Icaion, the impossible to pronounce sequel to the equally slippery Mysthea, has been reviewed by BGQ before. Spencer covered the multiplayer game and came away less-than-impressed. This time, we’re diving into Icaion solo, with some multiplayer thoughts sprinkled in as well.
Icaion, from Martino Chiacchiera and Marta Ciaccasassi, with art by Travis Anderson, and published by Tabula Games, is a 2-5 player game that takes about two hours to play. It has a solo mode via an expansion designed by Dávid Turczi and John Albertson.
Gameplay Overview:
Icaion is an engine builder, a territory developer, and a resource management game. Thus says BGG anyhow. To me, this feels like a city builder wearing a mask.
The game is played on a jewel-toned board made up of regions surrounding a central City space. Players move around Nodes on the board and place different machines to harvest precious (and sometimes plentiful) Qoam.
Qoam is the only resource in the game, and it comes in five colors. Blue, green, pink, brown, and gray. Each color is used to pay the cost to perform or boost actions.
Players take the role of Seekers and get 1 Standard and/or one Special action per turn. Those Standard actions let you
- Extract – harvest Qoam from regions adjacent to the Node where your Seeker mini is standing. This can be boosted by machines that you’ve placed or hindered by Parasites.
- Deploy a Machine – take one of the enormous Machine minis and place it in a region, as long as there are no machines of that type in the region.
- Eradicate Parasites – just like it sounds, pay Qoam to kill baddies.
- Investigate the Colossus – there is a gigantic Being that wanders around the edge of the board, birthing parasites. It also has Shards sprouting from its base, and you can swipe it off the thing for mega points. You’re basically doing it a favor by removing these growths. You’re like a doctor! Just… don’t think about it too much.
- Retrieve an Apparatus – Get a point-multiplier machine from the City. Combine with Shards for Even More Points.
- Install an Apparatus – Haul the Apparatus you just got at the City to the edge of the map and slot it in your player board to lock in the points.
There are only two Special Actions, which let you play Curio Cards or use your Emergency Power Supply. Both of which give bonuses like extra Standard Actions, Points, bonus Movement, and more.
The winner is the Seeker with the most points after three complete Years.
Game Experience:
If you haven’t read Spencer’s review, you should. He nails it.
As a Seeker, you move around the map gathering Qoam and immediately paying that Qoam to perform other actions. There’s much to be had, until there isn’t. Luckily, the start of each round reveals a new region card and more Qoam sprouts up there. Hang on, is this just a weeding simulator? Is Qoam bindweed??
The Colossus is an eye-catching mini, but ultimately doesn’t really do much aside from trudge in circles around the map and make parasites bloom. Sometimes it gets mad enough and whacks Seekers, weakening them until the next Year.
The game does move slowly in multiplayer, especially in learning games. Our first 3p game took just north of 3 hours with teach. Turns themselves are quick, but there is enough fiddle (no, you can’t just keep the Qoam you harvested; it goes in a Null Cage, and if there’s already Qoam in there, that gets discarded, and no, you can’t swap Null Cages) that rules checks are frequent.
Solo Game Experience
Velkhorne is a legendary Seeker, lost to the barren and cold lands outside the City. And he has returned—hideously disfigured and impenetrably armored—and very hungry. Velkhorne is a medium-complexity bot who prints points and spreads Corruption in regions around the City.
Like Mysthea, there is great character art for the solo opponent. And, like Mysthea, there is no matching mini. So we have to make do with one of the included Seeker minis. Even though it would be a blast to have a Very-Ill-Ms.-Marvel-looking mini to parade around the map.
The bot is fairly simple to run. There are just 7 cards, with two face up to start each turn. To play Velkhorne’s actions, you’ll draw one (to have 3 face-up cards), Velkhorne will move or camp, and then select which of the revealed cards’ actions he will take.
There’s a nice bit of foreshadowing here, as you can see what Velkhorne will do ahead of time and adjust according to your own priorities. You won’t always know what’s coming, because sometimes he takes the action of the drawn card instead. It’s a nice simulation of your (mostly) predictable human players.
But what does actual play against the bot feel like?
It’s quick. It takes a bit of a learning curve (nowhere near the same level as Maliath). And it does a decent job of inhabiting the role of a human player.
Velkhorne moves around the edge of the map and spams out machines and parasites. He also kills parasites. I guess they were ungrateful? Or put too much cheese in their Bloody Marys? Either way, in end-of-Year scoring, he gets points if he slayed more than you.
His machines clog up the board, meaning you need to account for that and either get in early where he is or stay across the board to maximize your Qoam harvest.
He’s a git. And he doesn’t take up too much brain space to bring his git-ness to life.
Rays of Light
Icaion includes an alternate game mode called Rays of Light. It’s mandatory for Solo, and it feels weird to me. In setup, Rays of Light instructs the player to randomly place a number of neutral machines on the board, phased. This makes sense for solo and keeps the board dynamic for development.
The other changes are weird. Scoring is nerfed (you can’t use Shards to multiply the value of Apparati). You can deploy machines in any order, instead of deploying the Leftmost machine in a row. There are some alternate ways to gain points.
To me, this is fluff. Is it better than base Icaion? Kinda? Setup is certainly improved. But this feels weird. Tacked on, almost. Or something a Developer advocated for, but the Designers didn’t like? The why doesn’t matter. The fact that it’s included makes me, the player, feel like this game was released too early and the Tabula team wasn’t confident in the product.
Perhaps it’s the edition that I have, and RoL wasn’t part of the base game in its original release.
Final Thoughts:
In some ways, Icaion feels like Mysthea’s kid brother. Less mature. Perpetually smeared in sticky and colorful gloops. Worms in every pocket. Always has that weird Robot lurking around behind him.
This is a game that is coated with lore and jargon, and none of it is particularly impactful on actual gameplay. The theme could be real estate development, theme park building, or gardening. It would still work with the rule set.
The parts that make it up are gorgeous. The minis are well crafted, the board is beautiful, and holding a fistful of glimmering Qoam awakens my inner Thorin.
It all adds up to a wonderfully weird package. A slightly underbaked ube cake. Icaion brings gem-mining and parasite squashing to Weird Euroville. And it works.
Final Score: 3 Stars – Icaion fidgets and fiddles. It colors and screams. But the foundation is a fun game. The Solo expansion is well done and will let me table this weirdo when I normally wouldn’t be able to.
Hits:
• The tactical mining infrastructure simulator rocks
• Fabulous art and production
• Solo mode is well crafted
Misses:
• Still fiddly to a fault
• Why does Rays of Light mode exist? Just pick one set of rules!
