Who Can Rescue The Most Miners? Find Out With Space-Based Strategy Board Game Mother Lode
Mother Lode ($0.99) by Order of Magnitude Games is an iPad-only space-themed strategy board game that’s perfect for up to four different players (computer or human), where each player controls miners on a dying planet. The goal? To escape with the most live miners and ore.
This game takes awhile to learn, but after the included tutorial, I got the hang of it. Once I became accustomed to the rules and the slow pace, Mother Lode became engrossing and fun.
The idea, essentially, is to deploy miners onto the game board. There are three areas that can be mined from the center outwards. Tiles in the center produce more ore, but the catch is that every miner must be successfully removed from the board in order for gathered ore to be counted as part of your score.
Putting a miner in the center means it’s going to take more turns to get that miner back to your home base. The game has two different stages. In the first, each player will place all of their miners and escape pods (which can rescue up to three miners and carry them homewards) at various spots on the board, and in the second, actual gameplay will begin.
Each player will get three action turns, to drag their miners onto the board. After all three movement turns have been used, the miners will attempt to mine if they have inventory space (all miners can only carry a certain amount of ore). They will either mine successfully or find nothing at all. At that point, the player selects a tile to remove from the board.
Tiles have different properties, which can be beneficial. Some will neutralize a negative attack, while others will add extra functions like worm holes to the game board. Worm holes will automatically teleport miners if there are two of them on the board.
There are also three types of creatures on the board - snakes, octopi, and pirates - which will destroy miners and rescue pods. At the end of each turn, all players get to spin a spinner which allows them to move one creature a certain number of spaces. This is how you take out enemy miners to prevent them from scoring points. There are some tiles which allow you to negate attacking creatures.
If this sounds complicated, it is a bit tough to learn, but one run through with the tutorial should explain the concept of the game. Figuring out the best strategies to win successfully will take a bit more time, but as it turns out, once you’ve got the basics down, this is a well designed board game that’s fun to play with other people.
There are some downsides to this game. The graphics really aren’t impressive, especially on the third generation iPad (an update is in the works), and it’s got some UI issues. To use and view cards or to examine your miners, you have to touch a bubble in the lower left side of the screen. At the same time, you have to tap, so this is a two handed maneuver that does not feel natural.
The biggest issue is pacing, and when playing against the computer, this game is in desperate need of a fast forward button. Right now, you’re currently forced to watch each of the computer’s moves, which makes the game quite slow. I’d also like to be able to speed up mining - watching each and every one of my miners plink at the board tiles is boring. Game pacing is slightly less of an issue when playing multiplayer, however.
All in all, if you’re looking for a great board game to play with friends, Mother Lode is a good choice, and at $0.99, it’s priced right too.
