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Awards

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • A unique combination of worker placement game with role playing style attribute tests.
  • The world building and narrative elements.
  • Variety of ways to play including…
  • An excellent solo mode.

Might Not Like

  • Thin and flimsy game boards used throughout.
  • The cheap feeling slider clip.
  • Basic player pieces.
  • The juxtaposition of the gameplay elements can be jarring.
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Nightlancer Core Game Review

NIGHTLANCER

Having been invested in the board game hobby for some time, keeping up with new releases, developments and associated media, it’s always nice when a game catches my eye from out of nowhere. This was the case with Nightlancer, a game set in a cyberpunk, dystopian future. Its name and box tagline drew me in. Would the gameplay be enough to hack into my psyche, or would it just leave me cold and hacked off?

A Game of 2 Halves.

The late Jimmy Greaves certainly didn't have a cyberpunk board game in mind when he first coined that famous footballing idiom, but it absolutely applies to Nightlancer.

The first part of each round is a worker placement affair, as players place their discs out on the shared main board in order to take actions to best ‘gear up’ for the dangerous missions that will follow. Players will want to do well in these missions, as acquiring credits and prospects is the name of the game when it comes to escaping the grubby criminal business the players’ characters find themselves in.

Gear acquired, players spend the next half of the round attempting to overcome 3 successive challenges in order to complete their chosen mission. These require a test against an attribute, by adding the result of rolling 3 custom dice to the character’s affinity and gear bonus in that category. Succeed and you are on to the next challenge. Fail and you will be penalised and possibly fail the mission altogether.

This combination puts Nightlancer in a strange and unusual board game space. The first part of each round feels very much like a euro game. The second becomes almost like a role-playing game, as players read narrative and carry out these simple tests.

I think the juxtaposition of these styles may put off some players, who want their games to be very much one thing or the other, but I find it to be refreshingly different and surprisingly thematic. In both stages of the game players are in fierce competition with each other and it is not lacking for interaction, as players compete for those prospects.

The Prospect of Healthy Competition.

Yes, prospects are what will decide the winner of Nightlancer. You can gain them through purchasing them with credits in the street phase (the worker placement part), gain them as rewards for completing missions, or pick them up when the criteria is met for opportunity cards.

Those mission cards, that players assign their Nightlancer to each round, allow things to get cooperative, or very, very competitive. You see, once a player selects a mission, the others have the option of choosing a different mission, joining the previous player and helping them for a share of the rewards, or starting a second crew on the mission, with the hope it is them that completes it and steals the reward!

In theory, players could all be on their own missions. That’s far from a certainty though, since more than one player may be geared towards meeting a certain type of challenge. It may be better to join another player or compete with them, rather than take your own mission that you have no hope of finishing, or offers only a pitiful reward.

The worker placement spots do scale with player count, ensuring the game is fraught with tension regardless of how many are fighting to get out of future dystopian Birmingham (yes, that is indeed the setting). This adds up to make Nightlancer a game I’d happily play at all player counts, especially given how snappy and rapid individual turns are.

If Intense Competition is Not Ideal.

Nightlancer includes rules for cooperative and solo play. These feature an Agent opponent, whose counters block places and they attempt to play cards on the players during challengers and is generally irksome.

This mode is a good challenge, especially as there are additional win conditions, such as all players must get at least 20 prospects and no player can be down to zero ideals. It works very well and is strong enough to make Nightlancer worthy of consideration as an out-and-out cooperative game.

When it comes to the solo mode, Nightlancer absolutely nails it with the precision of a cyborg joiner. The solo mode plays as the cooperative game, but with an additional set of dummy discs for the player. What this means is that each turn 3 places will become occupied; the player’s action, the space they choose to place the dummy disc in and the place chosen by the agent.

This results in some delightfully taxing choices each turn, as the solo player has to figure out what they want now, what they want later in the phase and what they can afford to give up on this occasion. I find it very enjoyable and Nightlancer has joined the ranks of games I am more than happy to take out and play solo.

Cyberpunk Universe, Dystopian Components

Nightlancer is not without its niggles, the main one being the production. The game boards are more like game mats, as they are cereal-box-thin cardboard.

There are plastic clips provided that attach to the edge of the player boards and are used to slide up and down a scale, tracking ideals. It’s a system I’ve not appreciated in other games (first edition Zombicide for example), as it is is fiddly to operate and in this case the clips feel cheaply made.

The token to represent your Nightlancer is a basic wooden square, your action markers basic wooden discs. Functional, but unspectacular.

Credits, health and resolve are card chits of various denominations. They do the job and are easy to read at a glance, which is what you want from resource tokens.

The art is not the best I’ve ever seen, but it does do a good job of bringing the world to life. The Nightlancers, contacts, weapons, gear and cybernetics are all well depicted in a consistent style that adds a sense of this fictional world’s character to the game. The important graphic design elements are clear with minimal iconography and all icons that are present are well explained in the rulebook.

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • A unique combination of worker placement game with role playing style attribute tests.
  • The world building and narrative elements.
  • Variety of ways to play including
  • An excellent solo mode.

Might not like

  • Thin and flimsy game boards used throughout.
  • The cheap feeling slider clip.
  • Basic player pieces.
  • The juxtaposition of the gameplay elements can be jarring.

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