Factory 42

Designer: Timo Multamäki

Artr: Lars Munck

Price: ca € 50

Publisher: Dragon Dawn Productions

Additional information: Kickstarter Projekt

Rules: english, German translation download PDF

In-game text: JA

User: Experten

Version: 1. Auflage (2021), english

The factory makes all equal, but nothing immediately

Factory 42

Communist industry is not normally known for a huge output of commodities, but in a world that is populated by diligent and frugal dwarves this is not necessary. Product quality is of secondary importance, the focus is on completing some government orders and on keeping the steam kettle from exploding, because too many have burnt their left-over resources.

After we have - with some efforts - mastered the rules we are ready to start. We adopt the roles of factory overseers which assign suitable positions to dwarf comrades and commissioners to complete government orders. But where should you usefully place your dwarves? By and by, the options and correlations in that unusual worker placement game Factory 42 are revealed.

Definitive important is the securing of resources and transport to your own player board where you find two docks for the railcars, your personal warehouse and two factories for the production of commodities. Furthermore, you can do research there to enlarge the commodity storage or to enable each factory to access resources from both docks instead of only one.

Big wobbly dice tower

To be able to load resources into the railcars, the resources - in the guise of small colored cubes - must be first acquired. For each worker used for acquisition you may place resources of a certain point value into the common stock. All in all, there are nine different resources, with point costs between one and three, in categories of food, metal and material. In addition, there is coal, ideal for later steam production, and „magic“, a green cube that can be used as a joker to replace all other resources.

Before the cubes are available for loading, all the stock is thrown into the big Bureaucracy Tower, where sometimes one or several of the resources can get stuck and reappear only in a later round. This bureaucratic delay suits the topic nicely, but unfortunately handling and function/working of the tower does are not very convincing. It is rare that something gets stuck and usually the slightest touch on the impressive cardboard construction can make the missing cube reappear.

In the next step you need to fill the railcars. This happens, as everything in the game, in relation to the position of your own dwarf worker at the respective action location. If you are first in line, you act first, in positions further back it can happen that you miss out, if your fellow dwarves have grabbed all available resources.

However, there are also dirty tricks in play in the next step, the sending off of the railcars to your personal dock. It is exquisite pleasure when you can grab the filled-up railcar directly from the other player because you managed to place your meeple in front of his at the dispatch location.

No production of commodities without steam

The production of the items in demand not only needs resources, but also needs steam power. Steam power is increased by burning all burnable resources, which could not be placed on railcars, at the power station. Furthermore, each player can place a dwarf worker in order to increase the steam pressure by discarding personal resources. This gives you respectable rewards in the guise of red stars which can be changed later into victory points, but also carries the danger of the kettle overheating and exploding. In this case, only half the steam power is available, which usually is not enough for all to produce the planned commodities. Of course, it happens that the kettle is made to explode intentionally if you happen to place your own factory early in turn order.

Now, the demanded commodities are produced, of course only if you managed to acquire all of the necessary resources. At a pinch, you can produce commodities of reduced quality. This saves resources, but gives you no recognition stars which can then changed into victory points in Bookkeeping.

At the end of each round, those overseers are rewarded with victory points whose dwarves really did produce something and for unfiled orders there is a loss of points for all players, a collective penalty.

Factory 42 is an ambitious, innovative worker placement game, which however suffers from some unnecessary complicated rule details, too many different resources without relevant differences in function and from colors that are difficult to differentiate.

The board in shades of red and brown with lots of text is hard to read, not only for color-blind players, and some of the cube colors are nearly identical on the order cards.

Furthermore, you need some playing time until you understand the options and opportunities to further your advantages and to damage other players‘ chances. Factory 42 is not a game for beginners or casual players. It targets experts who favor planning and a high degree of interaction which borders viciousness. If you like the oddball setting of dwarves in a Marxist steampunk universe, Factory 42 is your game and highly recommended to you.

Alexander Schilpp, 5/7

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0