Wormholes: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Route-Building, Pick up and Deliver, Hand Management, Modular Board
Player Age: 14+ Player Count: 1 - 5 PlayersTime to Play: 45 - 60 Minutes
Game Designer: Peter McPherson
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Peter McPherson
Introduction:
Space is known to be a vast and open place, taking humans lifetimes to travel a relatively short distance. Now, new technology has been deployed, creating efficient transport through the use of wormholes. What better use of this concept than as a transport agency? Set up the most efficient intergalactic travel possible in this pickup and deliver game by leaving wormholes throughout space, creating a network of speedy travel.
Game Anatomy:
Space Boards:
The map is made up of numerous space boards, each containing obstacles such as space stations, planets, stars and/or asteroids. All obstacles are denoted by a black background and may feature unique abilities such as the ones detailed below.
Orbit:
Big ring planets and space stations have an orbit. An orbit allows a player to move to any space within this orbit as one action, spending only one energy to move.
Nebulae Space:
Moving off or through a nebulae space is a free movement, however, moving onto the space still cost one energy.
Wild Wormhole:
Each wild wormhole has a number between 3 and 5. Any player can travel to and from this wild wormhole by using their active wormhole of the same number.
Photon Cannon:
As a free action, a player on this space can launch themselves in a straight line across the map, covering any amount of spaces (minimum two). This action will move players through obstacles but will not allow them to stop on any.
Black Hole:
When moving onto the black hole a player must immediately reveal and discard a passenger card from the top of the deck and then move adjacent to that planet.
Passenger Cards:
Passengers are a pivotal part of this pickup and deliver game. Each passenger card has the location where they want to go and a reminder that they score two points at the end of the game if completed.
Exploration Tokens and Round Tokens:
The length of the game is based on the exploration tokens. At the bottom of this exploration stack is 3,2,1 round Tokens followed by a planets-connected token, then tokens equal to the number of planets in play. An exploration token is gained when a wormhole token is placed adjacent to a planet for the first time. Once every planet has this, there are 3 rounds of gameplay left for the players. Each exploration token will give the players between 1 and 3 points at the end of the game
Wormholes:
Each player will have a wormhole stack of 10 wormholes, numbered 1-5 in duplicate. Players can play wormholes on the inactive side as a free action during their turn. When both wormholes of the same value are played, the tokens flip to the active side and can now be travelled through as a free action. Travel is only through matching wormholes (and wild wormholes of the same number). Use of an opponent’s wormhole will gain them one victory point.
There are several rules involved in placing a wormhole.
- Can be placed under or adjacent to your ship.
- The space has to be vacant (without another wormhole but can have ships).
- This wormhole must be from the top of a player's stack, either completing a wormhole pairing or starting a new one.
- Wormhole tokens can't be moved or removed.
- One player cannot have more than one of their wormhole tokens adjacent to the same planet or station.
Setup:
- Flip the space station board to the side matching the player count.
- Based on player count, either remove the excess space boards denoted with four plus or shuffle them together with the rest of the space boards.
- Place the space boards together to form a map in the pattern below matching the correct player count. Make sure each planet has at least two spaces between them.
- Form the exploration stack in this order: round 1, 2, 3 tokens, planets-connected token
exploration tokens 8 to 1 (include 9 and 10 in a four-player plus game).
- Have the point tokens within all players' reach.
- Give each player 3 energy tokens face-up, a ship, a reference card in their colour, a pick-up token, and a wormhole token stack with 5 at the bottom and ascending to 1 at the top with the inactive side faceup.
- Either remove the cards with 4+ from the passenger deck or keep them based on player count and shuffle the passenger deck.
- Determine the first player by the most recent player to pass through a doorway.
- Deal one passenger card to the first player, two to players 2 and 3 and three to players four and five.
- On a player's first turn place the top wormhole token adjacent to the space station and place your ship on that wormhole.
How to Play:
On a player's turn, they can use their three energy tokens for movement and can use an assortment of free actions to drop off passengers, use a map feature, place and move through wormholes.
Moving:
Moving is easy but slow in this game. On your turn, flip over one energy marker to move one adjacent space, as long as you aren't moving onto or through an obstacle space. If you want to traverse the map quickly, you want to take full advantage of the wormholes.
Free actions:
Players can do these free actions any amount of times on their turn:
- Drop off a passenger matching the planet you are adjacent to.
- Place a wormhole on your space or an adjacent empty space. If this is the second wormhole of a number both flip to the active side.
- Use a map feature, as explained in the game anatomy.
- Warp through a wormhole of the same number, if this is an opponent's wormhole they gain one point.
Passengers:
As the goal is to pick up and deliver passengers, they are a pivotal part of the game. To pick up passengers, players will flip over their pick-up token (this action can only be performed once per turn) and then discard any amount of cards in hand. If picking up passengers at a planet, the player will then draw to a hand size of four cards, discarding any cards that match the planet they are drawing from.
When passengers are discarded they will be displayed face-up in separate piles for each planet, next to the passenger deck. When a player draws passengers from the space station they can first discard any cards and then draw up to four passengers from two of these discard stacks.
Dropping off passengers is as easy as using a free action when the player is adjacent to the destination planet. Each delivered passenger is worth two points and players gain an extra three points for every different planet after the first five unique planets.
End of Turn:
A player can end their turn whenever they are happy to. Once that occurs they will refresh their energy and passenger pick-up tokens.
Game End:
When the planets connected token is revealed there will be three rounds of gameplay left before the game ends, so make sure to optimise those wormholes and deliver those passengers in that time. If the passenger deck runs out, the current round will finish and there will be one more round.
Final Thoughts:
- Feels like a fast pick-up and deliver game.
- Great tokens for the wormholes.
- Variance included on the modular board set-up.
- The turn structure may confuse people at first.
- Interesting discard system.
- Easy to play with plenty of depth.
- End of game is lead by players actions.
At its core, Wormholes is a route-building game. As you play through the game, you and your opponents are building routes and connecting highways of planets via wormholes that later connect to one another, allowing you to travel around the map with ease. This is where the game shines. The core gameplay is easy to explain but there are intricacies in how to set up these routes to optimise your drop off's while also presenting an enticing route for your opponents to use. If you carefully incorporate the space station you can also setup powerful turns where you pick up four passengers that others discarded that fit into your route perfectly. There is interesting features on the boards that add extra layers into the core loop such as wild wormholes that allows your portal can go to three sections connects the portals. These wormholes tend to be high in value so players will have to unload wormholes to access these wild faster. Pick-up and deliver games can feel a bit tedious for me but Wormholes hits with speed and entertainment. This is an easy recommendation and has earned a Silver Seal of Approval.
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