Fantastic Factories
30 Oct 2019Fantastic Factories is a clean engine building game. The main focus is on building up synergies to help you produce goods and more buildings to race to trigger the end of the game when opportune for you. It is a fast playing game, where the mechanics are optimized so that players can pick it the second phase within one or two rounds and can optimize playing time by playing simultaeously (at the same time) rather than sequentially (taking turns). The art is cute and quirky, with the card layout is clean, utilitarian, and minimalistic.
The game round is split into two main phases. Phase 1 (Market Phase) is fairly straightforward, each player starting with the start player either pay the costs to use a contractor card (resources, dice, or some other ability) or pick up a building card that everyone can see in a row. Phase 2 (Work Phase) is a simultaneous turn and is designed to keep the game length down from about 1.5 hours to 1 hour max (45 minutes for experienced gamers). The simultaneous turn consists of the rolling of die, and assigning dice and the two resources to produce goods and more resources.
Phase 1 is the only phase where players really interact with one another, this kept to a minimum as well as the only thing players can do is to reset a card row to prevent another player from attaining something for their engine or select a card to prevent another player from doing so. There are contractor cards that give another player resources which is another point of player interaction, I didn’t see any rules about bartering I think it would make great house rule as quite a few of the contractor cards actually benefits another player.
In phase 2 there are basic actions that all players have access to these all cost a single die: draw a card from the top the deck, gain energy equal to face value of a die whose face value is at most 3, gain metal for a 4+ die. These basic actions offer a interesting secondary mechanic that isn’t explore elsewhere (seems like a missed opportunity to me), where pairs and triples offer a bonus 1 or 2 of the said resource respectively. An example of this would be for 2 two-sided die in electricity the payout would be 5 energy (= 2 + 2 + 1 as a bonus ). In metal 3 five-sided die would payout 5 metal (= 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 bonus), the same example would apply for drawing cards. In terms of resources, the game is tight, it really feels like a waste to attempt to grief an opponent to reset a row because the most efficient actions rely on conversions and the uncertainty of dice don’t allow you to account and hedge the risk enough to guarantee a steady income without some sacrifices. I guess a player could horde a resource, but the game hard caps the resources players can have at 12 of (metal or energy) or 10 cards.
The other aspect of phase 2 is the buildings that can be activated once per round. For example a building might give you a metal on building a building, other buildings might give you additional actions to use your dice on, convert resources or provide additional die. This is the meat of the game play and there is little player interaction in phase two.
End game is triggered either when a player has built 10 buildings or has produced 12 goods. After which, an additional round is played out before the score is tallied. The math for the final score is essentially building prestige plus goods. Straightforward, nothing here that doesn’t make sense.
The game has been finely balanced, there doesn’t stick out to me a single strategy that exploits dice in such a way that creates much of a disparity between an organically developed strategy and a memorized one. The randomization of cards and die rolls make it so that players will have to account for two levels of uncertainty to mitigate randomness, which comes at the cost to building slots and points. There were KS exclusive cards, which is a turn off for some people, I don’t care much and I hope for those two do it’s fairly cheap to get those cards either in a secondary market or via some other way.
I would compare this to Space Base, Machi Koro, Gizmos (not to unflatter the game), even aspects of Terraforming Mars. The game fills same niche, a quick playing engine building game that scratches the nerves that delight in the growth of a tableau of card. Art-wise it’s not a fanciful as Machi Koro, but better than Terraforming’s and Space Base’s. Gizmo’s game design is gimmicky in comparison. Gameplay wise it is quicker feeling (not necessarily actually quicker) than the rest.
Component-wise the tactility is much better than Machi Koro, not as an impressive table presence as Terraforming, and hard to compare to Space Base or Gizmos. My copy has a UV treatment on the tokens in the game add a nice touch, and the use of tokens is nice as it helps bookkeeping as by keeping them on the cards can help players remember which ones they have used.
Rulebook-wise the game is a breeze to pick up, I’m used to Wargaming manuals, so this 8 page pamphlet was no sneeze. I really wish there was a legend that explains all the symbols. The pattern for the symbols is clear, but not the most intuitive to pick up prima facie. I had to refer to the comprehensive glossary that contains all but the KS cards (a missed opportunity as the actions had to be deduced from the other symbols, I think I’m getting them right?). This game is almost language independent a few cards are explained via English, also all the reminders are also in English. Unfortunate in my opinion, but minimal.
Overall I think I would recommend Fantastic Factories as a level up from a gateway game. It requires some sophistication to excel at the game, but the complexity isn’t deep enough to really have the strategic depth to keep the game in the forefront of my mind. I would regift the game after about 10-15 plays. or use it as an excuse to replace Machi Koro or another dice-based engine building game.