Published in 2012 board game Manhattan Project is a European-style strategy game based on the history of the initial stage of the nuclear race.
Number of players - 2-5 people.
Each player represents one country, and tries to make his own nuclear bomb in order to maintain nuclear parity of the parties involved throughout the game, from its very beginning to the victorious end.
The player is faced with the task of competent and most efficient distribution of available resources in order to score the required number of points necessary for victory before his opponents. That is, load atomic bombs of destructive force onto their bomber planes. In the end, the winner is the player who, during the passage of the game, by the very end of the game, has accumulated more nuclear potential in the board game Manhattan Project.
Board game for 2-5 people "The Manhattan Project". Helps develop budget planning skills
The game process takes approximately 2-4 hours depending on the number of players.
The game will be difficult for beginners, but you can learn it in literally an hour, an hour and a half, it won’t take much time.
These few happy hours will take you back more than half a century, to the height of the Cold War, when the right to possess nuclear weapons can decide whether a country will die or not.
You, as a talented strategist, have been entrusted with a task from the high command to be the first to obtain the recipe for a “weapon of retaliation” at all costs, while it is important to understand that the enemy is not asleep and is ready to strike at any moment, or send spies to steal your military secrets.
Plot
The action begins back in 1945, recent discoveries by scientists simply shocked politicians, the world community recognized the destructive power of weapons, which are achieved through the fission of atoms. And you are in charge of your country’s nuclear project; your task is to quickly provide your homeland with a nuclear shield.
An exciting story where you are the head of a nuclear project
The essence of the game
The point is to earn as many additional points as possible, which come to the player through the development of bombs, as well as testing, and putting them into service with his army. The country that can develop nuclear weapons the fastest will become a superpower on a planetary scale.
Basic moments
The game involves managing workers and allocating resources to achieve the maximum level of economic efficiency. Here, as in any other game of this genre, you need to think through your opponent’s actions in advance and have your own plan of action in advance.
Instructions
Sequencing
The game involves resource management, for example, a mine gives us yellow cake, and factories, for payment, make uranium from the cake, that is, the filling for a nuclear bomb. Factories provide us with the means for production and equipment. There are also universities in the game that provide us with qualified personnel for our development. In other words, engineers are the mental potential of your state.
The game has factories, universities, mines, factories
Sequence
In this case, for complete victory, direct production alone cannot be achieved; a certain approach is needed. There is a need for competent and systematic development of the infrastructure of your camp, thereby ensuring its safety.
If you do not have interceptor aircraft, then it is likely that the enemy will attack you with bombers. A powerful explosion of a uranium isotope will deal a crushing blow to you. Your nuclear reactors will be a particularly attractive target for the enemy in Project Manhattan.
Diplomacy
The game involves some coordination of actions between players by agreement. Diplomacy gives the lagging player a chance to catch up with his opponent, and with a tactful approach, even overtake him. For example, you can form a flight of attack bombers or fighters. In general, the conclusion of some pacts only adds excitement to the participants in the game.
The game also has additional tasks, so to speak, to increase interest. For example, you will need to repair buildings, send your spies into enemy territory, this will allow you to find out the secret information of your enemy.
In the game itself 50 building cards, which may be destroyed, they will have to be restored.
Building maps
For repairs, a certain number of workers are moved to designated cells. After which, from 7 buildings, we choose what we need at a given time. Cheap buildings are built for free, but for expensive ones you will have to pay a coin in the “bribe” cell.
Freedom of action completely shifts the initiative to the player, and only you can decide what will be built, a laboratory, or a scientific academy. If you need to destroy your enemy's building, you can use bombs that need to be prepared in advance. You need to strike at the enemy of your country not spontaneously, but deliberately, and even moreover, purposefully. Based on your own logic, the destruction of which part of the enemy can harm him the most, also calculate the enemy’s response to your infrastructure.
Market
The game has a completely free market, and there is also complete freedom of action on the part of the players. Everyone develops in their own direction.
The priority, of course, is the extraction of raw materials, from which we will make the filling for our destructive bomb.
Once you have received the necessary components and have studied the bomb well enough, you can safely begin making it.
The game is extremely realistic, and this can be understood because the developers treated the authenticity of names and formulas. For example, in the game there are such terms as isotopes of uranium 235 and plutonium 239. These elements exist in reality, and are deadly not only for humans, but also for all living things on planet earth. game Manhattan Project.
Resources
In the Manhattan Project game, the main resource is considered to be labor personnel; there are only 3 types of them.
- Scientists
- Engineers
- Laborers
It is these units that do all the work. Their task is to create a plan, develop, and extract resources to build super-powerful weapons. Units can also spy on your enemy's territory. To gain greater professionalism, workers can undergo special training in the Manhattan program training centers being built.
In addition to actual resources, you will also need money, with the help of which control, accounting and exchange of resources take place. Combat aircraft strike the enemy; there are specially equipped cells for them.
Equipment
- The set includes 23 workers, engineers and scientists.
- Disks in the amount of 15 pieces
- Coins - 48 pieces
- Markers for unloading atomic bombs in the amount of 10 pieces
50 buildings - Cake resources are indicated as yellow cubes
- Damage markers - 16 pieces
- Trial first explosions available 10 tests
- Airplanes - 10 pieces
- Tablets for each player - 5 pieces
- Additional fields - 5 units
- Rules\instructions for the game, with a full explanation of the game.
Don’t worry, the variety of details does not complicate the game at all, but rather adds excitement, the game becomes multifaceted, and due to this, players have more choice, and as a result, freedom of choice. There is only one drawback: if at least one element from the set is suddenly lost in the box, the game will no longer be complete. The elements are not on sale separately; you will have to buy a new game along with the set, or reduce the number of players, which is not very pleasant for a group of friends.
Before starting to play, we strongly recommend that you read the rules completely, from cover to cover. The game is very specific, and there are moments that are fraught with nuances and surprises. But the essence is always the same, it is to score as many points as possible during the game. To start a comfortable game, a beginner should remember the useful functionality of some buildings and the abilities of their employees.
Any employee of your top-secret enterprise can become an excellent engineer or scientist, so you need to invest in education.
What is included
Game mechanics
Each player has his own individual tablet, which has fields for personal planes and bombers. During one turn, you can fire all your workers at once, or hire new ones. After you have made one action, you need to pass the move to another player. As stated above, the game has complete freedom of action, and only you can decide who to hire and who to fire.
In order to hire new staff for work, perform the following manipulations:
- Place your workers on the playing field.
- Place workers on the field in any of the buildings.
The last point can be renewed as long as you have unoccupied units. Dismissed workers are automatically added to your reserves, free workers can be useful to you, for example, you can use them to extract the necessary raw materials in the mines.
Playing field
The insidious spy
Using the existing “Spy” location, you have the opportunity to obtain the resources necessary for bomb development on the side, that is, without using your industrial buildings. The game configuration allows each player to have 6 spies. Before each subsequent placement of an agent, you need to increase your personal level. Place an agent in an unoccupied enemy building. If necessary, you can easily recall your spy back home.
Manhattan Project is a European style strategy board game created in 2012 by Brandon Tibbetts (Minion Games). Dedicated to the history of the creation of the nuclear bomb (see Manhattan Project about the history project). This game can be played by 2 to 5 people. Players, conditionally representing different countries, create nuclear bombs to maintain the nuclear balance in the world. Their task is to competently manage resources of various types in order to gain the required number of victory points before their opponents by building and loading a certain number of nuclear bombs onto bombers. The player who has accumulated the most nuclear potential at the end of the game wins.
The game's publication was partially funded through the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter. Before launching a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, the author spent 4 months intensively working on the balance using the virtual platform for creating board games ZunTzu. After creating a prototype of the game, it took a year and a half for testing and running, and only after that there was Kickstarter, 3 editions of the English version, as well as the publication of this game in Russian, Hungarian, French and German. The illustrations for this board game were made by Spanish artist Sergi Marcet Rovira, who also previously designed the board games Dungeon Run, Target Earth and Stalag 17.
In August 2014, digital versions of the board game “The Manhattan Project” appeared for Android and for iOS. The electronic versions of this game have a single player mode against artificial intelligence, as well as a multiplayer mode (on one device or over the Internet). The Manhattan Project costs about $7.
Game mechanics
The main resource in the game is workers of 3 types: laborers, engineers and scientists. In addition, workers are divided into permanent (4 laborers, scientists and engineers for each player, the color corresponds to the color of the selected tablet) and contractors (4 scientists, 4 engineers and 4 gray laborers).
The entire game for each player is based on placing workers and returning them to their warehouse (and contractors to a common warehouse). During his turn, a player either places workers on the playing field and on his tablet, or immediately brings all his workers to his warehouse (in this case, contractors from the playing field, this player’s tablet, as well as contractors from mixed combinations of workers that the player used for spying on other people's tablets, return to the common warehouse).
The initial placement of workers on the playing field is done at the request of the players, with any of the free cells on the field being occupied (an arbitrary number of workers are placed in the “Construction” cell), then in free buildings on the player’s tablet. During a turn, a player can occupy only one (free) cell on the playing field, and only after that can he occupy free buildings on the tablet without exceeding the available number of workers.
When placing a worker on the playing field, one of the cells is selected that is free from other workers; some cells indicate the requirements necessary for their activation (a certain type of worker, the presence of a yellow cake or money).
For each cell, one of the following options is available:
When working with a tablet, on each building card, the appropriate type of worker is indicated at the top (a question mark - a worker of any type is suitable) and the number of workers that is necessary to activate the building and receive a one-time “income” from the building, which is indicated at the bottom of the card. Reactors and enrichment plants, in addition to housing one or several scientists, to remove “income” in the form of uranium or plutonium, also require the expenditure of yellow cake or uranium (for reactors) or the expenditure of money and yellow cake (for enrichment plants).
When workers are introduced into a building, the resource is obtained instantly and one-time. In order to withdraw “income” from the same building again, the player will then need to remove the workers (the turn is lost) and place them in this building again.
For some buildings, two alternative types of resources are indicated that are required to use the building (more specifically, 4 plutonium reactors, where 2 types of alternative fuel are available - yellowcake and uranium, the options are separated by a slash). Also in the game there are 3 universities and 4 factories, from which you can get 2 options for “income” at the exit.
Resources in the game
In the board game "Manhattan Project" some of the resources are not limited by the game's configuration. When chips of such resources run out in the general warehouse, other items can be added there, for example, chips from another game or matches, and they will play the role of the same resource. Infinite resources include yellowcake cubes, coins, damage markers, and bomb loading markers.
The number of buildings in the game is limited, there are 50 in total (10 factories, 10 universities, 10 mines, 10 reactors and 10 enrichment plants), it is also worth noting that 6 of these buildings (which are distinguished by the red color of the shirt) are laid out in the construction queue first.
The number of bomb designs is also limited - 15 uranium and 15 plutonium. 5 test explosion tokens for plutonium bombs just correspond to the maximum number of players (in case each player develops into plutonium bombs or two types of bombs).
Espionage is limited to a maximum level of 6, players cannot have more than 8 free units of nuclear fuel (uranium or plutonium), and military airfields can accommodate no more than 10 aircraft of each type at a time.
One of the game's most important resources is people. A player can have no more than 12 of his own workers (4 of each type). The total number of contractors is also 12, but there is a constant struggle between players for them (it is rare when all the contractors end up in the hands of one person).
Human resources:
- Laborers can extract resources from most cells of the playing field, as well as from a large number of constructed buildings on the tablets (by the way, the number of constructed buildings is not limited by the cells of the player’s tablet). What laborers cannot do is mine uranium and plutonium, or use advanced universities, factories, and mines.
- Scientists- they can do everything that laborers can, plus they participate in the extraction of uranium and plutonium (in reactors and enrichment plants of tablets, as well as on the playing field), and also participate in the development and construction of bombs.
- Engineers are also capable of solving the problems of laborers, but, in addition, they also know how to build any of the two cheapest buildings for free, get money and planes from advanced factories, extract more yellowcake from advanced mines, and also train people in several advanced universities. Engineers, together with scientists, participate in the development and construction of bombs, however, they cannot mine uranium and plutonium.
Other resources in the game:
Construction and loading of bombs
There are 30 bomb designs available in the game - 15 plutonium, 15 uranium. Each bomb card displays the number of uranium or plutonium units required to build a bomb (depending on the type of bomb), the cost of loading the bomb onto a bomber (in addition to money, you also need 1 bomber, loading gives +5 victory points), as well as the number of victory points (for plutonium bombs 2 numbers, the first - points before the test, the second - after).
The number of points you need to score to win is determined by the number of players: 2 players - 70 points, 3 players - 60 points, 4 players - 50 points, 5 players - 45 points.
When building a bomb, the player's workers in the required number are placed on the bomb drawing, then the player reduces the amount of his uranium or plutonium by the number indicated on the bomb. When workers are subsequently removed by that player, the workers from the bomb are returned to the player's warehouse, similar to how they are returned from regular buildings.
Plutonium bombs display two victory point numbers on the bottom. Points are counted according to the second (higher) number of all plutonium bombs built by the player if the player has previously tested a plutonium bomb by sacrificing it.
You can test any plutonium bomb that the player has previously built. If there were workers on the bomb, they move to the test explosion token so that during the next withdrawal of workers they will return to the player’s warehouse. The sacrificed bomb goes to the bottom of the bomb stack (face down).
Additional points can be earned by loading one or more bombs onto bombers (also during your turn). Loading one bomb requires money (in the amount indicated on the bomb drawing), as well as 1 bomber on your tablet.
DLC: The Manhattan Project: Nations Expansion
In March 2012, a small addition to the game was released, which was called “Nations Expansion”. This add-on includes 7 maps corresponding to different countries (maps of Great Britain, China, France, Germany, Japan, Soviet Union and USA are available in this add-on). Each player chooses a country to play for. Each of the cards in this expansion works similarly to the buildings that players build on their board in the base game. However, these cards, unlike ordinary buildings, are active immediately after the start of the game and are immune to airstrikes and espionage.
Each country card gives its own unique resource as an output when placing workers.
Addition: “The Manhattan Project: Second Stage”
In 2012, a fundraiser was announced through the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter for a comprehensive addition to the game. The fundraising was successfully completed on September 1, 2012, and already in 2013, an addition to the game was released - The Manhattan Project: Second Stage. The addition includes 4 small expansions that can be added to the main game, either individually or in different combinations:
At the beginning of 2017, this addition had not yet been localized into Russian.
Today’s review is dedicated to one of the new products from the Magellan publishing house - the strategic board game “The Manhattan Project”. It was developed in 2011 by American Brandon Tibbetts. The game turned out to be quite successful and has now gone through two editions only in its native language and has acquired two additions.
The Russian version of the newly-minted bestseller was released by the Magellan company. In principle, the game is mostly language-independent, with the exception of a few inscriptions on the playing field and the rules of the game.
The code name "Project Manhattan" or "Manhattan Project" was the American program to develop nuclear weapons, which gave its name to this board game.
Each player must implement his nuclear program by scoring a certain number of points before his opponents, which varies with different numbers of players (from two to five). Points are given for the development, testing and loading of atomic bombs onto bombers.
At the same time, there are a lot of means to achieve the goal. From the creation of a military-industrial complex and effective personnel management to rabid industrial espionage and airstrikes against enemy enterprises.
The first thing we see when opening the game box is the rules, the cover of which is stylized as the front page of a newspaper dated August 12, 1945, announcing the start of the atomic race. The rules are printed on good glossy paper and generously supplied with color illustrations.
And finally, we got to the cards. They come in two types: building and bomb cards.
The building map contains an artistic depiction and the name of the building. At the very top, the type and number of workers required to activate the enterprise effect are indicated. The lower part displays the effect applied when it is activated.
Among the enterprises there are mines where cake is extracted, factories that provide profits in the form of aviation and money, universities where specialists are trained, as well as enrichment plants and reactors that produce raw materials for nuclear weapons.
Bomb cards contain the image and name of each specific bomb, the number and categories of personnel and resources required to build it, the cost of making the bomb operational, and, of course, the number of points awarded for its creation. Moreover, plutonium bombs have two such indicators: before testing and after testing.
The player’s personal playing field is divided into two parts, one of which is occupied by the aviation scale, which I already mentioned above.
The second part is marked out into ten rectangles, on which the player places cards of the buildings he has built. There may be more than ten buildings. In this case, the cards are simply laid out next to the field.
The general playing field is a much more interesting thing. Its upper part is a construction market, where cards of buildings that can be built are laid out openly. Please note that the cost of construction is not shown on the maps. It is indicated on the playing field above each section of the construction market, with the cheapest building on the left and the most expensive on the right.
When purchasing, the player removes a building card from the field and places it on his personal field, and the cards of all buildings on the market that come after the purchased one are shifted to the left. This leads to the fact that any real estate will certainly become cheaper over time. So players often have dilemmas: wait until a “tasty” building drops in price or buy it at a high price before competitors grab it.
By the way, the moment of the initial laying out of cards in the rules is described crookedly, due to which we can conclude that only the card placed on the field worth twenty dollars is laid out face up. However, all cards are placed face up, as is explicitly stated in the original English rules.
To the left of the construction market there is an ashtray, into which bribes in the amount of one dollar are placed from the general warehouse in some game situations. The accumulated money is received by the player who buys the cheapest enterprise on the playing field, after which the ashtray is refilled.
Under the buildings under construction are the fields “Construction”, “Airstrike”, “Repair”, “Factory”, “Mines”, “Universities”, “Bomb Development” and “Reactor and Enrichment Plant”. You can place your workers on each of these fields and receive some benefits for this, similar to the enterprises on your personal playing field. But firstly, on your turn, you can place only one worker on the common field, while on your own field you can install as many of them as you like, as long as there are free workers and places for installation. Secondly, you often have to pay for installing an employee on the field either in money or in cash.
On the left side of the field there is an espionage scale. Here you can hire spies, which allows you to place your employees in enemy enterprises and use the products produced. Experience shows that this possibility should not be ignored, since a player with a developed spy network can do business well even with a minimal number of his own enterprises, throwing his agents like cuckoos into other people’s nests.
In addition, if it comes to an airstrike, some of the enterprises may be paralyzed (the building cannot function if it has at least one damage), while the enemy will not attack its own enterprises with your spies inside.
As you can see, if you look at the root, the whole game comes down to competent management of personnel, who need to be placed in the right places in time. In this way, we extract resources and strengthen our defenses, since the rules “If you want peace, prepare for war” have not yet been canceled. Even if you yourself do not plan to attack anyone, you will still have to intensively develop your Air Force, because otherwise the enemy will attack you.
And, of course, along with all this, you need to produce raw materials for bombs and rivet the bombs themselves, otherwise there will be no chance of winning. The amount of enriched uranium and plutonium is noted on a scale located on the right side of the general field.
The gaming experience is excellent. Most often we play this game with four or five players, which is what we want for you too.
In my opinion, playing together is not particularly interesting. Direct confrontation between two players is duel in nature, where the strength of weapons often decides everything and open conflict usually cannot be avoided, since the player who has built more fighters, as a rule, will definitely use them, since this is the most obvious and simple opportunity to put pressure on the opponent.
Meanwhile, the entry of a third party makes significant adjustments to the game, since militarily weak players can enter into a military alliance and heartily beat down a well-improved but presumptuous comrade.
But all the nuances of the game are revealed most fully when there are four or five participants, when there are more contenders for each place in the general field and you have to think very carefully about which sector to occupy.
The Manhattan Project board game is packed with so many features and depth that it's a must-try for fans of good resource strategies. I am very glad that it appeared in my collection and I will probably play it more than once.
I thank the Stavropol store “Mosigra” for providing the kit for review.
Humanity is always looking for a reason for war. The ambassador was served under-salted soup at a reception with a high-ranking official of a rival power - a “Note of Protest” immediately arises, airplanes take off from both sides of the border, soldiers rush into battle for the honor and conscience of the country. And while passions rage on the battlefields, scientists and engineers are creating perfect weapons that can wipe out all life from the face of the earth. Today on the Pink Sofa is the bomb-making board game "The Manhattan Project".
There once were five powerful countries with developed economies. Universities in every country produced great scientists, workers dedicatedly extracted resources, and squadrons of fighters and bombers soared in the skies. Each state sought to develop a powerful bomb designed to destroy the border lands of competitors “to the ground.” Those states no longer exist, and that Planet no longer exists... But in memory of scientific exploits, a game was created, which I will tell you about today.
Inside the medium-sized box is a stack of cards, a set of tokens, a bag of wooden components, player mats, a game board, and a history of the Manhattan Project. The rest of the space was occupied by something, but due to the secrecy of the project, it was seized by the relevant authorities and put into storage.
The five competing powers are represented by a corresponding number of different colored tablets. On an individual field, space is allocated for the construction of buildings and a runway is located.
A playing field with locations to which players will send their players to receive cards of bombs and buildings, to mine Kek, Uranium, Plutonium, as well as for espionage and other useful actions.
Each power has its own air fleet, consisting of fighters and bombers. Players will receive two tokens, matching the color of their individual board, to place aircraft on their personal airfield. Bombers will carry atomic bombs for test explosions (10 markers) and damage enemy buildings during combat sorties (16 double-sided markers).
Wooden discs of the player's color are used to mark the amount of "Uranium" and "Plutonium", as well as to indicate the level of "Espionage". 48 coins will provide opponents with a comfortable existence and allow them to place their players in advantageous locations. 40 yellow Keck cubes will be processed into Uranium and Plutonium.
The population of the state under your control consists of 4 workers, 4 engineers in helmets and 4 bug-eyed scientists dressed in uniforms in the colors of your power. A similar number of gray contractors are ready to temporarily hire any player.
Without test explosions, neither you nor your opponents will learn about the destructive capabilities of the created bomb. Five markers will mark test explosions of powers. The faster a state completes tests, the more additional victory points it will receive.
Note: on the back of the tokens, the number of players at which a particular tile is used is indicated.
50 building cards will gradually be distributed across player boards and will bring the corresponding bonuses indicated at the bottom of the picture. It is from these buildings that your miniature “state” will consist.
30 deadly bombs of two types, filled with Uranium and Plutonium, will bring victory points to your opponents. It is their manufacture, equipment and testing that is the priority task of the players.
Note: the building deck has 6 starting cards, which I recommend separating from the rest and storing separately to speed up preparation for the next game.
At a secret facility.
The playing field is located in the center of the table, with wooden markers and building cards placed on it.
The six starting building cards are shuffled and placed from left to right openly in the “real estate market.” The main stack of buildings is also shuffled and placed nearby face down. One card is removed from the deck and placed in an empty space in the row.
The bombs are also shuffled, a stack is placed next to the field, a number of cards are removed from it, one greater than the number of players, and laid out openly next to the “building market”.
Place tokens for test explosions, destruction of objects, loading bombs, contractors, engineers, scientists, Keck cubes and coins within the players’ reach, forming a common bank. Marker discs are placed on the initial divisions of three tracks: “Espionage”, “Plutonium” and “Uranium”.
Players receive individual tablets, four laborers, 10 coins, as well as fighter and bomber tokens, which are placed on the first mark of their “airfield”.
The first player does not receive bonuses, the players following him are rewarded with coins and additional workers, depending on the order of the move (the second will take 2 additional coins, the third - 4, the fourth - 2 coins, scientist or engineer, the fifth - 4 coins, scientist or engineer).
Opponents take turns and on their turn they can either place one ward on the main field and several on the individual field (immediately performing the appropriate actions), or take all subordinates back to the reserve.
Every state needs to be developed, and we will start with the purchase of buildings. By placing one ward in the "Construction" location, you can receive a map from a number of buildings. If this is an engineer, then you will receive one of the first two cards for free. Otherwise, you must pay the card value indicated on the field to the general bank.
For example: the blue player receives a card for free, and the red player, having placed a handyman, is obliged to buy the building for coins. By buying the leftmost building, you can earn money.
In case of purchasing one of the three most expensive buildings, the buyer, in addition to the amount, is obliged to put one coin in the “ashtray.” When purchasing the cheapest building, the buyer receives all the coins accumulated in the “ashtray”.
Note: As soon as a player receives a card, he moves the row to the left and places a new one from the pile on the “market”. The resulting building is placed on an individual tablet.
You can send people to buildings - their number and type are indicated at the top of the map (a question mark allows you to send any character). At the bottom of the card is a bonus that the player immediately receives. These could be resources, money, additional wards or planes. If the building is occupied by personnel, then it cannot be reactivated - this is important for “Espionage”.
The "factories" provide money and planes. Don’t forget to throw coins into the ashtray if the corresponding “Dollar” icon is indicated in the location, and also pay for the accommodation of your charges with “Kekom”.
Yellow cubes are mined at the mine. Please note: the central place brings all players one resource cube, and the owner - as many as 3. Similar symbols are found on the field, and in all cases, in addition to the player who placed his ward in the location, all his opponents also receive bonuses.
Universities train staff - you can get additional wards for your personal use. These can be either color-matched engineers or scientists, or neutral contractors.
The point of neutral contractors is that they tend to run away from you the moment you put all your workers back into the pool. And this happens at the moment when the player has no one left in his hands (you can choose this action voluntarily). In this case, you need to remove all your subordinates from the general and individual fields (from the opponents’ fields in the case of “Espionage”), as well as from the “bomb range” and return them to the reserve. At the same time, all involved gray contractors are also removed and go to the general reserve.
You can advance along the “Uranium” and “Plutonium” scales both by processing “Keck” on the main field, and by using personal “Reactor” buildings on an individual tablet. We will need all the resources to make bombs.
You can’t do without intelligence in any arms race - by sending one of your charges to the “espionage” location and paying 3 coins, you can send your employees to work in enemy buildings by placing tokens on other people’s tablets. The number of spies you can deploy is indicated on the track. Remember that only when this location is activated, the player can use his second action to send a spy into the enemy camp!
Thus, you block your opponent from using your own buildings, receiving income from them.
For example: the red player goes to the green opponent's "University" and receives three scientists. The green player will not be able to use his building until the red player removes his scientist from it (or the green player must choose the “remove workers” action).
After such injustice, the green player seeks revenge and prepares an “Airstrike”. During an air attack, the following happens.
Fighters destroy fighters. The purpose of these defenders is to create a shield for the enemy. If you have at least one fighter, you cannot attack your tablet. Let's see: the green player has an advantage of one car, we move the blue player's fighter to "zero", and the green one to "one".
Destroyed buildings are prohibited from being used, but you can return all their personnel to the player’s reserve using the “remove workers” action. You can repair buildings for 5 coins in the corresponding location of the playing field. Remember that one repair removes up to three damage markers.
So, you develop, bomb each other, get resources, but... it doesn’t bring any points. That's right - only bombs give victory points, with which not everything is so simple.
You can only get maps of all bombs laid out openly if you simultaneously place an engineer and a scientist in the corresponding location. The player who has made such a significant step takes all the bomb cards, secretly selects one, and passes the rest around.
Opponents do a similar action, as a result of which, at the end of the circle, the first player receives another additional card. Players keep all bombs they receive secret from their opponents until a special moment.
After this, new cards are removed from the common pile of bombs and laid out next to the field.
But cards won’t bring anything for nothing; bombs need to be equipped, loaded into a bomber and tested. Let's start with simple bombs filled with Uranium.
On any bomb cards you must place the number of personnel indicated in the picture. To activate, you need to place the card openly in front of you, place personnel on it and pay for resources. All actions must be performed in one turn! Additionally, you can pay the number of coins indicated in the picture and “load” a bomb into the bomb bay by placing a token worth 5 points.
In the case of a bomb filled with Plutonium, the player receives the minimum score. This situation can be corrected by performing a test explosion. It is necessary to fully equip the bomb with personnel and resources, after which the card is discarded to the bottom of the general deck, the player takes the “Test Explosion” token of the maximum value and henceforth receives the maximum number of points from each plutonium bomb (including all previously collected bombs). A test explosion can be carried out only once per game - you lose the bomb, but receive bonus points from the token and make a kind of “investment”.
The player who scores the number of victory points specified in the rules becomes the head of a superpower and explodes all the bombs, proving his advantage to everyone.
By exploding a couple of bombs.
I'll start with the quality of the components, which are pleasing to the eye. The cutting is perfect - the tokens fall into your hands on their own, there are no “notches” or problems with separation from the base, the playing field is made of high quality. Unfortunately, on some personnel tiles there is a print misalignment, which is not critical in the game, but is a reason to “work on the mistakes.”
The localization was done with humor - the names of the bombs were “adapted” to domestic “folklore”, I did not find any errors on the maps. There is a lot (even too much) of empty space in the box, but Western publishing houses are also guilty of this - a tribute to standardization...
The game itself is tense with active interaction between players. At first, opponents actively use the locations of the playing field, develop their own powers, earn resources and replenish their personnel. Over time, opponents “dig deeper” into their own and other people’s tablets, bombers soar into the air over states, and the smoke of fires rises. And then the arms race begins...
An interesting feature of Manhattan is that opponents can either destroy enemy buildings with bomb attacks, or use spies and benefit from someone else's development. The rules are logical, in the locations of the field there are hints on resources and money, and the bonuses “produced” by buildings coincide in meaning with the name of the building. All this greatly facilitates the gameplay and allows you to connect newcomers to the game in the shortest possible time.
Since the invention of nuclear weapons, the world has found itself on the brink of disaster. The superiority in weapons of one country automatically means the defeat of all others. The only way out in this situation is to rapidly arm our own nuclear weapons and destroy the enemy’s weapons and infrastructure. The arms race turns out to be the only way to preserve peace.
Your state and the enemy states find themselves in the same conditions at the start of the nuclear arms race. And here you will need not only all the forces and means, but also all your mind in order to correctly build a development and defense strategy, in order to correctly solve the tactical problems of providing weapons factories materially and intellectually. The game will take all your attention and captivate you from the very first move.
Who is this game for?
A game "The Manhattan Project" (The Manhattan Project) has an average level of difficulty and is intended for children from 12 years old and adults of any age. We can safely say that it will be interesting both for teenagers and for already established people, both for workers and for academics. As for the number of players, it can be from 2 to 5 people.
Purpose of the game
The goal of the game, as in most similar games, is to score as many points as possible. In the Manhattan Project, they can only be obtained for the quantity and quality of nuclear bombs. Bombs are the main and only goal of the game. Everything else is just surroundings and necessary accompanying elements. You need to remember this when planning your strategy. At the same time, the better the bomb is designed and the more tests are carried out, the more points it will bring. But every action to improve the nuclear arsenal takes time and resources.
Rules of the game
At your disposal will be a playing field on which your buildings and workers will be located. There will be 9 areas on the common field where you can place your scientists and workers, as well as plant your combat aircraft there. And you will definitely need to take advantage of mines for the extraction of uranium ore, universities to provide production with qualified engineers, reactors and uranium enrichment factories. You will need factories that bring in money and workers. And you also need airplanes. What are airplanes for, you ask? They don't help create bombs. They will help you if your opponent starts to overtake you. In this case, it is enough to bomb it, destroying its factories. As a result, he will spend time and resources on restoring his power.
Alliances are an important part of the game. As a rule, these are short-term alliances. For example, you want to stop a strong opponent. In this case, you can cooperate with other players and deal him a joint blow, from which he will not be able to recover even until the end of the game. Cooperate, but remember that in this game, as in life, everyone is looking out only for their own interests and your yesterday’s ally, without blinking an eye, will bomb your enterprises in 5 minutes.
The game perfectly develops strategic thinking and ability, complex multifactor tasks.
