presentation

Area 51

Top Secret

Area 51 – a secret military base in the Nevada desert, where proof for the existence of aliens is stored. This needs modern bunkers that are continually expanded and can only store certain types of artifacts. You also need trucks and trains to transfer artifacts to various other locations.

You begin with five starting artifacts and, in your turn, you choose one out of four action options, for which you always play the necessary artifacts into the respective region of the board and can distribute them at your discretion in the various hangars: 1 - Get new artifacts; you take three cards. Artifact categories are Advanced Tools, Futuristic Weapons, Biological Samples and Alien Clothing, and are marked from 1 to 4 for security levels and degrees of danger. 2 - Play open and face-down artifacts to build a bunker or to raise the security level of a bunker; bunkers can only store artifacts of the same or lower level of security. 3 - Play one open and up to eight face-down artifacts to add a train or truck or to move train or truck. 4 - Discard your hand of cards and pick up all artifacts from one Hangar, sort and show them and store them in bunkers of the same region and the same color and suitable security level to score points.

When two regions are without security marker, all players have one more turn and then you score bunkers of the three highest levels of security, in all the regions.

Area 51 is a thrilling Euro game with a rare topic, that has been well implemented as to game mechanics, but remains rather abstract all the same; mechanisms interact cleverly and provide, after a few trial games, a satisfactory game play.

Players: 2-5

Age: 12+

Time: 60+

Designer: Stefan Alexander

Artist: Christian Opperer

Price: ca. 36 Euro

Publisher: Mücke Spiele 2016

Web: www.spielmaterial.de

Genre: Development, SciFi

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Needs a few trial games

Double use of artifacts for expansion and scoring

Rather abstract, despite the topic

Mechanisms work well

Compares to:

All games making multiple use of resources

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0