At the end of October 2022, the cooperative collected Board game Daybreak by Pandemic designer Matt Leacock in collaboration with Matteo Menapace almost $450.000 on Backerkit. The special thing about the game is that - in addition to the fun of the game - the topic of climate change, including how it is dealt with and its dimensions, also plays an important role. Thanks to the traditional publisher Schmidt Spiele, Daybreak has now also come onto the market in Germany under the name e-Mission. You can find out how e-Mission performs in purely playful terms in the following review.
In the fight against CO2
In e-Mission we take on the role of one of four world powers and work together to reduce CO2 emissions2 to produce more than the earth can absorb before the temperature rises too much and we become too distressed. To do this, we jointly invent groundbreaking technologies and try to keep society, nature and infrastructure stable in the face of global warming.
Each of our nations still produces large amounts of CO at the start of the game2 in the form of “dirty energy and emissions”. These are partly bound by the trees and oceans around the world. The rest causes the global temperature - indicated by a thermometer on the game board - to rise and results in more crises and global consequences occurring and our population increasingly in a state of emergency. Our goal is to achieve less CO overall2 to produce more than the earth can absorb and thereby reach the turning point.
Round by round we are trying to remove dirty energy and emissions and replace them with green, clean energy. The energy requirements, emissions and the state of the population of each nation are recorded on their personal panels.
Make the best of the situation
The game is played over six rounds. However, the game can also end earlier if the temperature reaches the 2°C limit or a state of emergency is declared in a country in the form of the 12th emergency tile. If we don't manage to reach the goal by then, we lose the game. Each of the 6 rounds consists of 5 phases: The Global Phase, Project Phase, Issuance Phase, Crisis Phase & Growth Phase.
At the beginning we draw in the global phase 3 crisis cards and place them to the right of the game board. The first is laid out face up, the rest face down. These are activated in the crisis phase. When it comes to hidden crises, we don't know what to expect. Depending on the temperature, the number of crises increases that we cannot foresee. We are also starting a global project here. Each has an advantage in the fight against climate change, which is activated once the project's requirement has been met.
Then, in the project phase, each nation draws 5 cards from the project deck (+/-, depending on positive or negative bonuses) and uses them to influence the 5 projects of their world power, common projects or crises. Here you have to think carefully about which card you use, when and how, as personal projects can be strengthened or changed. If you change a project, you can still use the previously available project, then change it and possibly use the new project. Accordingly, you try to get the best out of your cards.
Round after round of new crises
In the following emissions phase, each nation reviews its energy needs. If this is below the required value, we receive emergency tiles equal to the difference. Then everyone counts their dirty energy and emissions and places them on the emission fields of the thermometer. All emissions are then tied to free tree and sea tiles. The rest remains on the thermometer and increases its temperature as a row is filled.
In the crisis phase, all crises are then carried out and the global consequences die is rolled - depending on the temperature. This gives us various negative effects that make life difficult for the rest of the game.
The round ends with the growth phase, in which we check whether we have won the game. If not, each nation increases its energy requirement by 2 and the next round begins.
Information about e-Mission
| Number of players: 1 – 4 Age: from 10 years Playing time: 60 - 120 minutes Difficulty: Higher family game Long-term motivation: medium Classification: Hand Management, Cooperative Author: Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace Illustrations: Mads Berg Publisher: Schmidt Spiele, CMYK Official Website: Link Year of publication: 2023 Language: German Cost: 77,99 Euro |
Conclusion
From a purely gameplay perspective, e-Mission is a fantastic game that is not only a lot of fun, but also gives a very good insight into the effects of climate change on our world and that it is better to act quickly before it is too late. e-Mission manages all of this without swinging around with a moral club, but in a purely playful way. Time is running out to achieve our goals and we see, round by round, how everything goes further and further down the drain. This motivates us even more to get the best out of our rounds.
e-Mission can be convincing both cooperatively and solo. The level of difficulty is nice and tough, but never too unfair. Here, good agreements are the be-all and end-all. Once you have played a few games, you know what you should pay attention to and can react better to certain disasters.
But even if e-Mission is a lot of fun, it has one big negative point and that is its game material. This was produced in a CO2-neutral way in Germany - which is commendable - and I don't expect the very best material for a game like this, but unfortunately it is also by far the worst that I have ever held in my hands. For the RRP price of €77,99, what you get is simply disappointing. Of course, CO2-neutral production in Germany is more expensive, but the game is simply not worth the price. For example, the cards can hardly be shuffled properly and they constantly get stuck together. The double-layered game boards feel as if two slightly thicker pieces of paper had been glued together and are therefore thinner than a single-layer board in common games. The tokens are made of really thick cardboard, but it is almost falling apart...
If we were to rate the fun of the game alone, I would have rated e-Mission in the good 8 range. However, with the high price tag and the miserable quality of the material, e-Mission ends up significantly lower. Our recommendation: Wait until the game is on sale, because in terms of gameplay it is excellent. However, for more than €50, we simply can't recommend it.
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