First Impressions of Armageddon

Armageddon isn’t nearly as awful as the title suggests. Sure, civilisation has fallen and gangs of marauding psychopaths roam the dusty countryside hurling insults and sharp pointy objects at you but you have a home with people and the most important thing to worry about, really, is who is going to earn the most victory points! Has all that much changed, really?

At the centre of Armageddon, past the burned out motorcycles and scrap metal fortifications, is an auction system that is really quite nice. Each round there are 3 auctions running simultaneously. One gets you first pick of new buildings to construct in your personal tableau, the second gives you useful artefacts from the bygone era, like guns, fuel and cars, as well as bringing in new people to join your fledgling society. People are useful in this game because not only do you need them to man the walls and operate your buildings, people are what you bid with each turn.

So in a different sense it’s a worker placement game, where you will commit a big pile of workers to a task at once, but if anyone places more, then that bigger gang is going to get first pick of the corresponding reward. It’s a natural system for resolving who gets what in the lawless future! Adding an extra zing of pepper (a valuable commodity in dog and rodent based cuisine) to proceedings is that top bidder in a given auction gets a bonus, bottom bidder takes a penalty. Do you try and play safe on all three auctions? Or accept a hit on one to ride high on another? I quite enjoy an auction and this was a nice system, especially when you think you’ve played safe and everyone proceeds to throw men into that auction to outbid you! Really!?

Making things even more challenging is that fact that as the game goes on you will end up with different numbers of people available, giving those bigger gangs more power in the auctions. But this comes with a challenge. Firstly you’ll need enough space to house these folks as any… extras… will have to be kicked out back to the waste and that’s certainly going to cost you victory points (plus, you know, morality points or whatever). New people tag along with the rewards from the wastes, but not everyone is happy and helpful. Some are bandits and bring along the raiders. Drawing the ire of the wasteland marauders is an inevitable part of life in Armageddon and it only gets worse if you don’t fight back. Fortunately many of the available buildings let you defend yourself. This is essential, as the marauders will really prey on the weak and it is certainly plausible to be completely taken apart if you don’t stay on top of the threat.

I very much enjoyed my demo of Armageddon. The auctions are interesting and surprising. Managing people, buildings, point scoring and raider fighting is a satisfying puzzle. I wasn’t overly excited about the theme though. That’s not to say it isn’t thematic, I feel it does a very good job on its theme for a Euro game. But it doesn’t do anything with the setting that hasn’t been done before, and generic “post-apocalypse” just feels a little drab to me. But if you like this setting, and enjoy auctions, then definitely check this one out.

This First Impression article is based on a demo at Essen. Check out my thoughts on some of the other games I played here.