Colonies

Overview

Thousands of man hours between dozens of revisions, countless amounts of currency, and blood sweat and tears, have finally brought man kind to a time where it can be ready to leave Terra.

Beyond Humanity: Colonies is the first game in the Beyond Humanity series, and the first hybrid boardgame by Three Headed Monster. Featuring full integration with the Exogen database in the coming months, players take on the role of managers attempting to turn a freshly-landed ARC into a thriving colony on any of the hundreds of thousands of planets found throughout known space.

Managers will face numerous daunting tasks as they choose to work together towards their colony's success, or behind the scenes for their own agendas. Often they will face difficult choices between what is best, what is easiest, and what they or their people want.

Boasting a very limited array of truly random events, millions of lines of code in the game create a flowing structure of variables and results impossible for a human to keep track of, resulting in a difficult to predict but organic feeling chain of events that ensures no two games will ever play the same way.

Beyond Humanity: Colonies funded on Kickstarter in 2019 to the tune of over 500,000usd, and shipping is scheduled to begin early Q2 2022.

Assets

Within the box there is: both the full color full rulebook and supplementary Annex, 9 directive cards, 9 double-sided assistant cards, 3 advisor cards, 68 or 108 RFID enabled decree cards, 40 artifact cards, 9 personal 25 semi co-op and 15 co-op goal cards, 4 aux fleet transfer cards, 5 double sided quick reference cards, 2 base endorsement tiles, 1 ARC tile and Module, 1 solo tile, 9 player boards, 31/32 modules/module tiles, 15 ability tiles, 15 corridor connections, 11 RFID-enabled tokens, and resource tokens of all 4 kinds as laid out below.

Cards

In Beyond Humanity: Colonies there are 5 principle card types:

Decrees: RFID enabled cards used to influence the game state via communication within the ARC, or as module endorsements to promote the construction of module buildings. Main Article -> Decrees

Artifacts: Mysterious relics found on the surface of planets that need to be discovered via Expeditions, and then analyzed through Research actions. Each artifact takes a maximum of 3 Experience, 2 Terran Goods, 2 Credits, and 1 Political Advantage. Main Article -> Artifacts

Goals: Goals have 3 subtypes": Personal goals, which are given to each player at the start of their game, and assigned to their character; Semi Coop Goals, which are randomized with each game; and Coop goals, which are used only in the coop mode, and feature a different colored back. Goals have both costs of failure and rewards of success in BHC, so it is better to find a way to get rid of goals you cannot complete in favor of other ones. Main Article -> Goal Cards

Assistants: These double sided cards are used exclusively for a unique set of actions, and are assigned per manager character at the start of the game. These cards all feature action sockets with actions not found on module tiles, and unlike module tile actions, have a cost associated with their use. Main Article -> Characters and Assistants

Advisors: These specialized assistants are single sided, all cost a varying amount of Political Advantage, and all feature unique action sockets that can heavily shake up the game, from changing Governor to removing Terran Dependences. Main Article -> Characters and Assistants

Resources

There are 5 resource types in BHC as well. Credits, the gold circles which represent universal currency used across known space; Terran Goods, exotic exports from Earth which are more rare resource, in blue crates; Experience, gained from module endorsements and used for abilities or expeditions, displayed as white triangles; and Political Advantage, a reflection of a character's influence allowing them to take powerful actions unavailable to those without the required clout, represented by green shields.

Modules

Modules in BHC are the backbone of the colony. New buildings allow for new opportunities, resource production and management, and new risks. There are a total of 28/29 unique modules in the BHC box along with the ARC, with 10 being reserved based on the managers in play for the game, the remaining are available in all games, and can be sorted into two categories for convenience, active modules, which have an action socket for use with the worker placement mechanics of the game, and passive modules, those with only effects on the colony statistics and in the companion app.

• All* modules impact game state in a collection of varied ways. If a number is not provided for the module's effects, it may change due to various elements including but not limited to: planet selection, AUX fleet interactions, happiness security and technical state, etc, etc. All of this information can be found in the last three pages of the BHC Annex.

Active Modules

Hydroponics Dome, Industrial Dome, Landing Pad, Storage, Community Dome, Temporary Residential Capsules, Technical Zone, Academy, Health and Sports Center, Galactic Market Place (This module is an addon)

Passive Modules

Solar Power Plant (2x), Nuclear Power Plant, Life Support System, Atmospheric Synthesizer, Automatic Well, Tanks, Residential Dome (3x), Security Dome

Specialty Modules

Hangar: Paul Bloch, Giselle Carter, Athena Gore. Test Chamber: Paul Bloch, Boris Artyomov. Community Tower: Art Chen, Ava Xu, Vlad Pokorny. Obelisk: Art Chen. Consulate: Mac McCain. Laboratory: Boris Artyomov, Giselle Carter. Bunker: Athena Gore (Passive). Prison Dome: Ava Xu, Lucas Johannes. Terran Embassy: Vlad Pokorny. Cryogenics Cubes: Lucas Johannes (Passive)

Player Boards, Tokens, and Characters

In addition to the modules, each Manager character has their own unique player board featuring their art, order of command (turn order identifier), their repositories (resource storage locations) ability and artifact management slots, their assigned assistants, and an RFID enabled token for interacting with the ARC for decrees, campaigns, and module building as required. Main Article -> Characters and Assistants

Assistants

Each manager is assigned their own pair of assistants at the start of the game, and may only put one into play (by facing that side of the card up) at a time. Various actions and decrees will allow or cause the manager to swap assistants by flipping the card. Assistants come with a variety of actions as well as costs, and can only be used during game phase 4, assistant actions. Likewise, any assistant may only be used once in a round, and assistant actions may be used by anyone that can pay for their services.

Rulebooks and Quick Reference Content

Finally, in the box there are the two main rulebooks.

The Manager's Guide teaches the basic gameplay mode (Semi-Coop) along with the phase structure, necessary terminology, and rudimentary functions of the game such as the in-app statistics and interactions. This should be read cover to cover or all of its content absorbed before playing a regular game. It is unknown at this time how well the in-app tutorial covers this.

The Annex is a much more detailed look at some mechanical elements, including listing all of the statistics and actions of all modules in the game, the alternative game modes (Coop and Solo), various special states, and a plethora of iconography (which there is LOTS of in the game.)

Finally there are five double sided playing cards, one side covering the basic action sockets, with a reminder to check the Annex for others, and the other denoting the round structure by phases, including the necessary app interactions and upkeep phases.

Companion App

The BHC Companion App is a necessary element of the game not found in the box. It is to be installed from the software provider of your choice (currently the Apple Store or Google Play only) and is used to connect to the ARC module and display the goings on of the "Colony Side" of the events in game.

The main screen of the app is used to select the mode of the game, be it online or offline games, scenarios, adjust settings, logs, and other functions. Once into a game, the app will pull a selection of in range planets (from the republic space and beyond only when connected to the Exogen database), once a selection is made based on the available information, an aux fleet may be selected if applicable, and then the game will begin.

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Once the game has begun the display converts to a round tracker with five tabs detailing the important statistics of the colony.

The first tab is the colony's states, happiness security and technical. These are shown in a simple green good, yellow orange red bad state with phrases assigned to the severity of the state when expanded. These stats lead to various occurrences as well as riots and catastrophes if not monitored.

The second tab is the production and accumulators tab, which shows the production and storage of power, life support, gasses, and liquids. The accumulators (batteries) store overproduction for the event of a sudden drain on the system, and can be increased by both decrees and modules. Running out of these can start to burn stock very quickly.

The third tab is the population and immigration tab, which keeps track of the number of available beds in the colony, the rate at which the population is growing, and what the assigned roles of the patrons are in the colony.

Fourth is the special states tab. Riots, Terran Dependences, and Overcrowding conditions are viewed here.

Finally is the stock tab. Stock production and values are shown here along with module construction statuses. This tab will give you a good idea of what is to come regarding supplies and if a Terran Dependence is looming.

Additionally, every 6 months the app will inform the players of their standings with the populace of the colony. More popular managers are more likely to pass decrees.

And finally, at the end of the game, the app will display its internal victory points for colony president and other special events, which is to be added to each manager's score in turn to determine the final outcome.