Aldarra

On Kallax there were flowers and lamps,

Later, there were only lamps,

And at the very end, there was Aldarra.

I invite you to my review of another colossus game with plastic figures.

Aldarra is a 4X game in which we’ll fight epic aerial battles, expand our empire, explore new territories and complete quests to earn the most points.

In such games, the more X’s it has, the better it should be. Let’s check it out.

X for Eternal Battle

Aldarra is combat oriented. We won’t be bunkering and slowly siphoning off resources. We just have to build up our fleet quickly and be ready to strike.

The reason for this motivation to attack is that the main source of points is winning aerial battles. Therefore, we are constantly attacking each other, trying to gain advantages on the board, and taking advantage of the features of our ships.

Each player will be able to recruit the same types of ships. That’s a bit of a downside for me because we can’t customize them as much as we could in Eclipse. But it’s not too bad. Because ships have different durability, attack power, firing initiative, and special abilities. We can also upgrade our fleet with various technologies. So we have some options.

Once we have this information behind us, we can move on to this explosive combat. Battles in Aldarra will look like we are playing some kind of war game. We stand over a table, roll a handful of dice, and see what we hit.

Well I simplified it a bit. Because fighting in Aldarra has some cool flavors.

The first is that battles have two initiatives. Some ships fire in light, and some in heavy. The difference is that if we destroya ship in light initiative it will no longer shoot in heavy. All this will also depend on our fleet. The damage we inflict in some initiative will not transfer to the next one. That is, you have to get rid of something right away. A cool patent is that we can abandon the light initiative and fire all ships in the heavy one. So as to get rid of something big and armored.

Combat in Aldarra is explosive because the dice during an attack can explode. If you roll a star on some dice you roll it again until no other result comes out. Thanks to this, just like in Star Wars, we can get rid of some big cruisers with a small flock of ships. This always gives us a chance to win.

On top of that, there are the various ship abilities I wrote about earlier. The Destroyer can easily join various conflicts, the Cruiser tanks damage, the Drednot shoots back as it dies, the Engineer lowers the defense of buildings, and the Frigate, when upgraded, gains additional special initiative. There are quite a few possible combinations for building our fleet.

The battles are fast and won’t last very long either. Mainly due to the fact that there can be only 5 of our ships on one hex. In addition, if we have already survived this first round of combat then we can keep fighting. Although then comes the escalation dice, which will increase the damage to both sides of the conflict. That is, we won’t be able to fight indefinitely like in Twilight Imperium.

Once we lose our fleet, it was usually hard in such games to rebuild and get back into the competition. For that in Aldarra we get cash from the bank for each of our units destroyed. Such war reparations. In addition, it’s impossible to conquer our base, which generates quite a bit of income every round. Through it all, we still feel that we are in the game. It’s not like we play those few hours knowing we’ve lost a long time ago.

We can even cause several conflicts at the same time in our turn. All thanks to how we play our orders. Because we have the ability to move units to one territory or to fly all our ships out of one hex. We just have to remember one golden rule, that there can be 5 of our ships on one tile. The swarm strategy doesn’t work here. Although you can easily score points on single ships of your rivals. Because they are an easy target to farm points.

X for Exploration

Aldarra doesn’t have that typical exploration. From the very beginning of the game we know what is where on the map. Nothing will surprise us. Although I like the fact that at the beginning of the game we build ourselves a battle map. We can even create some strange shapes with holes in the middle. Who will forbid us to do that?

Exploration in this game is based on the fact that after a move we can draw a card from the exploration deck. The effects we can encounter there are really many. Sometimes there can be free units, new technologies or some strong one-time effects. Although there will also be situations where we won’t gain anything because, for example, we already have such a technology, etc. It’s quite random with what we can gain. However, the best cards are those that we can save for later. Because they can help us in battle, for example, canceling the damage in one of the initiatives. It was awesome and the look on my opponent’s face was priceless.

X for Exploitation Expansion

We will not only fight with these ships. We’ll also be taking over territories to benefit from the various mines scattered around the map. We’ll also gain the crystals needed to upgrade buildings or build better ships.

We’ll place outposts on our territories to offer us a presence on the map or fortresses to produce units.

Aldarra’s economic layer is quite negligible. There will be no supply chains or hundreds of technologies to acquire here. This is a combat-oriented game, but I think I’ve mentioned that before.

Although some of the technologies can be really powerful at times. Especially additionally the initiative for our frigates. We also have some interesting ones that allow us to teleport around the board, we will be able to unleash aerial fire on someone, and there is even one that will allow us to collect income from our buildings.

X for Asymmetry

I left Aldarra’s biggest advantage for the very end. This is something that such Bearded Tigers like the most. That is, the different factions, which delights us with their asymmetry. Each side of the conflict in Aldarra has its own special abilities that subtly modify their gameplay.

The mysterious Arrodan Sydnicate can steal enemy units and has a larger pool of objective cards to choose from. The Cin’darian Empire specialize in building ships. They also have no limit on how many ships they can build in their base and can easily upgrade their ships. Mining Corp. Coalition can freely exchange crystals for money and vice versa. They are also masters at putting up new outposts. Odarian Empire is my favorite faction. Because it gets more technology than the other others and still gets to move its buildings on occasion. This does not count towards the limit of units per tile so those few more attack dice can help us quite a bit.

I don’t want to somehow talk about the balance of these factions here, but some are just better than others. As it happens in these asymmetrical games. Because all these abilities in a small way modify what we can normally do. Except, of course, for Ordarian Empire and Cin’darian Empire.

X for Cosmic Quality

The level of performance of this game reminds me of Eclipse. It’s cosmically good. High quality ship models, gametrayz that organize our tokens, cards and tiles. It’s so good in this aspect. Now I know why the box of this game is so big. The box of this game is so big that I would have to knock out one wall in the Kallax and there would probably still be a problem fitting this game in. Therefore, it crowns the top of my Kallax like a crown of kings.

The faction boards are another plus, as they contain all the information about the course of the round and what each tile does.

X for Gameplay Time

Aldarra is a long game. Sometimes I would even say too long. Because normally we play up to 20 victory points. We have to count one hour per player. In terms of gameplay time, this game is definitely closer to Eclipse than to the all-day Twilight Imperium.

However, it’s up to us to dictate the duration of the game. Because it all depends on us how often we brawl, fulfill additional objectives and exchange resources for points. There have been quick games, and there have been some that dragged on because everyone was afraid of the attack.

That’s why, after a while, I found that we played to 12 points and somehow it was better. Because it was still a race and somehow the motivation to fight was greater.

X for Scaling

Such large games generally work badly for two players. Sometimes the board is too big, and sometimes the tension is missing as we beat each other. Aldarra, on the other hand, works well for two players. Because of the fact that it is played as if we were playing some kind of war game. The board is then correspondingly smaller and there is no chance here to bunker down in its corners. We can fly everywhere and it’s easy to have a fight between us. For two players we will also have some more neutral units on the map, which will block other locations. We can score ourselves a few points on them.

As for me, Aldarra works well in any group and the most important thing is that I can attack my wife. The perfect game for non-romantic battles for two.

Summary

A friend of mine asked me before the game whether they would manage it. Because he knew very well that I like such big games with tons of rules that you forget during the game. This is another big plus for Aldarra. For a 4X game, it has pretty simple rules that take 20 minutes to explain. The flow of the game is also so well structured that we know when and what we can do. One of the things that helps is our player board, which has everything nicely described.

Aldarra is a full-fledged 4X. Maybe some of the X’s available in the game are a bit limited, but that’s just so we can sit down to play, quickly explain the rules, and just play. The best part for me, though, is the combat, and that’s what Aldarra puts the most emphasis on. I feel like it’s a real war game with airships where we’re flying, using the abilities of our ships and trying to outsmart our rivals. Plus, we still have asymmetric factions that change what we can do in the game.

Final Verdict: A simpler Eclipse, only different.

Pros

• Set for epic air battles
• Explosive combat
• Reparations of war
• Different ship abilities
• Asymmetrical factions
• Cosmic quality
• Works well for 2 players

Cons

• Can be lengthy
• Economy only needed for combat
• Exploration sometimes fails

[Game provided by Sordane Publishing]