Futuropia

Luckless engine-building game of an ideal future. I always appreciate how much Friese puts his own philosophy into his game, so the theme worked well for me here. Solid game with a great market mechanic.

This game definitely feels like a Freise game with math-y optimization, forward thinking and planning. The resource generators feel like Power Grid's power plants, as you need to know when to let some of them go. The game play is actually quite simple. You have 5 actions tiles to choose from, then do whats on that tile, and then flip it over. It can't be use again until you flip all action tiles back over but it cost a resource to flip each of them over when you haven't used them yet so timing when to do this is a key aspect to the tough decisions in the game. Overall, a really great game.

Classic Friedemann. Good rules, simple components, no inlay, the typical "green" box. This is an economics centered game, with a little twist. There is a common market, so ample opportunity to throw spanners in the works of your opponents. It is really the gameplay that makes this work, rather than "the board" or the components!