Before we even start this piece I want to remind you once again of the ridiculousness of the English language. The word volcanoes is pronounced vol-cainose but the word canoes is pronounced canooze. So we could have Volcanooze which to me sounds like a lot more fun and eruptiony. If you have a Super Vol canoes, then you've probably landed in Teleporthole Game's house, and now you're trying to deal with the management of therms. It's all very much warm.
Super Volcano Is a Euro-Write. A game where resources are gained and then utilised every round with the overall goal of achieving victory points based on the number of civilians you keep warm and toasty, but not burning and on fire. In the middle of the board there's a Super Volcano, providing everyone in the area with plentiful Therms and therefore energy, providing you have enough power stations to utilise them.
Fairly straightforward to get into, rounds are comprised of using workers to increase your reach across the two player or four player board, joining spaces together to created your own network of towns, villages and cities to increase you population. Population can be assigned to either being citizens or workers, the former providing victory points as long as they're warm and powered and the latter giving you action points that allow you to fill in one of six small spaces that are contained in every hex.
Hexes must be connected by pipelines to create your network and the workers required for each space depends on the type of terrain. So your standard forest only needs one worker action point to colour a space, while the mountains need three. At the beginning of the game, its fairly easy to traverse the board only connecting up your forest and various habitable zones, but as the game progresses you'll potentially use up a lot of action points on the higher costing hexes.
Taking control of one of the terrain zones results in its transformation into a power plant, and depending on its proximity to the central volcano, you then be granted a certain number of therms that will be used for point scoring. Point scoring is based around the number of normal heated citizens that you have in play and so it is vital that you balance up the build of power stations, the expansion of your population and making sure everyone is properly heated.
This need for therms comes to a head in every round, as you have a level of therms that needs to be reached in order to prevent excess pressure in the volcano causing damage. Fail to reach that level and you'll be rolling a dice to see how much population damage has been done on that turn. As the rounds progress, the level required for the Therms jumps up considerably, and rather that fight it, sometimes you have to accept that you'll be rolling every round as time goes on. There's only a total of six rounds to play though, so you're looking at charging in to make what hay you can.
Super Volcano reminds me of Power Grid with an extra touch of aggression and the geothermal pressure of time. With such a short time at the table, you'll need to look at expansion from the offset, making sure you start off with as many workers as possible, trying to expand your network as widely as you can. That means expanding into the path of other players, and at both player counts it means placing workers into plots to disrupt others plans for power stations. With that, Super Volcanoes shares some affinity with an area control, because yes, you can try to stay on your own side of the board, but the high costs of some of the terrain will often have you chasing after the cheaper forest to create your power stations. So you are likely to end up with several spaces where you are slowly building towards the required six plots for a power station and hoping that another player doesn't crash in and ruin the party.
It is a tricky balancing act, as it feels like cheaper spaces are fewer by design, to encourage you to step in to other's networks. This doesn't play like similar games, where there is enough for players to build their own little kingdom and interaction is only through choice. Super Volcano will often have you sacrificing the easier gameplay for the invasive one, especially if you are trying to stop others from building their power stations. With the ever looming threat of population loss through the Therm tally check at the end of the round, it can sometime feel like continual mitigation over an overall strategy. Though to be fair to it, there's far too many resource control games where you sit politely with people as you build your own little point machine and apologise if you think too loudly.
The theme of Super Vol canoes ties in nicely to the gameplay. The print element is an interesting choice and I actually wonder at what stage this moved from being an actual physical board game to the Euro-write version I tested and played. It warrants being laminated for multiple plays but the printed version allows for a host of different maps and changes that will ultimately offer more choice and longevity. If you're looking for power grid vibes that doesn't take over an hour to climb, then this is probably going to hit the sweet spot for you. There's something quite nice about a game that allows you to be the area control business asshole. Until it all erupts and the mountain is covered in liquid hot canoes. I'm sorry, I'll Stop.
The Kickstarter Campaign is found on https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/teleportholegames/supervolcano
Designed - Andrew Klinkenberg
This preview is based on the prototype version of the game provided to us by the designer and publisher. We were not paid monetary compensation for this Preview. We give a general overview of the gameplay and so not all of the mechanical aspects of the game may be mentioned. Quotations from this preview may possibly appear in relation to any marketing associated with this game.The majority of the games that we are play are going to take a reasonable number of sessions and playthroughs to fully understand every possibility that they offer. We hope this write up gives you an idea of whether or not this game is something that you will consider playing or even add to your collection.
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