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And here we are again with a great classic of settings dedicated to a board game: the dystopian world. One of the questions that best excites authors of all genres, from books to movies, from video games to works of art, is “what would have happened instead?“. From this simple question, alternative plots, worlds and sometimes universes are born, with a curious, unexpected, or sometimes dark, most of the time disorienting trait.
The question of this article can be summarized like this: “what if we would have discovered atomic energy in the midst of the industrial revolution instead of the mid-twenty-first century?“. And the answer is given by this splendid game that can be easily categorized into the brain squeezing Eurogame category: Nucleum.
In full production boom, during the nineteenth century, Central Europe finds itself grappling with a new discovery: a German scientist (or at least, the name suggests it… but no spoilers) has just discovered the way to split the atom to create enormous amounts of energy. Good old coal will soon become the fuel of the past, to make room for the “nucleum“, a container full of radioactive material capable of producing disproportionate quantities of energy and fueling the growing energy demand.
And so 1 to 4 players will try their hand at exploiting this incredible opportunity, lighting up the dark and dusty region between Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Not an easy task, given that at every turn the player will be faced with a difficult choice: use the precious tokens to carry out actions or transform them into railway tracks to expand their network. In the meantime, obviously, there will be no shortage of building industries, residential neighborhoods and laboratories, but above all no shortage of giving energy to your buildings, key action of the game, using coal or nuclear power plants.
In our opinion the authors, Simone Luciani and David Turczi, have outdone themselves in this title: the atmosphere of Brass: Birmingham is strong and clear, as is the energy arms race of Barrage, two titles that have made the history of Eurogames, in a perfect fusion.
This is certainly not a simple game to start or play, but the true beauty is hidden at first glance. After each game played, you will discover new strategies and tricks, and one game will hardly be the same as another. The asymmetrical setup brings a hint of risk to every game, and players will never have the same starting setup.
Nor will they have an easy time getting started: the quantity of tokens, meeples, boards and platforms is nothing short of pharaonic, and wasting time before starting a game like this is not desirable for anyone.
This is the reason why we couldn’t let this German pearl get lost in the chaos: in our Nucleum organizer there is everything you need to get started in just a few minutes, separate player boxes, dedicated slots for the various experiment sets, contracts, starting components game… All with wrapped cards, wire closure and possibility of storing the game vertically.
May energy flow smoothly, may the chaos of the coal era pale in comparison to orderly atomic energy, in a harmonious flow of electrons. To play Nucleum properly, you need the spark of The Dicetroyers.
Discover also the other games in our catalog and contact us for any request or question!
