Mechanica: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Tile Placement, Engine Building, Recipe Fufillment
Player Age: 12+ Player Count: 1 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 35 - 75 Minutes
Game Designer: Mary Flanagan, Emma Hobday, Max SeidmanGame Artist: Cisco Garrido, Mariana Sosa, Ann-Sophie De Steur, Spring YuPublisher: ResonymYear Published: 2020BGG Weight: 2.33Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Player Age: 12+
Game Designer: Mary Flanagan, Emma Hobday, Max Seidman
Rundown:
Mechanica is an engine-building bot fulfilment game. Players are trying to create paths for the bots that are generated on the left side of their board. Funnelling these bots through machines that generate duplicate bots, upgrades, downgrades or other ways to generate money or re-orient the bots until they reach the final truck. Bots can be sold at the trucks at their various levels white, orange, and purple bots can sell for 2, 4 or 6 money. Instead, the player can keep these bots on the trucks until they have enough to fulfil a blueprint scoring much better points in their bank for end-game scoring.
Advancement of the Engine:
Run the factory:
Simultaneously all the players' bots move to the next open hole on their engine. If two or more bots were destined for this destination then all will be destroyed beseides one of the players choices. Any bots at an improvement that need to be improved will now be activated.
Sell Bots:
Players will sell any of the bots they have in their trucks. Each truck has a capacity of 1, 2 or 3 bots. They can choose not to sell and use these bots towards blueprints. Fulfilled.
A blueprint will have a certain amount and type of bots they require and will earn that player coins for their bank (end of game scoring), and cannot be used during the game. Each round new blueprints will replace the blueprints that have already been fulfilled. Each player can fulfill a blueprint in a round but no blueprint can be fulfilled more than once by a player.
Buy Improvements:
Improvements have a cost shown on them based on their correspondence to the market. There are also forks and larger trucks (hold more bots) that players can buy shown on the insert next to the piece.
A player may buy as many improvements as they want on a turn as long as they can afford the improvements. Each improvement can be placed on the players board or discarded into the recycle pile for a bot shown on that tile in one of the players starting spaces on the fabricators.
Make new bots:
On each fabricator the player has on the far left side. Place one bot determined by the fabricator.
Rotate the shop:
Rotate the shop clockwise if a tile falls into the game box you may immediately gain its recycle bonus (additional bot). After rotating a new tile will be placed on the seven cost improvement space.
End-Game Scoring:
The game will end of all the improvements run out from the shop and improvement pile. Each coin in and out of a players bank will count directly as their value and each tile will also have an end game scoring shown on its top left.
Production:
The game is beautifully produced with the key focus being on the fact the game box doubles as a game board. There are spaces in this box for the blueprints, improvements that are always available, and most importantly the market rondel. The funny part about the market is it will recycle improvement tiles directly into the insert of the game box making packing away much easier as it occurs while the game is played.
Interaction:
The main interaction players have is the shared marketplace. Players may choose to let an improvement stay on the market for longer and push their luck. Remember the money a player spends is direct points.
The overactive fabricator will actually give opponents bots as a bot is produced, there isn't too much player interaction besides making sure if someone completes a blueprint, If a player seeks to finish that blueprint they also do on that round.
Determination:
-Very fun tongue-in-cheek rulebook
- Not enough interesting variety in the improvement tiles, the upgrade and downgrades didn't feel too exciting.
Mechanica is a core engine building game where players are programming their factory to make sure they generate a high resale value in their bots. It is crucial to sell bots in the standard way to make money that can be used in the game and upgrade their engine, however at a certain point players need to pivot into filling the blueprints as that is where good victory points lie. The production is great as the table space is managed to be mostly confined in the game box, this also gives the game a great presence. My main issue is the new improvements that players are improving their engine with do not feel unique enough. If the game has caught your attention or you simply love engine building games this is worth trying.
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