Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Desolated, an engine builder for 1-2 players (1-6 with multiple copies). Harvest materials, optimize exploration, make trades and influence orbital councils for dominance and ultimately victory.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
Desolated, an engine builder for 1-2 players (1-6 with multiple copies). Harvest materials, optimize exploration, make trades and influence orbital councils for dominance and ultimately victory. The first player to dominate 5 councils, wins the game. Start the game by dividing material-cards, trade-cards and council-cards facedown into individual decks; shuffle and reveal 5 of each. Then give each player 4 material-cards. This is their starting hand. The first player is decided by drawing a material-card and revealing the card number. Highest number is the starting player. In turn order, clockwise around the table, each player has two phases. In the first phase, draw 2 material-cards into your hand. In the second phase, either play a material card to optimize your engine, trade for influence or dominate an orbital council. The game contains 130 cards of amazing art work and high quality cards, printed on a special 330 gr/sqm triplex paper of casino quality, assuring zero transparency. Easy to shuffle and resistant to worn-out. —description from the designer