Beyond the Horizon

When the first game, Beyond the Sun, came out it made a splash in the board game circles for making a technology tree fun with its innovative design. Naturally, its one that was an instant hit for myself and some others in my play group. So when it was announced that a new version that would be Civilization-themed be available for preorder during Essen I knew I had to get a copy.

The core of Beyond the Horizon is effectively the same with two main areas of interaction: the shared technology tree board and the area control aspect. In Beyond the Sun, it was a simple small board with pre-printed spots and held 4 location cards that would go away as people claimed it. With Beyond the Horizon, instead of a board with static routes we now have a growing and evolving hex map of territory tiles.

Exploring a world of Hexagons

I want to go over the map first because in the first game it was super easy to overlook the area control even though vying for those locations was a very key aspect, plus its the biggest change compared to the first game.

When you get movement actions you can move a pawn of the existing map and explore a new hex, provided its touching at least two other hexes. There's an immediate benefit for scouting tiles and it gives a new option for players to try and claim. With this you get a lot more available options for the map compared to the 4 locations people were fighting over in the first game. That and traversal now matters more since there can be greater distance to move across the map.

However, and maybe this is just my playstyle, I did feel that it was also easy to kind of stay in your own corner and explore in such a way to deincentivize players going over your discovered tiles. By ensuring you both settle and fortify the same tile you're making sure all those points and bonuses stay with you, though it is quite a lot of work to do. But importantly, its denying reach on the map for opponents since you can spawn on any tile you have a cube. So in some ways, sometimes it could be an interesting play to dash across the map for a surprise claim, though you need to have prepared for it.

Speaking of settlers and soldiers, gone are the nifty multi-purpose dice that represented population or showed a unit's strength in Beyond the Sun. Instead, we have little pawns that represent population. To convert them into the specific map unit, you just plop a little token on top to represent the type and its strength. These new tokens act as a secondary control though, because if you were to create a unit or gain power through an ability but don't have the related token of the specific number then it's basically wasted. Especially because they're double sided, so if you have all your 2-power tokens out, then you can't even make a 1-token till you find a way to retrieve that 2-power token. It's an interesting restriction, one that I didn't have to deal with a whole lot but it did happen where I was about to do one action and realized that I couldn't fully do what I wanted.

And that's something that was present in the original Beyond the Sun, it's easy for someone who is prone to analysis paralysis to try and figure out the web of growing action spaces for what they want to do on a turn.

Aside from that, the other thing you can do for the maps is add a Construction, which a new tile that goes on top of an unused tile. You can sort of think of these Constructions as the Civilization equivalent of wonders: they give bonuses to up to two players who help build it. One minor gripe though is that the "first builder" point bonus requires that at least two contributions be made to the same construction, which isn't immediately obvious from the tile iconography alone.

They add an interesting layer of choice in terms of whether to try and use the territory for the points and area control or to use it for these Construction tiles. On the flip side, the one odd thing is that they aren't used a whole lot, you get three from your player board and its rare to get anything beyond that. So it kind of makes the Construction tile display a dead area taking up table space for most of the game.

The tech tree is just as solid

As for the other main board, the technology tree, the overall layout is effectively identical: to the number of technologies and their connecting lines, to the similar basic actions that are available. In many ways, it shows "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". One thing I'll mention is that the technology cards are a little bit more pleasing on the eye compared to Beyond the Sun, from the layout and just a bit more splash of color makes a difference from the stark minimalist design from the first game. The same goes for the event cards, now Leaders which feature a portrait of a historical figure.

One nice thing is that there isn't the fiddlyness with the events, which in Beyond the Sun you needed certain events guaranteed in the game to unlock the more advanced basic actions. Here, in Beyond the Horizon, the actions are there you just need to meet their requirements in order to use those spaces. Same thing with the shared goal cards, instead of certain ones being mandatory you just pull one of each of the different types. All this makes for a smoother setup for sure.

Lastly, another change is that the player powers are no longer separate boards but simply double sided cards. They give you a starting ability and more that you can unlock through removing cubes from your personal board's Development tracks. These cards help push you in a certain direction for the game.

Lastly, I will lament that there's no solo mode in the box, which is unfortunate when they added one in the expansion for Beyond the Sun, Leaders of the New Dawn, so they know there's desire for it. But for whatever reason they didn't bother to make an official one for Beyond the Horizon. Maybe they'll do the same thing here: solo mode requiring buying an expansion, which I wish wasn't the norm but perhaps its worth it since its a good enough game.

When I played two handed solo, I was super surprised that I got the same score between the two players and ended up having to use the tiebreaker rules to determine a winner.