Nucleum

Nucleum has its roots in Brass, Barrage and Imperial Steam but I would be happy to play it ahead of any of those games.

A game I wish I liked more. It is beautiful, interesting and variable. But it just seems to be missing something I can't put my finger on.

I need to get another play on it and reevaluate.

Own the [boardgame=408223]Australia[/boardgame] and [boardgame=423519]Court of Progress[/boardgame] expansions and the [boardgame=400823]Acrylic Nucleums[/boardgame], [boardgame=400825]Half Tiles[/boardgame], [boardgame=425063]Patrons set[/boardgame], [boardgame=425315]Neons[/boardgame] and [boardgame=425316]New Contracts[/boardgame] promos.

Extremely complicated and the theme of electricity just doesn't attract me.

Nucleum hits a lot of the familiar Euro beats. This isn't necessarily a slight on the game, it just seems to be the reality of modern Euros - games that are largely efficiency puzzles through and through, challenging you to maximize those classic 'action-domino' combos.

The fundamental actions you'll be executing in Nucleum are actually much simpler than the 4+ complexity rating would suggest. Play an action tile to your player board or use it as a railway tile and execute the actions on it (if you can), or 'recharge' to gain your income and your tiles back, but you'll be agonizing over every small decision and how it might potentially impact your ability to perform an action on a later turn. The game demands AP - if you're not playing efficiently, why even play?!

Our play with 2 players did feel a bit solitaire-y, but with 3 or 4, I could see the board getting a lot tighter, with access to crucial contract-fulfilling spaces blocked off. With more players in the game, however, that's an inevitable recipe for more downtime between turns in games like this as people try to maximize their moves.

A few of the less appealing notes are the onerous setup (besting even large beasts like GWT or Anachrony) and the massive table-hog that could make this a pain to break out at most casual game nights.

First impressions. Strong title. Has a very Brass-esque feel with the network building, although things work differently and I do think I still prefer Brass. I liked how the mechanisms worked together, with contracts feeding into technologies and technologies enabling more energy production. There were interesting decision-making around when to refresh and definitely a lot of interesting ideas. I have enough similar titles that I don't need to own it, but I would happily play it again.

Turns are fairly quick despite the decision space, and fiddliness is marginal. There are many helpful graphical rules reminders on all the boards and the iconography is easy to understand.

The AI is very easy to run and comes with a near-comprehensive aid on the back of the solo rulebook. Figuring out where the AI will build is the thinky-est procedure, but it is far simpler than in Barrage.

Nucleum is far less cutthroat than Barrage because there is little worker placement blockage. You can always do what you want as long as you have the tile and can pay for it, and it's not often that you are boxed in or out of a network. There is also no randomness as far as power sources go (i.e. Barrage's water placement tiles).

Coming back to this and relearning it is a struggle, and I don't love it enough to bother. This is now a pattern with Turczi games; I had the same problem with Excavation Earth and Tawantinsuyu. I think I'll stick to the Imperium style card games.

Too long setup. Reduced number of actions with deep decision space. Theme is non existant, pure eurogame. Good game. Solo is nice, although decisions are often too random (decided with a die).