Resurgence Review

boardgamequest.com:

If you’ll recall from my City of the Living review, I’m always down for a post-apocalyptic city-building game. When I’ve got the spare time, Frostpunk: The Board Game is still my go-to, but that’s pretty heavy and I rarely have the free time to bust it out. So I’m always on the hunt for a new game in the genre that can play quicker, yet still keep my interest.

This year, Portal Games has decided to publish Resurgence, the latest game in the post-apocalyptic euro game genre. Resurgence plays from 1-4 players with a playtime of about 60-90 minutes.

Games of Resurgence last for 6 rounds, with each round taking place over 4 phases.

During the first phase, you’ll draw survivors from your bag and place them on your assignment board. There are 5 types of survivors: workers, 3 different specialists, and your leader. They work in a hierarchy, so a leader can go anywhere, and a specialist can go anywhere a worker does. Survivors are also secretly assigned to one of three locations on your assignment board: Metro, Harbor, and your Compound.

Once everyone is ready, assignment boards are revealed and players gain advancements on the matching leadership tracks for having the most survivor points in any location. For example, if you have 3 survivor points on the Metro track, and the other two players have 2 points. You’ll get to advance a space on that track, earning any rewards.

Then, starting with the first player, you’ll place your survivors in a space in the matching region on the game board. The Metro and Harbor both have 6 locations, while your Compound starts with 1 and increases as you build it. For the most part, you’ll be sending out your survivors to collect resources (5 different kinds), draft and complete missions, or recruit new survivors (that also come with special abilities). The main thing to know here is that you have to place a survivor in the matching region you planned for, and if there is already someone there you need to pay a resource for every unit that