With the various districts sitting in the middle of the table and player’s armies surrounding it, taking control of Gateway city intuitively feels like it’s the primary goal of the game, and yet once everything ends each district you currently hold is only worth a single point. Surprisingly, though, the area-control aspect of the game is a lot less important than it looks visually. This can also trigger the district’s ability, including drawing an extra card or some victory points. So long as you wipe the entire enemy force out you get to take control of the district, as shown by placing one of your kind of ugly cardboard standees on it. Importantly, though, whoever your attacking also gets to strike back, doing the exact same thing as you, and thus you need to be prepared to lose a few soldiers in the assault unless you massively outnumber them. You can assign your attack points however you see fit, so you could pour them all into an annoying card that has a high defense value or spread them out against several smaller foes, perhaps ones that have abilities you want to get rid of. Whatever your target you simply need to calculate the total attack and defense values of your army as clearly listed on the cards, and then compare them against the enemy’s same values, with attack points being pitted against defense and vice versa. That brings us nicely to vying for control of the numerous districts, either against other players or against the city guard or even the incoming monsters. Don’t worry, though, they don’t die, they just get added to your discard pile. Unlike other card types your insurgents stay on the table to act as your army, and only get removed when they are defeated in combat. Every turn you have a default of two action points to spend and typically an insurgent will cost a single point to put on the table, although some special effects can alter this like letting you play a bonus card for free. Much like your merchants, support cards are also free to play and are taken back off the table at the end of each turn, but they bring a variety of benefits including extra gold to spend, being able to draw more cards, boosts to your army and more action points.Īction points? These come into the picture when you play insurgent cards who form your army. All of them get added to your discard pile, ready and waiting to be shuffled into your new and hopefully improved deck. You can pick up new, more valuable merchants, new insurgents for your army like mobile wizard towers and blunderbuss mages and Red Templars. From the massive thirty different types of cards you randomly select eight to sit alongside a few core cards to form what is essentially the Argos of fantastical things. Your starting deck contains a variety of merchants which are free to play and grant you gold to spend in the shop, and what a big shop it is. So, the core of the game is its deck-building which follows the same basic idea as most games in the genre. You’ll be battling for control of Gateway city which is made up of six randomly chosen hexagonal districts that surround a central district, but standing in your way are other players, the city guards tasked with keeping order and even invading monsters whose sole goal is to trash stuff, thus not only do you want to score the most Infamy points by the end of the game but you also need to stop the city from getting overrun by the monster hordes otherwise it’s game over for everyone, bringing a sort of semi-cooperative element into the experience. So, Gateway attempts to merge this deck-building satisfaction with area-control. You take the same stack of basic cards as everyone else and then proceed to slowly add new things to it, molding what you began with into something that’s yours, built around your vision for how to win. There’s something satisfying about a deck-builder, I think. Review copy provided free of charge by Asmodee UK. Designed by: John Hawkins, Michelle Menard
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