allboardgames.com
Catalyst box art
2018 Ranked #7,124

Catalyst

An engine-building game in which players recruit superhuman Catalysts, construct buildings, and chain powerful actions for points. Goals and military majorities shape scoring, while activation converts a carefully built engine into rewards.

Family Games Card Game Open Drafting Set Collection Theme: Post-Apocalyptic

Players

2-4

Play time

20-40 min

Age

10+

Complexity

2/5

Rating

6.62

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.6/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

It is the Age of Rebirth, thanks to the discovery of a new type of catalytic energy and the special individuals who are able to exploit it. These rare individuals, known as “Catalyst”, use this energy to act together in a sort of interconnected network.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

It is the Age of Rebirth, thanks to the discovery of a new type of catalytic energy and the special individuals who are able to exploit it. These rare individuals, known as “Catalyst”, use this energy to act together in a sort of interconnected network. Can you make the most of their superhuman abilities to lead your city to fame and fortune? This is a simple yet deep game of engine-building and powerful combos. You will carefully build up your chain of actions, and then finally pull the trigger to perform all them at the same time! At the beginning of the game, a random Goal card is revealed. This will set various ways to score extra victory points at the end of the game, thus deeply affecting the available strategies. The game is turn-based and on your turn you must choose to perform one action among the following three: -Take a number of coins equal to the highest cost visible on the Catalyst cards displayed on the board. -Pay the indicated number of coins to recruit one of the available Catalyst cards on the board. The cost is altered by the current position of the card on the board. Once recruited, you can put the Catalyst card in one of the buildings you have managed to build. -Activate one of your recruited Catalyst cards to perform its effect. These will provide you several bonuses and actions like gaining extra coins, building new buildings, recruiting other catalyst cards from the board, obtaining military power tokens which will score for majorities at the end of the game, or allowing you to immediately activate other Catalyst cards. Whenever you activate a Catalyst card which is located in one of your buildings, the building provides an additional effect. Activated Catalyst cards go into your scoring pile, while buildings always remain in front of you. Buildings are also extremely important due to the fact each additional scoring indicated on the Goal card is related to a specific building; this means that you can score for it only if you first have managed to build that building. When the deck runs out of cards, there is a final round and then the game ends: players score points according to the Goal card as well as for the majority of Military power tokens and activated Catalyst cards. Whoever gathered the most victory points is the winner. -description from publisher

Browse all classifications

Shopping

Where to buy

No verified retailer offers are available yet. The references below may still help you continue your search.

Unverified shopping references

Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–4
Best with
2–4
Play time
20–40 min
Age
10+
Complexity
2.0/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

5
Per Abrahamsson Martino Chiacchiera Roberto Corbelli David Fröjmark Sergio Roscini

Artists

1
Yann Tisseron

Publishers

2
Atalia DV Games

Linked items

No published linked games yet.