This is the account of a demo night I attended a few weeks ago. I got to try two games: Dreamscape and Mission: Red Planet.

Dreamscape is collectible. This is a shame, because this makes it very unlikely that I’ll play it, despite the fact that it looks very good. It’s published by Wizards of the Coast, and they were promoting the heck out of it at Origins.

To make matters even worse, it’s a miniatures game, which is a double shame: Your army is a maximum of 16 figures (could have been cards), and while the minis do look very attractive, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have been cards. (You move them around a tactical grid, which is very open, plenty of room for either minis or cards.) At such a small deck size, a CCG might have been conceivable.

The game looks neat, very fast-moving; on your turn, you can move all your units or attack with all your units. Between rounds you summon in more units to replace the fallen. You gain points for killing enemies and controlling squares near your opponent’s side of the board.

There are four “factions”: the evocatively-named Fear, Valor, Madness, and Passion. You don’t have to pick one faction; instead, the cost of units can be reduced (to a point) by units of that faction you already have in play. Mixing two factions looks very doable.

Units have special powers, of course, and it looks like they put a lot of thought and work into it. Which is a shame, because as I mentioned, I can’t envision myself buying any.

Mission: Red Planet, on the other hand, is an ordinary board game. The theme is steampunk colonization of Mars; it’s a very loose theme such as you would expect from your average Euro-game.

The gameplay will make you think of a cross between El Grande (vie for control of regions that are worth varying amounts of points; highest population controls the region) and Citadels (you have a hand full of roles; each turn you choose a role, which grants you certain choices in how you deploy your forces. Like Citadels, there is a strong element of preemption where the roles have a fixed order, and depending on the other players’ plans, going first or last can be a big advantage.)

The game is fun but not flawless; the selection of roles is very tight with lots of calculation, but there are “event cards” that can introduce dramatic and unpredictable scoring swings, which can be frustrating. It has the somewhat dubious distinction of being the first new board game I’ve played in a while where I thought “I’ve seen this before.” El Grande is a classic; if you like it and are looking for a slightly lighter, differently themed variant of it, give Mission: Red Planet a try. Otherwise, stick with the classic.