Shapers of Gaia Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Shapers of Gaia, a world building, resource management game with some engine building elements. Published by WizKids Games, Shapers of Gaia tasks you with rebuilding the world after an apocalypse.

I enjoyed Populous on the Sega Genesis and the Fallout video game series, so I thought Shapers of Gaia was going to be right up my alley, but somehow it just missed for me. In Shapers of Gaia, you emerge from a vault to “Restore Biomes and help repopulate Gaia’s species from the past, present, and future.” I wish I had stayed in the Vault.

Shapers of Gaia is a world building, resource management game with some engine building elements for 2-3 players that plays best with three people.

Each player selects one of the six shapers, each with unique abilities. The shapers use the “Caretaker robot” to help rebuild Gaia and the shaper with the most Victory Points (VP) at the end of the game wins.

On your turn you choose to either Restore Biomes or Introduce an Animal

Restore Biomes: When restoring Biomes you use the caretaker robot, which is shared by all players. In order to restore a biome you place 1-3 tiles, from your hand, adjacent to the caretaker and move the caretaker onto the new biome tile or spend one energy resource to teleport the Caretaker and place the biome tile anywhere that you would like.

There are five Biome types: water, crystal, forest, mushroom, and temple. When you place a new biome you must select one of the actions on the biome tile to resolve, your opponents may then choose the other action. These actions usually reward you with one of the five resource types. Occasionally, the actions require you to spend an advance resource and if you don’t have the resource you must collect a toxicity token,