I have to confess that although being interested in the Kickstarter Campaign I was initially wary so waited for it to make general distribution.
Having now bought and played it I am loving it more and more each play.
Components:The artwork is superb throughout and invokes the theme of the game rather well from the New Shiny Parts through to the scrap parts. The quality of the components is really great, the cardboard is decent thickness and the wooden components fit the theme well. The board itself is well layed out, though the symbols to aid your understanding on what each sections does are a little small and hard to see from around the table but once you have played a round you no longer really need these as they game is simple enough to pick up.
Gameplay:I am really liking this game which pits you as one of the unsung engineer's of the auto-mobile era trying to win investment for your prototype against other engineers.
Each game you play will be different as you choose a number of scoring tiles (Investors) based on the level of game you wish to play, chosen from 3 different stacks.
You compete for the best parts as well as scavenging the junk yards in order to put your vehicle together with the right criteria to meet your investors exacting needs. You can visit the back alley to do deals to further your cause, at the cost of actions in later turns. Planning is key and rushing for the shiny new parts can end the game quicker than you expected leaving you to finish your vehicle with scrap in order to have it ready in time.
Though the starting player can be changed by who goes last in the Workshop area, which does give the advantage of first choice of action next round, player order for taking the actions selected is determined by the order players placed their tokens their. This then can have very strategic implications of where you choose to place your early tokens.
Players have a hand limit of Blueprints (parts) they can hold in their hand and holding on to them may mean you will not be able to take any actions that allow you to take more.
There is potential here for a lot of player interaction, especially with the Back Ally actions so thinking carefully about the order in which you do things can be crucial.
Conclusions:Great game which scales well and is quite fun to play but brutal to learn the right strategy.
The designers/publishers warn you that new players tend to always go for new parts, I agree but I would add that the game board layout for the actions encourages that behaviour to a degree as well. In the games I have played most have ended due to the new Part pile being depleted. This has led me to look at the variant page in the main rulebook and I have adopted the Patent office variant from there, this has slowed the amount of New part tiles being discarded enough that it gives players more time to get their cars together. For me this improves the gameplay quite a lot and makes it a more even competition, I will also have to introduce the expansions next as it looks like these will improve the gameplay still further.
I have now played this a few times and I am liking it more and more each time I play. Despite my initial doubts this has quickly become a favourite game of mine and has seen regular plays at my gaming group. The designers have done a fantastic job and look forward to seeing whatever they produce next either for this or something new.
Really fun game I can recommend as it plays really quickly, even with 5 players, and there is plenty there to allow many more plays
