Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
This is my fourth Nucleum article.
If you’ve followed my thoughts on the three other Nucleum products I’ve covered—the base game, Nucleum: Australia, and Nucleum: Energy Research Institute–it’s pretty clear that I think Nucleum is the second-best route/network building gaming system in my collection after the Brass games.
And, in a world where I already love Nucleum, Nucleum: Gibraltar might be the system’s best content. It combines the things I love about the base game, adds juicy new building tiles to the mix alongside new contracts and special powers, and then does what I didn’t think would be possible: Gibraltar’s map is the best combination of Nucluem’s design powers all in one place.
“I think this is the best map now,” said two players who joined me for separate plays, players who have extensive experience with both the base map as well as Australia. I was pretty sure that was my feeling as well after my first play, but winner’s bias set in and I wanted to try again to make sure that’s where I really landed.
The answer? Yep. Nucleum: Gibraltar is the system’s best map!
The Middle is a Warzone
There are three new elements on display in Nucleum: Gibraltar: the new map, military contracts, and Special Urban Buildings. A fourth new element is really only “new” if you have not played Nucleum: Australia—shipping lanes, as well as new permanent shipping lanes dedicated specifically to coal. In this way, the shipping lanes are not worth a discussion here, but as a way to extend a player’s network, the shipping lanes idea is well utilized here without being a requirement for success on the Gibraltar map.
Let’s focus on the new map, shall we? Gibraltar is exceptional because it offers so many areas to play around in. Mines are scattered around the northern, western, and southern edges of the map, meaning that connecting to those areas is going to take a little work. But coal can be found both at the coal mine at the lower eastern region of the map, as well as through a couple of additional sources. This gives players a few different ways to energize their low-cost buildings beyond powers from tiles or turbines.
The meat of the early and mid-game decisions in my plays came in the middle of the map. There are now two major cities, Madrid and Almeraz, that become magnets for players to rush turbine placement because these are two of the three cities where turbines can be placed. (The Gibraltar map has one less nucleum plant than the base map.) This push makes getting a seat at the table in Madrid—a Prague-like wild location, like Prague’s status from the base game—relatively important for connections in and out of the middle portions of the map.
But there’s a second location in the middle of the map that also creates a bunch of drama: Gibraltar. This location is a “colorless” location, meaning it is not any color, nor is it wild. When players build track into Gibraltar, they will only be able to match one end of a track tile there, but they will earn two thaler for extending their network into Gibraltar. In exchange, connected players gain access to the race for three military contracts—like the purple contracts in the base game—that earn a player an extra experiment technology that could offer an ongoing power or end-game scoring opportunities.
So, Gibraltar offers a few new races, races which became exciting to chase during my plays and the rest of the map also has lots of fun things to trigger. There are four cities, Imperial locations, that boost the end-game VP value of energized buildings, and shipping lanes make for fun ways to circumvent parts of the map when certain locations are cut off. Two dedicated coal shipping lanes are useful to connect cities to permanent coal markets and buildings that don’t require as much uranium to power. Track tile spaces have bonuses like the ones from Australia, making some spaces better than others to extend one’s network.
I could go on and on about this map, but the reaction from other players really hit home for me. Designer Dávid Turczi and his team (Gibraltar is the first Nucleum expansion that doesn’t feature base game co-designer Simone Luciani’s name on the cover) have done an excellent job building a balanced map that has both the Nucleum magic along with a few new tricks to keep things exciting.
Special Urban Buildings
Nucleum: Gibraltar adds 16 new beige buildings that can be bought from a separate, common market when a player takes the Urbanize action.
The 16 buildings include four of each level, so four each of Level I, II, III, and IV, with symbols that match the Residential, Factory, Laboratory, and Government symbols from the base game. When a player wants to Urbanize, they can build the top-most building from any of the four stacks by paying one thaler more than the building from their board (so, Level I Special Urban Buildings cost three thaler, not two), then place that on the map and toss the matching level and color of a building from their player board out of the game.
And these new buildings are pretty sexy. Some just offer bigger instant bonuses by level—more cash or workers than their standard editions—but some are wild. The Level III lab from the base game gives its owner a level three technology from an Experiment board normally, but the Level III lab here gives a player two level two techs instead—and I used that to great effect during my first play. The Level III Special Urban Factory Building becomes a mine, and in a game where mine spaces can really feel tight, I was thankful to gain a mine in the middle of the map that didn’t require an Industrialize action.
There are also building slots only for these new Special Urban Tiles in some cities, forcing players to jump into the fray even if they don’t want to. I love the powers on these buildings, but I also appreciate that players are going to have to play along with the new goodies in order to be successful here.
The Buffet is Getting Larger
For my second play of Nucleum: Gibraltar, we did a four-player game with four of the Experiments from Nucleum: Energy Research Institute, and now the buffet is almost too large to believe.
Now we’ve got 14 different Experiments—14 ways to attack the game—and the way we saw the new map interact with some of these Experiments was wild. One didn’t work as well, the Mistress of Espionage (Experiment J), but even that is probably linked to not fully understanding how to best use Experiment J with this new map.
The point here is that Nucleum’s system now includes three great maps and a bunch of different ways to pursue victory. I could see Turczi churning out a couple more maps, and I haven’t even tried to add Nucleum: Court of Progress to the equation yet to see how that shakes up the game’s other mechanics.
Nucleum’s future is bright. Now I just have to hope we begin to see some of these new goodies on Board Game Arena’s Nucleum implementation soon!
