Amass – The Battle for Resources on Planet XS – Board Game Kickstarter Preview

In every round the Nefarious Nefar move around the planet surface, preventing mining and stealing back the resources from the invaders, while the players plan out where they are going to place their forces in secret. This is achieved by placing your workers on a small grid in front of you, covered by a screen so no one else can see what you are up to. Once you’ve decided what you are going to do then everyone drops their screen and the action starts, with you placing your workers on the appropriate spaces on the board. You might decide to go mining for the resources, or go on a pillaging spree against one of your other opponents. You might even decide to go ransack the Nefar’s own base for valuable action cards which can help you through the game. 

If you’re lucky, then you’ll pick a place no one else has decided to visit and carry out your action without impediment, but more often than not, and by design, you’ll end up facing off against another player. When it comes to mining, combat will only kick in if there aren’t enough resources to share between the sides, so if there are three resources but four players then there has to be a face off between two of the opposing workers. Combat is resolved through dice rolls and the result will place the defeated party on a wound track, that rewards you with action cards depending on how badly your ass was kicked. I really like wound track mechanics. I enjoyed similar things in the Funko games and Coraquest and this is no different. It can occasionally punish those that are too bold, but you never entirely feel that you’re out of the game entirely as more often than not, players are losing characters across multiple locations at the same time. 

As you gain resources you’ll add them to the four walls of your base, which in turn gives your opponents the chance to come in and raid you for your valuables based on the compass direction that they decide to attack on. Unlike the mines, the raiders can only attack with one worker on a specific side, and if multiple raiders from different factions appear together then they need to face off against each other before they face off against the defending base. Once the resources are all used up or once one of the bases are filled up, then the game ends and the points for the resources are totalled up and the player with the overall highest points total is the winner. 

Amass looks lovely. In a board game world where the default colour scheme for sci-fi seems to revolve around the dull and mundane, Amass is almost 8 bit in terms of its design. With pastel shades that draw the eye combined with the primary colours of each of the teams, when Amass is on the table then your table is vibrant and awash with colour and spectrum. It was the colour scheme that had me interested in the game in the first place and you won’t be too disappointed once you have a table full of players. 

Amass is also not incredibly difficult to grasp either, as you are really only placing workers in decided positions and then resolving them based on the interaction between players. Worker placement games fall into that odd situation where the normally the only level of interaction is the denial of spaces due to placed workers. In Amass, stepping on others toes is one of the main mechanics of the game and with the nature of the secrecy behind the planning, you never really have the ability to constantly target other players directly unless you decide to hit their base. There will be noise around your table when you play and often your challengers will come from unexpected places. That being said, there is a completely serviceable AI deck for those wanting to play from solo to two players, Amass has the best fun when the full team of three to six players are there to be mining and raiding, as it is a game where you want to be looking you opponents in the eye when you lift their four pointers out of their hands. You want the satisfaction of revealing your intended actions and watching the faces go sour as they realise you’ve just made the move to clear them out. For that alone, Amass deserves it’s place on a shelf.