auztralia board game review

Okay, so I got my hands on this board game called “Auztralia” the other day. I’d heard some good things about it, thought I’d give it a shot. You know, always up for trying new board games.

First off, unboxing it was pretty standard. The box art is kinda cool, you got this 1930s vibe, with some weird monsters and zeppelins in the background. Inside, there’s the game board, a bunch of cardboard tokens, wooden pieces, cards – you know, the usual stuff you find in these kinds of games.

I set up the game board. It looked pretty neat. Then I started punching out all those cardboard tokens. You got your resources, your monsters, player tokens, all that jazz. Took a bit of time, you know how it is with those punch-out sheets, but nothing too crazy.

The rulebook, well, it’s a bit of a beast. Not super complicated, but definitely something you gotta sit down and read carefully. It’s got this whole thing where you’re exploring post-World War I Australia, but there’s also these Cthulhu-style Old Ones that are waking up. You’re supposed to, like, build farms and railways, fight monsters, gather resources. It sounds way cooler than it actually plays out, honestly.

I started a solo game just to get a feel for it. You pick a faction, set up your starting stuff on the board. Then, you start taking turns, doing actions like moving, building, recruiting troops. The basic gameplay loop is kinda like this: you explore, find resources, build up your economy, and then get ready for the Old Ones to show up.

The combat’s pretty simple. You just roll dice and compare numbers, nothing too fancy. You also have these cards that let you do special actions or mess with the other players if you’re playing multiplayer, which I did later on.

• Early Game: The beginning is all about exploring and building up your base. It’s kinda slow, to be honest. You’re just placing your pieces, trying to get a good foothold on the map.
• Mid Game: This is where things start to pick up. You’re fighting monsters, collecting resources, building your railways, and trying to get those victory points. It was during the mid-game that I realized how much randomness affects the gameplay.
• Late Game: The Old Ones start waking up more frequently, and it becomes a real scramble to survive. Or, you know, it would be, if the game didn’t just kinda fizzle out. The ending felt pretty anticlimactic, no real sense of accomplishment.

I played a few more times, trying out different factions and strategies. I even roped in a couple of friends for a multiplayer game. It was a bit more interesting with other people, but it still felt kinda…meh.

My Final Thoughts

Honestly, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The theme is cool, the components are decent quality, but the gameplay itself just didn’t grab me. The randomness with the dice rolls and card draws can make or break the game sometimes. And it all just feels a bit too simple, almost like it was trying to do too many things at once without really nailing any of them. It’s not a terrible game, just not one I’d be itching to play again anytime soon.

So yeah, that’s my experience with “Auztralia”. Maybe you’ll like it more than I did. Who knows? Board games are pretty subjective, right?