Mass Effect The Board Game review – pleasingly tasty tactics

As Wargamer’s resident Bioware baby, I have been very excited to get my hands on Mass Effect The Board Game: Priority Hagalaz – Modiphius’ officially licensed attempt to transport the best sci-fi videogame trilogy of all time (we don’t count Andromeda) into tabletop form. And, reader, against the odds: it’s generally very successful.

Why against the odds, I hear you cry? Well, videogame-to-board game crossovers are all the rage nowadays – but they’re a risky business, and rarely produce the best board games around.

Translating complex, computer-aided interactive experiences into tabletop games where you do the math is often a more fiendish design task than starting an original tabletop property from scratch. For every atmospheric slam dunk like the Darkest Dungeon board game, there’s a well-intentioned, but ultimately brain-melting admin-fest like the infamous Stardew Valley board game. Each one is, er, a roll of the dice.

And why only “generally” fun? Well, I personally dig Priority Hagalaz, and think it deserves a 7/10 (very good) based purely on the core experience, helped along by excellent minis and a low price. But I don’t think I can properly review the game (generously provided to us by publisher Modiphius) without acknowledging that – despite being literally the bullseye of its target market – even I feel conflicted about what Priority Hagalaz is trying to be, as a whole package. Let me explain.

What is Mass Effect The Board Game?

Mass Effect The Board Game: Priority Hagalaz is a tactical coop board game for one to four players (that’s right, it’s playable solo, which is a nice touch) – built around a series of combat missions on ring-bound hex-grid maps, Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion-style.

You and your pals play as Commander Shepard and three of the videogames’ iconic squadmates, in a story set during the events of Mass Effect 3, when the Reapers are running riot and the good guys are scrambling to amass a last stand against them.

Here’s the setup: a research/prison ship owned by the dastardly human supremacist terror group Cerberus has crashed on the planet Hagalaz with innocent test subjects on board. Shepard and the gang need to get down there, infiltrate the crash site, retrieve or destroy the research data, and – if at all possible – rescue the captives while they’re at it.

The game plays out as a short campaign of linked missions (three to five in one playthrough, two of them optional), each of which will nominally take you 45 to 90 minutes to complete – though your first game will likely take twice as long as you learn the ropes. There’s a short, branching storyline linking each – meaning you’ll need to play multiple campaigns to try all the missions in the book.

The components and presentation of Mass Effect The Board Game are absolutely splendid, especially considering the price point. The star of the show is undoubtedly the set of six resin minis: Shepard (female and male); Garrus; Wrex, Liara, and Tali. They’re supplied built, with only minimal mold lines, and I found them easy to paint up with GW Contrast paints.

For megafans, this box is worth it just for those minis – but for everyone else, the map book, lovingly designed wipe clean player sheets, and chunky dice still feel very well made. It’s genuinely satisfying how much thought has gone into fitting this type of game into a small box and a $50 (£40) price tag, and that’s a major point in Hagalaz’ column.

How does Mass Effect The Board Game play?

Priority Hagalaz picks a very specific and, in my view, sensible strategy on how to recreate Mass Effect on the tabletop: it goes deep on the moment-to-moment action, and relegates everything else to set dressing.

Each mission, you’ll set up the relevant battle map page with tokens representing the various grunt and boss enemies, defense turrets, locked doors, loot, objectives, and refugees, then plop your heroes down on their starting hexes, and review the objectives you’re looking to complete on the opposite page.

For every mission, there’s a ‘Paragon’ victory (harder to achieve, but nets you a buff for later missions, and more points for your final, overall campaign score); a ‘Renegade’ victory (worth fewer points and slightly debuffs you) and a fail state (no points, but you still continue, unless you fail the first two missions on the trot, in which case it’s game over).

Missions (at least, the five out of 14 I’ve played so far) generally consist of teamwork objectives familiar from all the best games like XCOM: get to various locations, spend action points to trigger them all, then get to a final location and spend more precious action points to trigger that – all while your teammates cover you and keep the baddies off your back. Renegade wins tend to let you ignore some of the button-pressing, in favor of just unaliving some enemies and running to an evac point.

Having multiple victory conditions does add some variety and replay potential, though – especially by introducing the option for you to aim for the mission’s good guy ending, only for things to go south halfway through, forcing you to beeline for the evil naughty red Renegade win instead. Ticking off your mission objectives in wet-wipe marker pen, roll-and-write style, is also delightful (the first few times, at least).

And the meat and potatoes – the turn-taking and tactical combat – works great. The four-person squad gets a pool of 12 action dice with symbols for move, super move, action, super action, move / action, and super special star – which powers up your character’s unique ability.

Each turn, you’ll roll the pool, and pick three dice results to assign to actions marked on your player board – moving around the board; attacking an enemy; doing a Mission Thing, and more. At the end of your turn, you flip a Hazard card – these power the AI enemies – and some combination of nastiness will ensue: new baddies spawn; existing ones move toward you or attack; turrets spit damage in lines across the map, et cetera.

At first, the constant, every-turn enemy onslaught seems wildly overbalanced – especially as some of your heroes are very squishy, and just one getting downed weakens you by locking three dice out of the pool – but you quickly learn that the game is all about momentum, not kill count. Victory relies on perfecting your action economy as a team to complete your objectives, fast, while killing only as many enemies as needed to clear your path and max out your XP gains each mission – and once you internalize that, everything slips into place beautifully.

Those unique character abilities add some extra spice, too, and tie back into the Mass Effect vibes for fans: Garrus stores up levels of ‘Aim’ that let him pile on extra high-damage shots; Wrex gets to dish out angry damage to all enemies around him; Liara can sneak a peek at hazard cards to help the team dodge threats. It all layers up neatly, and unlocking and deploying new abilities is delightful.

The rolling admin of placing, removing, and replacing enemy tokens felt a bit cumbersome and repetitive (especially when playing solo) and that could present a bit of a fun barrier for some newer gamers. But, honestly, playing with friends, it ought to fade into the background once you really get the momentum going.

And the story? Well, it’s there. You get a Narrative Book full of numbered excerpts to read at certain times (choose your own adventure style), which narrate the openings of missions, the decision points between them, and dramatic events like finishing a boss or completing a tough objective.

You choose one of several possible paths from mission to mission, and your later options, buffs, debuffs, and final scores will be affected by how well you beat each stage – but the writing, while generally good and setting-appropriate, can’t conjure depth or intrigue to embellish what is, essentially, a single videogame mission spread over several tabletop maps.

Who is Mass Effect The Board Game for?

So where’s the downside? Well, for some folks, there isn’t one. The core cooperative tactical gameplay rocks, the surface-level Mass Effect vibes are on point, and there’s more than enough mission content in the box to justify the price.

For people like me – OG Mass Effect fans who squee at the sight of a Quarian, but also love ponderous tactical RPG board games like the mighty Frosthaven – it’s easily an 8/10 game or better, especially if we can expect expansions to diversify the cast and deepen the storytelling a bit.

But my worry with Hagalaz is that, for basically every other category of board game fan, it might come across as neither here nor there: neither a fully fledged story-driven campaign, nor a straightforward, jump-right-in action game.

As an action game, it’s solid – and blasting through its tactical missions is super enjoyable even with no emotional connection to ME’s characters or lore. But they are tied into a multi-hour campaign, which doesn’t unfold all your tactical options until you’re several hours in – there’s no quick play or alternative mode. Playing one full game of this realistically takes 3-6 hours.

As a campaign game, meanwhile, it’s constrained by its relatively small scale, and the light-touch “read this paragraph now” storytelling – while an admirable effort – doesn’t really have room to spin out a proper yarn. Perhaps that’s just an occupational hazard for all narrative board games that don’t come in a giant, $200 crate – but it’s still true. Hagalaz aims to bridge the gap between one-off coop strategy battler and legacy RPG epic, and I’m not convinced it quite works.

Still, what it all boils down to is: the game’s creators – Blood Rage designer Eric M. Lang and prolific games writer-slash-Crazy Rich Asians actor Calvin Wong Tze Loon – have done actual magic to make this game as good as it is, at a price lower than anything else I’ve seen in its weight class for years and years.

Mass Effect The Board Game Priority: Hagalaz has a bit of an identity crisis, I think – but, if you like strategy board games and know what a ‘Hanar’ is, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll get more than your money’s worth. Oh, and Calvin – if you add Mordin in an expansion, you’ll be my Favorite Board Game Designer On The Citadel.

Source: Wargamer