Board Games
(Endless) Winter is Coming…
Move over Lost Ruins of Arnak and Dune Imperium. Best in class, Endless Winter is soon to be gracing a table near you!
Endless Winter: Paleoamericans by Fantasia Games Designed by Stan Kordonskiy Developed by Johnny Pac Art by the Mico. A game for 1–4 players with a playtime of 60–120 minutes for ages 12+.
How Dare You!
Greetings fellow Board Gamers, I come to you with an immodest proposal. If you like the Lost Ruins of Arnak or Dune Imperium then you’re going to love Endless Winter.
Yes, I know. Not everyone will agree with me. Some players got their feet on the ground with LRoA as their first hobbyist board game, and a lot of gamers are not only crazy about the Dune IP but also have come to really enjoy the mechanisms presented in DI. But I think anyone who tries Endless Winter will see what I mean. This game has it all.
Theme, Art, and Components
“Endless Winter: Paleoamericans takes place in North America, around 10,000 BCE. Players guide the development of their tribes across several generations — from nomadic hunter-gatherers to prosperous tribal societies. Over the course of the game, tribes migrate and settle new lands, establish cultural traditions, hunt paleolithic megafauna, and build everlasting megalithic structures.” — Fantasia Games
The art for this game is by the Mico. You may be familiar with from such popular games as the West Kingdom series (architects, Paladins, and Viscounts), and Imperium: Classics. The art is somehow both realistic and cartoonish. The Paleoamericans are presented as tough, skilled, and real as opposed to the often over-stylized versions of ancient people in most games present. These people look like they live and survive in a harsh world, and that’s what the Endless Winter of the Ice Age presents itself as.
Fierce and skilled tribes of First Nation ancestors compete for land and resources in this theme-rich eurogame.
The cards and resources in Endless Winter are both beautiful and multi-functional. The miniatures and meeples are well-crafted and fit the mood of the game quite well.
Game Mechanisms
“Endless Winter is a euro-style game that combines worker placement and deck building in an innovative way. Each round, players send their tribe members to various action spaces and pay for the actions by playing cards and spending resources. Tribe cards grant additional labor, while Culture cards provide a variety of unique effects. As an alternative, cards can be saved for an end-of-round Eclipse phase, where they are simultaneously revealed to determine the new player order, and trigger various bonus actions.
The game features a novel blend of interwoven systems and mechanisms, such as multi-use cards, area influence, tile placement, and set collection. Plus, there are many viable paths to victory. After four brisk rounds, scores are tallied, and the tribe with the most points wins!” — Fantasia Games
This game will remind players of Lost Ruins of Arnak and Dune Imperium because of their similar reliance on worker placement and deck-building mechanisms. Where DI dips its toe into area control, EW gives players the opportunity to make it a go-to part of their game plan from the beginning of the game.
Players can build villages and camps on the various terrain tiles, unlocking precious income/resources from their player boards.
Hand Management will be important as it is in any deck-building game. The multi-function cards are interesting in their own right even though LRoA and DI also have multi-use cards.
The Idol Track and Megalith Board provide more paths to victory and more mini-games to outwit your opponents at. The Modular Board and numerous expansions provide rich and vastly different gaming experiences right out of the box.
In Conclusion
Endless Winter is coming soon! Fulfillment of the Kickstarter is just on the horizon now that Chinese New Year is winding down. Expect to see this game jump up the hotness track on BGG in the months to come. Get in on the hype before the rest of ’em. This game is one of my top picks for Best Game of 2022!
That’s just a quick snapshot of Endless Winter. I hope to cover it more when my copy arrives and I can dive in over the board instead of a simulator.
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