Corrosion

Get stuff, use it before it rusts to get other stuff that doesn’t rust. Use the stuff that doesn’t rust to get more stuff that rusts to make even more stuff that doesn’t rust. Get points along the way and lots more points at the end for your stuff that didn’t rust. There is a lot of rust.

Corrosion
Designer: Stefan Bauer
Publisher: Deep Print Games
Released: 2021

How to Play

Players start the game with six Engineer cards. Each Engineer has its own unique action and also has a value between one and three. Players also have their own personal workshop board: a rotating wheel with four zones – Zone X (the ‘active’ area of your workshop) Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3 - as well as a separate area which will house permanent ‘chrome’ machines which you will build during the game which provide on going effects as well as a good source of end of game points.

Each turn you will choose between one of two main actions:

Action 1: Send an Engineer to your workshop and take its action.

Place a numbered Engineer of your choice into its equivalent numbered area of your workshop and perform its action. Typically Engineer actions will let you select an item from a central shared marketplace:

• Gain additional Engineers with different and typically greater powers than your starting six (a nice bit of deck building going on here)

• Obtain ‘turning’ or ‘one shot’ machines and place them into section 3 of your workshop. Turning machines will provide ongoing resources as the game progresses. One shot machines will provide a one off benefit

• Take ‘Chrome’ machines which provide permanent benefits

Your remaining Engineer actions gain you resources of either steam or cogs (the games main resource) – earned cogs are also stored in section 3 of your workshop until you choose to use them.

Action 2: Turn your Workshop wheel

You will turn your workshop wheel one quarter turn clockwise. Your active Zone X now sits where your Zone 1 sat previously. Time has moved. This has two implications;

1. Any of the Engineer cards that you had previously placed in your workshop can now be retrieved if they now find themselves located in your active Zone X. You now have that card back enabling you to take its action again on future turns.

Q: So turning your wheel is good as you get your Engineers back?

A: Erm, not exactly…

2. You remember when I said that when you gain resources and build machines and place them in your Zone 3? Well the more you turn your wheel the more those resources and machines edge closer to being in Zone X and at the end of your turn if there are any resources or machines left in Zone X then they rust and are removed from the game. You lose them. Groan.

a. Your turning machines are removed and no longer provide ongoing effects (you gain their benefits every time you turn the wheel - hence their name)

b. When you originally placed your ‘one shot’ machines into Zone 3, they weren’t active. They had a cost (those important cogs and steam!) which you need to pay to make them active. If you have managed to pay the cost to make them active by the time they find themselves in Zone X then great, take their benefit before they rust and are removed. Didn’t manage to pay the cost and they are still inactive? Too late: they rust and are removed from the game – you missed your chance to get their benefit.

Q. If everything I build rusts and is removed from the game what’s the point?

Your Turning and One Shot machines tend to give you enough ‘stuff’ to then be able to activate any Chrome machines that you may have (much like your one shot machines they have a costs before you can start using their benefits). But once the Chrome machines are active then they remain permanently so for the rest of the game - never rusting and hopefully working in tandem with your other machines to bring about combos and chains - for example one machine might generate steam when you turn your wheel, another might let you turn that steam into cogs, another might let you trade those cogs for points (I made that last one up but you get the idea - one move can set of a chain reaction).

There are some ‘contracts’ that you can fulfil as you go through the game which will earn you points at the end of the game (eg get 2 points for every single type of machine you have built) and you will earn some points here and there incidentally throughout the game but the main bulk of your points comes from your Chrome Machines at the end of the game with each one having a points value depending on its power; the more powerful the Chrome machine = the more resources it took to activate it = the greater its points at the end of the game.

Solo Headlines:

A simple beat your own score. Solo opponent has a deck of cards. Flip its card over, remove the item it displays from the marketplace so that you can’t get your grubby hands on it anymore. Will take less than ten seconds to take its turn.

At this point (much like in the multiplayer game) you can also copy its action if you want by playing a card from your hand of a matching colour but higher value. A bit of a chewy decision on whether to take what is in effect an extra action outside of your own turn but relinquish one of your Engineers from your hand meaning you can’t use it for your own turn anymore.

When the solo deck is cycled through 4 times count up your scores as its Game Over. Hopefully you did better than your previous score. Expect games to take 60 minutes or less.

Beat your own score solo games may not be to everyone’s tastes but in this game it feels wholly appropriate. The entire game is about you; your workshop, your machines, your combos, your resources – how you are optimising your engine. This game is the epitome of an individual optimisation / efficiency puzzle: other than having the ability to copy your opponent’s action and perhaps having something taken from the shared market place that you might have had your eye on there isn’t going to be any interest really in what another player is doing. This is a 'heads down focus on nothing but your own game' type of game. Indeed I can see this game perhaps suffering at higher player counts much in the same way as another (criminally underrated) solo game Blackout Hong Kong. I don’t want to wait for other people to take their turns as I probably have my next few turns mapped out and just want to get on with taking them, tapping my fingers on the table waiting for my turn to eventually come back around.

General Headlines:

Its not you, its me…

This game is good. I think some people are going to think this is a really good game. It is a really good game. The things that I don’t like about it are not faults of the game, they are indicative of my gaming preferences and I guess if I share what it is about me that makes me struggle a little with this one then you might by end up feeling that the game completely matches your tastes. You see, I like a strategic game. I like knowing at the start of the game the two or three things that I am going to achieve by the end of the game and I am going to spend every breathing second of the game working towards those goals. Heck, give me some objective cards at the start as well to satisfy that itch even further. I want a clear end goal.

Here though as soon as I have started to build my engine in a naïve hope of it gaining me as much stuff as Terraforming Mars does when it explodes, everything rusts and I have to start building my engine again. Perhaps not fully from scratch. But slowly, incrementally and most importantly - tactically. This game is a tactical game and not a strategic one. Things change and vanish so quickly that you just cant have an end goal in mind. You have to adapt in the moment to this ever changing game state. So, if you are a tactical player rather than a strategic one then you are going to LOVE this.

My other minor issues are semi-related. You can start to get quite nice combos together which are quite satisfying and give a good dopamine hit when they happen. But equally, I feel a little deflated when those combos are no more thanks to the darn rusting. As finding those combos are quite integral to your success I also worry that there might be more than some luck involved in having the right things come on to the marketplace at just the right time for you to be able to add it to your engine. When the marketplace works for you it really sets those combos on fire. When the marketplace isn’t giving you the potential for big combos then your engine can feel quite slow, stuttering and unsatisfying. But again this is not the fault of the game. The game tells me explicitly what it is. It’s a game about building stuff, toiling in a hot workshop, fires blazing, sweat dripping, things rusting. You are having to literally work hard for everything that you earn in this game. Which again, might be right up the street of some players that want to feel like they have grinded out any reward.

I would summarise the game as being more on the puzzle side than game side of things. Ok I get that all Euros are at heart efficiency puzzles. This one just lands more on the puzzle side than game side– perhaps the fact that it doesn’t have a main board and just individual player boards makes me feel this even more acutely.

I don’t want readers to think that I dislike this game. The opposite is true. This is very cleverly designed from what I believe is a first time designer. And what an excellent design it is. The cogs of your mind will be whirring as hard as the literal cogs in the game as you graft and slog away building your machines slowly but surely. And I always love the use of time as a mechanism much like in Tzolk'in or Barrage.

This is a superb tactical solo puzzle. If you like tactical solo optimisation puzzles that play in 60 minutes with minimal upkeep then I think you have found your new next game. It will certainly make its way off my shelf from time to time when I want that tactical itch scratched.

At a glance:

+ Really clever design and central conceit.

+ Opportunity to have some good rewarding combos

+ Solo mode is easy to manage and the beat your own score not an issue for a game that would be largely solitaire at all player counts

+ Plays in my preferred 60min solo sweet spot

+ I like time being used as a mechanism

- Can feel unrewarding when you don’t feel able to string combos together

- Frustrating to see your hard won engine rust away – making this game tactical rather than strategic.

- A minor gripe, I miss having a main board. Makes the table presence feel a little underwhelming though the art is great.

Final score:

7 out of 10 (+1 if tactical games are your personal preference)

Reviewed after 7 plays.