Review: Ecos - First Continent

 

 Review: Ecos - First Continent

The Basics

There's a combination of bingo and contract fulfillment happening in this game. In a turn, one player pulls an element token out of the bag and each player can do one of two things: either place a cube on a matching element of one of their cards or rotate their player dial. The contract fulfilment consists of filling up a card with cubes; the usefulness of rotating a player dial lies in players gaining new cards, playing new cards, or gaining additional cubes to fulfill contracts. Fulfilling contract cards is how players gain victory points. Whoever's got the most VP at the end of the game wins. Play is simultaneous, unless multiple people fulfill their contracts simultaneously, in which case, the Harbinger (the player currently pulling element tokens out of the bag) resolves their effects first and then other players resolve their effects in clockwise order. Some of the contracts will expand the world (represented by the hexagonal tiles in the picture below) by adding new tiles, terrain features, and animals. Each of the contract cards have unique effects, so while there will be overlap between players sometimes, there's also a lot of diversity with regards to paths players can take to victory. The game ends when at least one player has reached a VP threshold (60 for a shorter game, 80 for a standard game) and a wild card Element token has been pulled from the bag by the Harbinger.

The Specs

Player count: 2-6 (I suspect this plays best at 4 players)

Playing time: 45-75 minutes (Pretty accurate! There can definitely be some analysis paralysis, but that's really not the fault of the game in this case)

Age: 14+

The Expansions

One - Ecos: New Horizon

Gameplay

I covered a lot of this in The Basics section above. Players start with 12 contract cards: 3 in front of them on which they can place cubes, and 9 in their hands they can eventually put out in front of them. When a contract is fulfilled, the controlling player says "Eco!", thus notifying everyone else that they have some effects to resolve and no further Element tokens should be pulled from the bag until those fulfilled contracts are resolved. The player then clears the cubes off the card, resolves the effect, and rotates the card if there are 2+ leaves showing on top of the card. If there is only one leaf left on the top of the card, that contract card is discarded.

If a player cannot (or chooses not to) place a cube on a contract card, they can instead rotate their player dial. The first time this is done, there's no effect. But the second time it's done, the player has the option of gaining a new contract card. There are two draw piles as well as two discard piles. When drawing a new card, a player can draw two facedown cards from one pile, keep one and discard the other, or pull one of the faceup discarded cards. If the player resolves this effect, their player dial resets. If the player chooses not to do this, the next time the player rotates their dial, they'll have the option of either playing a new contract card from their hand or gaining an additional cube to better fulfill contracts (as players only start with 7 and may want to diversify their cube placement as the game progresses). At this point, the player must resolve one of these effects and then reset their player dial.

The terrain features and animal tokens that get added to the board have no inherent effect, but interact with different contract cards, earning players additional element types, cubes, and VPs. So while the board changes from game to game, the relevance of different board states varies wildly from game to game depending on player priorities.

My Thoughts on Gameplay

It can be slow to start for anyone who is unfamiliar with the game. But once the game gets going, it really hums! The simultaneous play is obviously only as fast as the slowest player, and as people build more complex machines and start triggering multiple contracts in a turn, interactions become a little more complex. But honestly, I don't see it ever being unreasonable. Some really cool effects can be chained together, allowing players to make really big leaps on the VP track. I'm sure there are games in which players are out of it, but it cannot happen too early because there are too many opportunities to chain these contracts together. The last time I played, there were three of us. I reached 80 VP first, but the game hadn't ended yet. I gained another 7 or 8 the following turn, increasing my lead. But the game still didn't end. Josh managed to jump me over the next turn or two before Geddy had a frighteningly effective turn or two and passed both of us to win the game with 96 or 98. At any time in those 6 or 7 turns, any one of the three of us could have won the game. The suspense was outstanding! Gameplay is simple enough to be accessible, but the strategy runs deep. The contract cards can be overwhelming at first, but honestly, once gameplay is in full swing (maybe a third of the way through the game?), players will have a decent handle on their fulfilment priorities. I had a vague handle on the gameplay, but it really surprised me how much I enjoyed it.

Components

The components are solid!

These chunky components have some satisfying heft to them.

I like the components! The little cardboard holders are a bit on the dainty side, so I wouldn't complain about some 3D printed holders or something more solid. But otherwise, the chunky white tokens you see there are element tokens and it's nice to have such chunky tokens to draw from a bag instead of the cardboard I have drawn in other games. The tokens we use for the critters are fine for what they are and the tiles are as solid as any other tiles. The look of the components works well for the game, though, and I like the little player dials and the way the cards are designed. There's a simplicity to the game's components that belie how exciting this game can get and I kind of dig that!

Final Thoughts

I had what I thought of as reasonable expectations for this game. I had played a couple of turns solo before CabinCon so I could do a decent job of teaching it if we played. It seemed pretty cool to me. And I was excited to play it, so that heightened my expectations of it a bit. We were enjoying the game as it was ramping up, but other than a couple of big point gains that occasionally made things a little more exciting, there was really no indication as to just how exciting the endgame would be. The tension built up nicely for a really exciting and satisfying finish! The simultaneous play helps offset the fact that each card has a unique effect; the design all feels really thoughtful. We played to 80 points (which is the standard endgame point threshold), but I think the game likely plays better to 60. Admittedly, I don't know that the race to the finish would've been as exciting during our 3 person play of it, but I think that the game length is probably better at 60 than 80 and the points race can be just as satisfying; it just wouldn't have been in our case. It's a really good game and a lot of fun. The semi-minimalist design really lets the players just play without there being too much confusion once the game is going. I want to play it several more times before deciding, but I'm confident that I'm a really big fan of this one! I think there's quite a lot of replayability in this one and it's different from anything else I've got in my collection to boot!