Tabletop_Gaming__Issue_27__February_2019

72 February 2019

PLAYED

have surely horried the notoriously

xenophobic Lovecraft.

If there’s one shortcoming, it’s

that its monsters never feel truly

terrifying. ey creep across the

map, blocking your railways and

despoiling your farms. Along the

way they’ll score points of their own,

raising the possibility that the game

itself might emerge as the eventual

winner. But it turns out that a few

well-placed howitzer rounds can

stop even the most blasphemous and

unspeakable of beings, and the result

is that taking them on feels more like

pest control than a desperate ght for

the fate of humankind.

In just about all other respects,

though, AuZtralia is a hell of a ride

• a madcap mix of mechanisms that
  somehow comes together in the most
  satisfying way.
  OWEN DUFFY

I

n 2013, designer Martin Wallace

released A Study in Emerald. A

tabletop adaptation of a short story

by author Neil Gaiman, it transported

players to an alternate Victorian

age where a band of revolutionaries

led by Sherlock Holmes conspired

to overthrow the tyrannical rule

of creatures from H.P. Lovecraft’s

Cthulhu Mythos. Now Wallace is back

with a sequel and, while there are still

plenty of cosmic horrors to confront,

his new game shifts the focus from

19th-century Europe to the Australian

outback in the 1930s.

With the rest of the world largely

reclaimed by humanity, the tentacled

interdimensional beasties have

retreated to heart of the Australian

continent. You and your fellow players

plan to forcibly return them to the cold

void of space; while your foes might

be eldritch beings with sanity-sapping

psychic powers, you’ll be taking them

on with crack infantry regiments,

airships and heavy artillery.

What’s surprising about AuZtralia,

though, is that while its premise

revolves around the ght against

Cthulhu and his squiggly minions,

combat is only one part of its much

larger package. As you aim to wipe

an assortment of monsters, ghouls

and cultists from the map, you’ll also

develop the land, building railway

networks to transport your troops,

mining resources like coal, gold

and iron, and establishing farms

producing sheep, cattle and corn.

It means that from your very rst

turn you’ll face a multitude of dierent

tasks, and you’ll need to prioritise

them carefully. Should you focus

on extending your rail routes deep

into the continent, allowing you to

strike at distant enemies? Should you

concentrate on mining, hoovering up

resources before your rivals can claim

them? Should you stick to the coastal

edges of the board, where the more

varied terrain allows you to build a

diverse mix of farms and ranches? Or

should you build your army, battening

down the hatches for the inevitable

onslaught of monstrous foes?

You’ll make these choices under

some serious pressure. AuZtralia uses

a Patchwork-style time track, where

each action you take progresses you a

dierent number of spaces depending

on its complexity. Once you and your

opponents reach a certain point,

the ancient horrors lurking in the

wastes will start to awaken, moving

inexorably towards your carefully-built

rail lines, farms and ports, creating an

escalating sense of tension as more

threats emerge across the board.

It’s a deft combination of strategic

challenge and mounting threat.

AuZtralia also gets points for

the diversity of its artwork, which

depicts characters of all genders and

ethnicities — something which would

An outback tale of steam, sheep and shoggoths

AUZTRALIA

30-120m 1-4 13+ £68

WHAT’S IN

THE BOX?

◗ Four ports

◗ 80 cubes

◗ 12 discs

◗ 80 railway tracks

◗ 28 cattle farms

◗ 28 corn farms

◗ 28 sheep farms

◗ Four player boards

◗ Game board

◗ 10 infantry tiles

◗ Five armoured

car tiles

◗ Three airship tiles

◗ Three artillery tiles

◗ Four armoured

train tiles

◗ Old One disc

◗ 10 Old One

damage cubes

◗ 35 Old One tiles

◗ 50 coal

◗ 50 iron

◗ 50 cold

◗ Seven phosphate

◗ 36 personality cards

◗ 40 Old One cards

◗ 30 event cards

◗ Four player aids

◗ 20 survey tiles

◗ Attack marker

◗ 15 victory point tokens

◗ 13 sanity tokens

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED... VIA NEBULA

It’s another route-building, resource-grabbing Martin Wallace game,

but it comes in a more family-friendly package.

PLAY IT? YES

On paper, AuZtralia looks like there’s

no way it should work. It throws so

many disparate elements into its

mechanical melting pot that it seems

like it should be a confused mess. But

it pulls it all together into a cohesive

and compelling whole, and the result

is an impressive blend of strategy

and tension that sees you competing

against the game’s AI antagonists just

as much as your human opponents.