If you’ll recall from my City of the Living review, I’m always down for a post-apocalyptic city-building game. When I’ve got the spare time, Frostpunk: The Board Game is still my go-to, but that’s pretty heavy and I rarely have the free time to bust it out. So I’m always on the hunt for a new game in the genre that can play quicker, yet still keep my interest.
This year, Portal Games has decided to publish Resurgence, the latest game in the post-apocalyptic euro game genre. Resurgence plays from 1-4 players with a playtime of about 60-90 minutes.
Gameplay Overview:
Games of Resurgence last for 6 rounds, with each round taking place over 4 phases.
During the first phase, you’ll draw survivors from your bag and place them on your assignment board. There are 5 types of survivors: workers, 3 different specialists, and your leader. They work in a hierarchy, so a leader can go anywhere, and a specialist can go anywhere a worker does. Survivors are also secretly assigned to one of three locations on your assignment board: Metro, Harbor, and your Compound.
Once everyone is ready, assignment boards are revealed and players gain advancements on the matching leadership tracks for having the most survivor points in any location. For example, if you have 3 survivor points on the Metro track, and the other two players have 2 points. You’ll get to advance a space on that track, earning any rewards.
Then, starting with the first player, you’ll place your survivors in a space in the matching region on the game board. The Metro and Harbor both have 6 locations, while your Compound starts with 1 and increases as you build it. For the most part, you’ll be sending out your survivors to collect resources (5 different kinds), draft and complete missions, or recruit new survivors (that also come with special abilities). The main thing to know here is that you have to place a survivor in the matching region you planned for, and if there is already someone there you need to pay a resource for every unit that arrived before you did.
The round ends with an upkeep phase that will have you refilling cards, earning resources for completed missions, and also giving you a chance to upgrade your compound. Upgrading it will unlock more placement locations as well as allow you to draw more survivors from the bag each round.
After the end of 6 rounds, points are totaled from resources, compound level, completed missions, and the leadership track. The player with the most points rules the wasteland.
Game Experience:
Resurgence kind of flew under my radar and I didn’t even know about its original release a few years ago. But it was designed by Stan Kordonskiy (who also designed the excellent Lockup: A Roll Player Tale) and features some really nice comic book-style art.
For the core gameplay, it’s a bit of a mashup of familiar mechanics. You have bag building, worker placement, resource management, and even a bit of combos. While nothing here is going to blow your socks off with its uniqueness, it does all mesh together well into a solid medium-weight euro game.
My favorite part of the game, hands down, is recruiting new survivors. Not only do you get new and better tokens for your bag, but you also get some upgraded powers to make your actions more efficient. For example, the Hunter will get you an extra bread when you gain a bread, or the Miner will earn you a VP whenever you draft a mission card. While none of the cards have a game-breaking power, their powers are all useful and I was constantly drawn to acquiring more of them.
My biggest criticism of the game is that the bag-building isn’t very deep (pun intended). You pull 4-6 tokens out of the bag, but they are not all that different. The 3 specialists give you a better exchange rate at some of the placement locations and more flexibility, but there was never really any tension in drawing a token. For the most part, even if you drew the lowest level token, you can still do what you want to do, albeit at a bit of a higher cost.
And that is one of the things I did like about the game. The economy in the game is really tight. There are 5 resources, 3 regular and 2 critical. Getting them isn’t always easy, and many times you are only going to have just want you need or even not enough. Which does fit the theme well. Living in a post-apocalyptic world should have low access to supplies. But it also means that you’ll need to make some tough decisions during the game. Do you use those gears to finish off a mission, upgrade your shelter, or maybe spend them to get access to an occupied placement spot so you can get that last food you need to upgrade your shelter? There will never be enough actions in a round to do everything you want to do.
However, this can also lead to some analysis paralysis. Since you have to plan out your entire turn in advance, it can lead to players taking forever to figure out their plan. On the flip side of that, I did like the simultaneous location reveal. It was a nice little twist on the worker placement genre where you have to plan for an area, and if it gets occupied early, you are not locked out, but it can either cost you extra resources you don’t want to spend or force you to pivot to a different location altogether.
Final Thoughts:
Resurgence is another great game from designer Stan Kordonskiy. While it’s not going to jump out in any one area as being amazing, what it does do, it does well. It’s a smooth blend of familiar euro game mechanics that nicely integrates its theme. While I didn’t talk about it above, it also has a well-made solo mode. While I prefer it with other players (3 players was my favorite count), it’s a nice bonus for solo players to have.
Final Score: 4 Stars – A solid post-apocalyptic city-building game with a tight economy.
Hits:
• Nice blend of mechanics
• Interesting worker placement planning
• Good use of the theme
• Fun comic book style art
Misses:
• Bag building isn’t very deep
• Turns can lead to some AP
