Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Hagalaz -.

I’m a big fan of the first two Mass Effect games. I remember being glued to the TV watching Shepard and his friends go up and down the world’s slowest elevators. So it felt a bit like a trip down memory lane to see Shepard, Wrex, Garrus, Liara and Tali again, but to be honest, and you should be in a review, I went into this adventure with low expectations.

Mass Effect to me is about relationships, drama, epic battles and choices with big consequences. How do you translate that into a board game that lives up to the name “Mass Effect”? Modiphius has taken a different path and instead offers small moments of space opera where the focus is more or less exclusively on action. There are certainly narrative elements that liven up the experience – I mean, there’s a whole booklet called the Narrative Book. It’s in no way poorly written or too thin, but it’s not nearly enough to make Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Hagalaz a Gloomhaven -esque epic that will keep you and your friends busy for a year. No, here it’s bang, boom, fast-paced action and highly entertaining action that really feels and breathes Mass Effect and gets just that little extra spice through lore and storytelling.

The expectations cannot be so high that you think it will contain the whole soul of Mass Effect when it is a relatively inexpensive game. It is what it is, and if you like that, you will find a very enjoyable game. Like Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion and Sleeping Gods, you won’t find a proper game board in the box. The board is a book where you turn the pages as you progress through the campaign. It is extremely flexible and requires minimal space and also speeds up the actual start of the game. Six miniatures featuring the aforementioned characters, two of which are Commander Shepard – both male and female versions. The enemies come in the form of small cardboard tokens and there are plenty of them. The boxing and organization is also not something I would list as a plus, as there are a few too many small zippered pouches and it is difficult to keep track of the contents. But it works and it’s not a disaster and doesn’t keep me from having fun.

The campaign works by providing a story in which, whether you go the right way or the wrong way, you end up in different places and have different circumstances on the next map. There are no more than four or five missions before you complete the adventure, but because you can actually take different paths – paragon or renegade, just like in the video game – a replay can offer a very different experience. The characters are also distinctly niche, with Wrex wanting to go in and punch and mêlee, Garrus wanting to shoot from a distance and Tali hacking doors and robots. That said, Modiphius has found the essence of the action part of the original and translated it into a very accessible and enjoyable journey.

Is it accessible? Yes, this is not an advanced story, nor does it need to be in order to be a good board game with relative depth. The game is played in exactly the same way whether you play alone or with four players. You always have four of the characters on the table and the first player rolls 12 dice, chooses three and makes various choices with them, and then the remaining dice go to the next player and then to the next until they are finished and everyone has played their round. During each round you draw an enemy card that indicates what the enemy is doing, and thematically it can feel a little weird when an enemy suddenly appears behind your back. But when you kill an enemy, you get XP and get to check a small box on the character card and eventually level up and unlock new skills. Plunder, run, shoot, do something the mission requires, then do the same thing again (sort of) on the next map. Yes, it’s a bit repetitive, but as I said before, the story part works so well and the mechanics fit great for a Mass Effect game, and all in all, I wouldn’t mind doing it again.

That said, the rulebook is a bit confusing at first. It doesn’t seem to be put together in a logical way and could use some work. Hopefully this is something Modiphius can work on for the next print. However, once you understand the whole thing, it’s not very complicated at all, but with a good rulebook, you can avoid that and get players started more quickly and smoothly.

Once you finish the war and complete the last mission, you can just start over. Brilliantly, all you have to do is erase some dots and lines you made with the fancy whiteboard pen. If there’s one thing Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Hagalaz is, it’s that it’s smooth and easy to pick up. With a name like that, it may be hard to believe, but it’s a fact. If you start this game with the right expectations or are at least ready to experience something other than the entirety of Mass Effect in a small box, you will definitely enjoy it. It is in no way perfect, but it is definitely worth spending a relatively small amount of money on.