Elementis is under siege by the Aether Fiends! The invaders are encroaching on the aethercore and it’s up to us to keep them out. We must build elemental spires to draw them away from our precious core – should be simple … right? As long as we work together, we can restore balance to the realm!

What Is It?

🥅The Goal of the game is to build all 4 spire toppers
⚙️Cooperative – Players work together as a team
⚙️Dice Rolling – Players roll dice each turn to get the element symbols they need in order to build up their fortress
⚙️Variable Players Powers – Players have unique abilities to help their team succeed
⚙️Variable Set-up – Players can scale difficulty for set-up changes, as well as choose from different heroes and fiends

Who Is It For?

👥1 to 4 Players – Any count works. I think I like 3-4 best just because you get to see more character powers
👥Ages 10 & Up – Pretty simple gameplay, but must work together strategically
👥Fans of co-op games who don’t mind multiple layers of randomness (pulling tiles and rolling dice)

PROS

🟢Aesthetics – Looks cool on the table
🟢Rules are well written
🟢Easy set-up
🟢Good variety of characters and fiends
🟢Can adjust difficulty

CONS

🔴The fiends come at you really quickly, and can really limit what players can do. I get that that’s where the difficulty comes from, but I felt like even the “easy” level 1 game ramped up so quickly that it can sometimes be hard to keep up as the players
🔴Can get unlucky between dice rolls and poor timing of not drawing the rooms you want at the time

Final Thoughts

This game is all about utilizing your abilities, both from characters and from the element wheel on the board. On top of that, timing plays a huge role in the game. I think if you wait too long to start building, you really won’t stand a chance. But if you don’t have the right floors to build early, you’ll also be in a sticky spot. It’s really a balancing act (which is funny given the nature of the buildings too).

Overall, I think it works pretty well, and over the course of the game makes for a really nice table presence. I just think you’ll want to make sure you get together a solid group, and bring along a good group of characters with a wide selection of abilities.

Additional Information:
My Final Rating: 6/10

Designer – Tim Mierzejewski
Artist – Víctor Pérez Corbella
Publisher – Phase Shift Games
MSRP – $49.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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