous and consistent and the quality of the materials used are fabulous.

I dove straight in with a solo game, it borrows deck building mechanics from many other popular titles but the location element is a really nice touch. It forces you to think about where you will be and optimizing your movement strategy along with building the most powerful deck.

The aim of the game is to score the most influence as an architect thus ensuring you are the guy with all the plans to save humanity from a dying solar system. You start with a standard deck plus 2 random faction cards and a random faction architect (leader) who has abilities. You spend cards to generate currency and defence which in turn are used to purchase more cards from the market and/or stop events from happening. These can be social or solar events and they generally cause bad stuff to happen, for instance making flight between locations expensive, locking down the bonuses that each location give or on the catastrophic end cause all locations to be locked down. They also remove influence you have gained if you don't own an embassy at that location.

Embassies allow you to travel between locations cheaply and give you access to the better location effects so they are very useful to get out quickly. I won my first solo game (woot) and that evening was set to crack the game out for a 4 player match. The basic game is 2 player, but with 2 decks you combine them to give you all the cards you need for 4 players.

The 4 player mechanics stand up well, we were constantly rivalling each other for influence, gaining, losing and stealing it...

Not much more to say on this for the moment, it has seen some more play since then and is light enough to teach new people quickly but deep enough to provide a lovely experience. Great little game if you can pick this up cheaply.