It provides a fifth company, from the Netherlands, although the maximum number of players remains at 4.

Barrage Primer | Barrage - BoardGameGeek A Barrage Primer | Barrage - BoardGameGeek

The Bank is a single action space that works differently from the others: you can place here any number of Engineers with a single action.Planning to make all of this work in time to get that desperately needed building constructed before its site is grabbed by an evil opponent is very challenging and lots of fun. They can use workers to turn their construction wheel (more on that later), add some new water to the river, and activate a powerhouse. Barrage is a resource management and strategic placement game in which players compete to build their majestic dams, raise them to increase their storing capacity of precious water, and deliver all the potential power through pressure tunnels connected to powerhouse energy turbines.

Barrage: The Leeghwater Project | Board Games | Zatu Games UK Barrage: The Leeghwater Project | Board Games | Zatu Games UK

If an opponent builds a dam/conduit/powerhouse combo, one possibility is to build a dam to catch the water that his conduit will reroute when he generates energy. Divide the Advanced Technology tiles according to their backs and shuffle the three piles separately. With gameplay that is tight and thinky, Barrage also offers variability due to variable player powers and different set-up each game. After much consternation at his exclusion from our Mount Rushmore of games, we’ve decided to honour legendary designer Sid Sackson elsewhere – a BGB Designer Spotlight!In Barrage each player is one of four CEOs representing four national companies aiming to prevail in the race to produce energy. All these are available using one to three workers (and sometimes three credits if desperate for a particular action).

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Shuffle the Headstream tiles and randomly place 4 tiles face up in the designated spaces on the Map. Finally, there’s also a solo game included, in which the player plays against one or more automas—I haven’t played that yet, but at least there’s a viable option for lovers of solitaire games. This combination of a unique theme, intricate planning, positive gameplay, and strong player interaction makes for a hugely appealing package for players who like meatier Euros. Conduits act as carriers to get water out of a basin to produce energy and the owning player or the opposition can pay to use the conduit.

The remaining actions are all associated with spaces on the central player boards and when a space is taken, it can’t be chosen again until the next round. The game’s first batch of construction wheels have a tenancy to lose grip of the technology tiles and resources. I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but several of my gaming buddies have and they’re very high on it and feel it’s the best way to play the game. When you get a resource (in any way), take it from the general supply and add it to your personal supply (do not put it on the Construction Wheel).

Barrage (Game Review by Larry Levy) | The Opinionated Gamers Barrage (Game Review by Larry Levy) | The Opinionated Gamers

I’ve expressed my love of Italian-designed games many times on these pages and one of the principal reasons for that is how one action can lead to another, in a very enjoyable cascading effect. I’m also unsure if taking the first turn is good enough consolation for having the last pick of the player powers. Some of the spaces are on the player boards, which only that player can use, while the others are available to all players, on a first-come, first-serve basis. As the game is, often there are moments where a player will want to curse when the action they want is taken.It’s a game that still has over 100 users giving the game a 1 on BGG due to their mishandling of it (which is ridiculous to do, BTW). There is an end-game building objective, randomly chosen at the start of the game, that‘s worth a big chunk of VPs; the players are ranked in how well they meet this objective, with the most successful player earning the most VPs, and so on.