Xia: Legends of a Drift System

What makes "Xia: Legend of a Drift System" such an immersive game? Is it the tight rules that are simple, yet flexible enough for diverse play options?Is it the tiny details, such as the intricate spaceships, or is it the audible 'thunk' of the metallic currency?Is it the gameplay elements that have an atmosphere of tense struggle?to all the above; yes. Yes, and then some.The Good:Right off the bat this game feels like a project made with love and care. The attention to detail had me giddy; like a kid getting his first lego kit. "What attention to detail", you ask? Well, how about:-Tiny model ships, each representing a different playable craft. Each one colored and matching it's designated board. Each ship has their special play mat and play card, giving each ship a unique feel.-Metal currency! The currency has weight and polish to it, making the game feel like you're in for a galactic ride.-Ship stands and player markers! Clear ships stands give the spaceship illusion of 'floating'. The player markers fit snug on the base, allowing players to easily pick each other out, and pick each other off.-Combat! Combat has a good risk/reward system. Do I sacrifice defense for more firepower? Or do I forgo all modern weaponry and go full viking, with maximum engine power and ramming myself into my opponents? The selection of items: shields, engines, lasers, and missiles are simple, yet allow for numerous builds for each ship.-Ship customization! Customizing your ship is pretty entertaining in it's own right (think Galaxy Road Truckers). Having to puzzle piece your ship parts together, while trying to weigh want you want to do adds to a certain tension in gameplay.-Exploration! Ship exploration allows you to form the map, letting no two games look the same. The risk of blasting as far as you can, collecting Fame Points (Victory points), money, or nothing, can get you jumping or swearing entertainingly. And then there's the risk of blind jumping. do you spend precious energy to scan the sector first, or go balls-out and simply fly into the sector blindfolded? Will it pay off, or will you end up like poor Icarus, flying right into the newly explored sun, christening it like a molten bottle of champagne?-Different wincons! There are many ways to win and you just need to choose. Will you be the merchant who travels the galaxy buying and selling your way to victory? Will you be the explorer, cementing your name in with the likes of Magellan? Will you fly missions and win through hard labor? Or will you put on the guise of the villain, going full blackbeard and vaporizing the aforementioned fools? Or you just happened to roll that hard 20 and win... You bastard...-Expandable! The creator released the developer kit for the game, allowing you the player to make their own expansions! Will you make or proxy your own ships, or use some from familiar universes?The Bad:-Long downtime. When you play with 5 players, the time between turns can be immense. Now get a better ship and proceed to die. Now twiddle your thumbs as your opponents skip your turn, merrily trading that last bit of spice in to win. There will also be times that you'll be asking "Are you done?" as your opponents will be looking down at the board, figuring out what to do for their turns.-Long setup/scrap time. It takes a while to setup the game itself and even more so to put it all away. Good thing they gave us all these handy bags, eh?-Difficult to grasp for newer gamers. The game can be overwhelming for people whose board gaming experience is Milton Bradley.Overall, this is a game that can't be missed. This has been, hands down, one of my favorite board games to date. If you even have an inkling for a board game that is diverse, free roaming, and a blast to play, do yourself a favor and get it. Now.Why are you still reading?? Just get the damn game already!

I'm a board gamer, and currently own almost 200 different board games, but I've played thousands of different board games. That being said, I have my favorites, and Xia: Legends of a Drift System is easily in my top 10 games. If you count the additional expansions, Xia is my favorite game of all time. The base game allows 3 to 5 players a fantastic experience, but there's an expansion that allows you to play this epic game solo. There's so much game in the core box, the value for your money is off the charts. The quality of the components is extremely good, and just looking at it makes you want to play the game. As many times as I've played this game, I always have fun, and it's never the same experience. There's so many different strategies that you can incorporate, and there's no best, or worse, strategy. Xia: Legends of a Drift System is a fun, and beautiful game. If you haven't played it yet, you are missing out.

I came into this game not knowing much about it. Amazon just suggested it to me one day and I thought it sounded fun enough to take a chance on it. Overall I think the game is amazing. It's fun and there's lots of ways to win from being a pirate to helping stranded players to being a merchant. This is because you aren't winning because you're building a fortune or anything; you win by becoming famous.If I had to describe the game in 3 words that would be "Firefly the game". You start out by picking one of the 6 tier one ships. The amount of free space and the layout of that space varies from ship to ship, and each ship has a special ability associated with it that you can use once per round. You then get 3k credits and a chance to buy outfits before the game starts. These outfits are Engines, Shields, Blasters, and Missiles. Each outfit comes in 3 different tiers and they all vary in size and shape with the higher tiers being larger. You buy your upgrades and fit them into the free space on your ship mat. Whatever spaces you don't fill with outfits can be used to store cargo for selling.As you complete missions, buy/mine cargo and sell it, claim bounties on other players for their nefarious deeds, or earn money by exploring the map you build up money and can eventually upgrade to a larger ship. There are a total of 3 tiers of ship and every time you upgrade, you get to keep the ability of the previous ship.QualityThe quality of the materials in the game really made it stand out to me upon opening the box. The tiles are a thick and sturdy cardboard that isn't going to just fall apart any time soon. The game currencies are real metal chips. This may not seem like much, but when you're holding a handful of credits, it feels like you're really holding money; it just feels good and shows a real strive towards quality. The miniatures could be painted better, but the quality of them is good. They don't feel fragile like in a lot of other games I've played. And if you don't like the paint jobs you can always repaint them yourself. Your resources consist of small colored plastic cubes, very reminiscent of the viruses in Pandemic. I think it's easier than dealing with a bunch of cardboard tokens that could fray at the edges due to all the handling.Attention to DetailAs a fan of board games and miniature games in general, there were a few small things that I noticed which really made the game appear to be made by someone who has a true love of board games. Slots in the in-box insert to store your credit chips. A baggie of extra baggies so that you could divvy up your markers however you wanted to speed up setup and tear down of the game and make organization more to your liking. A ton of extra flight stands which your ship sits on when you're playing. These things aren't the most fragile things ever, but it's still possible that you could accidentally break or lose them considering they're clear plastic. There are so many extra flight stands included, that I don't see how you could ever possibly lose enough of them by accident to not be able to play.Learning CurveThere is a lot you can do in this game and when it's your turn you can keep taking actions until you run out of things to do. There are also several ways you can win. As a direct consequence of this, it can be a little overwhelming at first as to what you should do. Especially when someone who has never played before is outfitting their ship before the game starts and has no idea what to buy. However, in the games that I've played, it only takes a few rounds for everyone to become comfortable with the rules so that play speed starts to pick up.RandomnessThis keeps the game fresh and re-playable along with the different ship configurations and roles you can play. However, the randomness can also make things feel unfair sometimes. The game board consists of a series of tiles, and as you explore the map, you place new tiles. So you don't know how the map will be laid out until it's revealed. This can also more easily lead to situations where a planet that is selling one cargo which is directly next to a planet that is buying that cargo. As selling cargo is one of the ways to amass Fame Points which are needed to win the game, this can lead to a situation that some might see as unfair. But if it bothers your group, then simply make a house rule amending the situation.SummaryI can't recommend this game enough. The length is variable as you can simply agree on how many Fame Points are needed to win the game. With a group of people that know how to play, a low point game could be over in 30 minutes. Or you could play a full 20 point game and have a few hours of fun with friends.