X is for X-odus: Rise of Corruption

By Bored Game Ink

Way back on "O is for Oregon Trail," I mentioned that I was chasing the high of how I felt as a 2nd grader playing Oregon Trail on DOS. Another computer game I really miss and am still chasing the high for is Master of Orion. Did anyone play that? Now, I recently discovered that there is a Master of Orion board game and I may or may not be getting it for Christmas (though if it goes the way of my Oregon Trail board game experience, I think I will be disappointed), BUT when I backed this, I was unaware of its existence. So, I backed this because my husband likes science fiction and I wanted to play some sort of cooperative space exploration game.

Players: 1-4

Time: 90-150 minutes

Ages: 14+

Theme: Galaxy Exploration
Mechanics: Co-Op, Rogue Like, Dice Rolling, Modular Board

In X-odus: Rise of Corruption,  you need to explore, complete varying difficult tasks (based on level of difficulty), fight battles, and upgrade your ship, while avoiding the much scarier and more powerful evil Avatar ships, that mostly can only be taken on while in "fleet" formation. When playing with 2 players, each player controls 2 ships. There are six ships to choose from in three categories (combat, rogue, special) and each ship has a unique strength. In our first couple of games, I played the Warship (good at battle) and the Drone Specialist (good at support/repairing). Dustin played the Battlecruiser (good at combat and protecting ships within the fleet) and the Pirate Ship (sort of a Jack of all Trades with an extra action). As you gain experience and level up your ship, you're given choices on how to build up your ship.

Our first few games did not go so well. We separated to explore more of the map, but I was defeated when faced alone with powerful enemies. Some ships are stealthier than others and can avoid detection more easily (My Warship was not one of them). On our subsequent tries, we tried "fleeting" up more often. In fact, in our first won game, we had spent most of the game as one fleet of all 4 ships. When you join a fleet, your actions become more limited and you have to agree with your fleet-mates which actions to take. Additionally, when in a fleet, the map is much slower to build, as you can't send probes in multiple directions while fleeted. Dustin and I were usually mostly in agreement, so it wasn't too much of an issue, but I imagine some people would not like to play this way, stripped of the ability to make their own decisions.

We ended up quitting our first couple games, first from time constraints (each play definitely leaned towards the 150 minutes as opposed to the 90 minutes) and the second time because both of my ships were dead and things were dire. On our third game, we BARELY won. We won on the last possible turn before the corruption meter ended the game. But I'll take it.

Overall, we liked this game. We plan to check out some of the other ships, some of the different builds for the ships we already tried, and attempt to play with more strategic fleeting. Cons include: some unclear rules (that are not addressed in the FAQ on the website-- so we made judgement calls), the length can be a bit long for more casual gamers, and the LOADED DICE (Seriously. Misses are on two sides of the dice, so 33% chance of rolling a miss. I think we rolled misses at least 60% of the time. It was insane. And totally not just our superhuman unluckiness...)

This was one of our rolls.
O's are misses.

 So we give it a 7.5/10.