WizKids Sidereal Confluence : Trading and Negotiation in the Elysian Quadrant Confluence Game

Summary. Fantastic sci-fi themed trading/negotiating/bidding game with (very fun and well-balanced) asymmetrical player roles. This game is NOT being talked about enough (yet). It was just officially released this summer, but I have high hopes that this title is going places.Theme. You and a total of 4-9 players will assume the roles of one of 9 unique alien races. Each race has recently come into contact with each other and have set aside their many differences in order to avoid military conflict and to mutually benefit from economic and technological advancements in a process called the Sidereal Confluence. But while they have agreed to general peace and cooperation, each race still aims to wield marginally more influence within the Confluence -- this influence is measured in the game in "Victory Points" and is how the winner of the game is determined.Components. I know the game seems a bit pricey but there is a TON of physical material in this box. Tokens, cubes, hexes, cards, cards, MORE CARDS, character sheets, etc. The cards are thick, 2.5 x 3.5" of nice quality. There's minimal shuffling and no true need to sleeve but given that the game requires a large footprint at even 4 players I feel there's a higher water damage risk, the price of the game, etc. I've sleeved w/ Mayday premium and I stress less when the game is at the table this way. The tokens are pretty good, the only thing I appreciated but also found odd was they made the ships themed to the races (as in the Zeth ships look "Zeth-y"), but when you actually go to play there's zero reason to keep them separate (the rules say ships are fully interchangeable and there is no count limit, not to mention that trading ships is a key part of the game) so we immediately just made a common ship pool. I was skeptical of the price but after opening the box I saw value. Consider holding on purchasing those Mayday's until you have your hands on the cards as that will add to the cost of the title (unless you're a known sleever).Art. I think the game is beautiful, but I can understand how someone stepping up to the table for the first time would question that. I was playing this with a group of four while we were waiting for some folks to come over for a night of Avalon and other party games. The first person to arrive while we were wrapping up Sidereal actually recoiled saying "Whoa" when he saw the table. I think it looks unbelievably busy and clashing when viewed as a whole But when you break it down to each race you see that the cards are highly functional but adorned with artistic flourishes in the background. It is clear that function was the priority, but I think that was necessary given the huge amount of information being conveyed on the face of each card, particularly the converters. I don't know how they could have made the cards any nicer while giving that much information.Game Organization. The game is played in 6 rounds, each round has 3 phases. First, there is a trading phase. Players are free to trade nearly anything they have available to them -- resources (such as food, energy, biotech), ships (used to acquire new colonies and research teams), colonies (usually used to produce resources), converters (factories capable of making lesser amounts of resources into more resources), even promises can be traded during this phase (such as "if you give me 2 yellow cubes (energy) this turn, I promise to give you 5 white cubes (culture) next turn". Note that all promises are binding in this game, and the penalties for failing to deliver on a promise is severe.) Second, there is a economy phase. This is where most players "run" their economic engine. If you've traded well, hopefully most of your converters will get to run this turn ( converters can run once per round, 6 rounds per game). The returns can really put you ahead in the game if you've managed to get most or all your converters online, but if you overspent on trades or other activities this is where your economy can visibly crash. Finally, there's the Confluence phase. Everyone bids ships to determine who gets first picks on getting a new colony and/or a research team (the latter can discover new technology which scores the player points and improves or introduces new converters). Then you start back with the trading phase in the same sequence until the end of Round 6. The Player with the most VP wins.Classes. The alien race asymmetry is really delightful, and they are designed such that you pick a playstyle that matches with what you enjoy. I'll talk a bit about some of the play styles for a couple of the races I've seen as examples. The Kit are a race of bugs that are great for beginners because players only needs to focus on a couple key things and it's hard to really crash their economy. They have a nearly insatiable demand for green (food/life) cubes to run, and they have a large stack of special colonies that they can warp into the game on demand if they can get only 1 or 2 yellow (energy) cubes ... since they can hand pick the climate of the colony from the deck of colonies they can make quite a nice business trading away these colonies. Another alien race I saw for more advanced players were the Unity. The Unity are a ... uh, I think they're computers or something. Anyway, basically the Unity are able to make a resource that can act as any color resource as long as it's the same size (I'm not going to get into it, just know that it's very valuable). Further, they can make this valuable resource using any color. Essentially they can turn other players' trash into valuable gold that everyone wants. So from what I observed it seems they need to make rather pushy trades where they sell their quality Wild resources for quantity, and be willing to hang back in the trade phase for folks to start getting desperate for that ONE COLOR they really need (again, Wild can be any color so Unity is there to delivery ... for a cost). As you can see, these are just two examples of race that play VERY differently but there are NINE races. Luckily, the developer includes player sheets for each race with cool flavor text and game play advice for how to approach each one.Gameplay. Most of the game play is centered on the trading phase. This is NOT usually a hardcore bareknuckled negotiation. It's usually pretty apparent what items are worth (each player card even includes a relative worth cheat sheet, just keep in mind that this game has a dynamic economy so things are worth what the market will bear). Most players are usually just making mutually beneficial deals, and are really aiming to win by virtue of having the most robust economies and cashing in for VP at just the right time. There is ONE race in the game, the Zeth, that is specifically designed to extort other players into paying him a bribe so that he will not steal resources from the other races. Now, in order for the extortion to have maximum effectiveness, the Zeth doesn't want to steal the resource the Zeth wants (say, black cubes); in order to inflict maximum pain as punishment for not bribing the Zeth off, he would more likely threaten, say, a Federan player with taking her precious white cubes. Or a Im'Dril's brown, or a Kit's green's etc. By threatening to take the thing that players want most, this keeps them bribing the Zeth player not to steal from them (and remember that promises are binding. Also, anyone who has traded with Zeth in a given round is Immune to stealing and so doesn't need to pay the bribe). I mention all of this because this is as close as I think the game's trading gets to "negative" so I wanted to make sure you understood to the greatest extent possible the nature of the "negativity" In short, Zeth are very fun if you have a player that likes to be a little evil, and your group won't ever be paying their dear resources as long as they toss the Zeth a bribe or trade (honestly, the Zeth doesn't like to have to steal since the converter that governs stealing sucks; they have to PRETEND they like to steal to be 'scary' and keep the sheep herded).Playtime. The stated 2-3 hours is right, but I've never played w/ more with 5. It is claimed that because the turns are simultaneous (everyone trades, economies, and bids at the same time), the game hardly takes longer at 9 as it would at 4. I'm playing with 8 on Friday, but almost half will be new. If I can get a game with 7-9 with experienced players I will try to remember to update with playtime. Again, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't fall in the normal 2-3 hours if players are reasonably disciplined (i.e. not being easily and chronically distracted, not allowing trading phase to be unreasonably drawn out, etc)Rules. I will say, the rule book is deceptively thin. If possible, get this game out with 4-5 patient folks and just try to get through the set up and 1 round quickly. I tried to rote memorize and learn this by myself so I could roll this out on a Sunday afternoon with some friends and learning it would have been so much easier if I had read through the book once, gotten this to the table with some friends and just tried to play a round. The game IS NOT that complicated, it just has some ideas and rules that you don't see everywhere so it's not until you see the pieces on the table actually working together that you realize how easy it is.Teaching the game. Related to the above, know that once you know this game and you're teaching it to someone else they will very likely have a bit of bewilderment at first. Again, try to get them through 1 round as soon as you can. It's not really apparent why you're doing the first phase (trading) until the next two (economy and confluence) are done, so if you even have to just call it a "practice" round then that's fine. Also, I highly recommend Kit, Caylion, or Kjas for new folks -- economies more resilient, much simpler, less reliant on pushy tactics, etc.. You can certainly get away with some others (like Federan or Im'Dril) but do him or her a favor and sit an experienced person next to them to help them avoid crashing their economy (i.e. running critically low on resources such that basic converters aren't functional) -- that is really not a fun experience and inexperienced players will not know how to pull out of a crash.Last thoughts. My first round I wasn't really sure where this was going. By my second round I had bought my first Relic World and completed a technology as a Federan, which, unbeknownst to me at the time, sent my economy into a total tailspin. By turn three, I handed out two Acknowledgements along with a cube of resources each which helped the players I gave them to complete the technologies and we essentially shared in the Victory Point profits. Around this time I was realizing what a mistake I had made in Round 2 with overspending, and started trying to turn things around by turning everything I had of value into resources. I didn't win that game, but from that moment on I HAD A BLAST and couldn't WAIT to play again. Since VP is the only secret information in this game, even if you're losing you're often not necessarily aware of it and you can have a lot of fun accomplishing the mini-objectives that you set for yourself in this game. This is a highly interactive experience where you can essentially pick your play style and let your friends pick theirs, and even if you lose I'll bet you'll have a highly enjoyable time -- once you really start getting a hang of the game mechanics then you can pick up the challenge classes for even more additional fun. I should also mention I'm someone who generally doesn't like Cataan (just too basic for my tastes), and I HATE Euro games (I play tabletop to interact with people, not avoid it altogether); someone mentioned Scythe since that's popular right now and involves cube-based economies, I REALLY dislike that game (again, minimal meaningful interaction between players. Everyone just runs their own economies almost completely independent of one another). This games is totally different, it has a highly dynamic highly interactive economy with asymmetric classes and plenty of strategy -- all in 2-2.5 hours! This is hours and hours of enjoyment for your friends/family, and I suspect you can get hardcore and more casual gamers to get on board since you can pair them into more or less difficult races. The developers have clearly put unbelievable thought into this and I'm told it was in development for years. I look forward to expansions with even more aliens and ideas. This. Game. Rocks. Highly recommended, do yourself a favor and get your hands on it *any way you can*

Review of the service: the game box arrived dented but amazon customer service offered partial refund/replacement for the damaged item. great service!Review of the game:The game can scale up to 9 players all playing simultaneously. Not many game can handle that kind of player count. The game is super fun but a bit long and some players might find the amount of choices and things happening at the same time to be confusing or overwhelming. But for people that like engine building games and/or negotiation games it's really really fun. Highly recommended.

It's as good as or better than any of the hundreds of games I've played. Better with higher player counts.

So to start this review is for the original version, the remastered version a much better production.I love this game, it's a fairly unique title but not for everyone. The game requires everyone to put on their best sales person hat and try to make trades with the other players. Basically players play one of the nine playable races each of which has unique features and try to build out a great engine. The cards that comprise your engine will take in certain material and spit out a different type, which you then trade so you can continue running your engine. While the game is fairly heavy due to it's open nature new comers can be eased in to the game. The game promotes making good trades, and a player shield offering guidelines for material worth. You can also make offers for the future, however you have to honor the trade, if you don't or are unable to you take a hit in victory points.However I don't think this game works well with less talkative groups or groups who want very limited player interaction. Since the materials you produce generally can't be recycled back into the engine, you will need to make deals to get the materials you need. The production on the original version is functional, it gets the point across but they felt the need to release a remastered version so the original is now lack luster.

This is an amazing game with a caveat. You would want to play this with a group of people that are very open to negotiatiing. Not every game group does well with this and I can only imagine it's a bit slow with a more quiet or bristly group. A good meter for this would be if your group has played Settlers of Catan - if your group would normally go on and on about trading sheep for wood then this is probably a good indicator that you'd like this game. If you almost never trade in Catan, then you might not have much luck here.The component quality is poor but it's not as bad as some reviewers make it out to be. I guess it's "On-Par" for something made by WizKids. Despite this flaw, it's well worth the price if you enjoy games that involve negotiation, engine building, and/or combo building.