Portal Games Publishing House takes care of its customers and constantly provides us with new boxes for a tactical game set in a post-apocalyptic world. The premiere of the seventeenth army Merchants Guild is ahead of us, so we remind you about the game itself and the starter set.
In the basic box we will find four factions that we will command. Juggernaut (red) is a mechanical-electronic creature that sends robots to patrol the ruins. They are quite resilient and hard to defeat, but they don’t have much mobility.
The Borgo army (blue) is a collection of mutants created by Moloch. This group is very fast and easily moves around the board, but is hopeless at ranged attacks. However, he has some interesting tricks up his sleeve, so if he gets close to the enemy, he can seriously hurt them.
Hegemony (yellow) is a land of lawlessness. It is ruled by gangs that respect no boundaries. This army is the most versatile and can effectively immobilize any enemy unit, but like the previous one, it does not perform well when the enemy is far away.
The only “good” army is the Outpost (green). Those who still have some moral backbone try to fight for humanity. Compared to machines, mutants and degenerate thugs, they are quite weak, but very mobile and clever.
The rules of the game are very simple, and the whole difficulty lies in the good use of the available units. Each player chooses an army, takes the tokens assigned to it, sets aside the HQ tile and damage counter, shuffles the rest of the hexes and places them in a facedown pile. Starting with the first player, everyone takes turns placing their bars on the board. Then, according to the description, they draw chips.
The turns look the same throughout the game. The player draws chips from the pile so that he has three face up in front of him. One must discard, and each of the other two may play, keep, or also discard. The most important thing is what is in the hexes. The numbers indicate the initiative, i.e. the order of attack, the small arrows indicate the direction of the melee attack, and the long arrows – from a distance. On the tiles you will also find the symbols of the net, armor, durability, mobility of the modules and the possible direction of action. Instant tiles, on the other hand, are not played on the board, but immediately resolved and discarded.
When one player draws the last tile from his stack, game over is triggered. The opponent takes one more turn, and then comes the Final Battle. The duel ends after it has been played or when one of the HQs has lost all its hit points.
Neuroshima Hex can be played with three or four people, but it doesn’t make much sense unless you’re playing as a team. This is a tactical board game perfect for a duo. In order for the chances of rivals to be even, they must know their armies at a similar level. A beginner has no chance against someone who has played even a few games. Knowing the strengths of the chosen faction is invaluable. The odds are evened out by the randomness in the draw of chips, because we can’t wait for the ones that we would need most at the moment.
In the basic box we will find four asymmetric armies, but as I mentioned earlier, the premiere of the seventeenth awaits us. This gives great replayability. Not only do you need to be able to use your strengths, but also know your opponent’s weaknesses. Getting to know the next boxes is still ahead of me, but I’m sure that they will all end up on my shelf in the end.
Neuroshima Hex is one of the most recognizable games published by Portal Games. It is highly tactical and requires planning while reacting to the rapidly changing situation on the board. I recommend it to fans of the negative interaction of tactical duels.
