Black Angel

What is Black Angel?

Black Angel is a heavy strategy game by Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, and Alain Orban, published by Pearl Games. The game is suitable for 1 to 4 players, ages 12 and up, with a playing time of 60 to 120 minutes. Black Angel is playable immediately and entirely in English. An official solo mode is included.

The Earth is exhausted. Humanity has completely squandered natural resources, and the great nations are setting aside their disputes for one final project: the Black Angel spaceship. The largest ship ever built must transport humanity's genetic heritage on a journey of thousands of years to unknown worlds. The crew consists exclusively of robots controlled by artificial intelligence. You manage one of those AI factions on board.

How does a game proceed?

Black Angel It features a central sliding player board representing the spaceship. Each round, the board shifts one position: new sectors appear at the front of the ship while older sectors lag behind. This shift ensures that the available action spaces differ each round and the competition for the best positions constantly changes.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. worker placement Place your dice on action spaces of the spaceship. The dice are simultaneously your workers, your currency, and a color resource: the color of the die you use determines which actions you can perform and which bonuses you receive. Each player manages a personal player board displaying their AI faction with its own upgrades and abilities.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Dice Rolling At the beginning of your turn, you roll a set of dice and divide them into two pools: action dice that you use on the spaceship, and supply dice that serve as currency or resources. The dice colors match action spaces on the board, requiring strategic choices about which color to use for action and which to save.

Missions are divided into two categories. Explore and Colonize sends you outside the Black Angel to discover and claim new planets and systems for victory points. Repair and Protect maintains the ship against the Ravagers: hostile alien life that attacks the Black Angel during the journey. Ignoring the Ravagers risks damage to the ship that costs score points.

Is it difficult to learn?

Black Angel This is a challenging to heavy game with a learning curve that requires multiple games to fully grasp. The combination of the sliding board, the dice acting as a triple resource, and the two mission categories makes the first session complex. The English card texts are functionally present and relevant. Recommended for players with experience in heavy eurogames.

Who is Black Angel suitable?

Black Angel is ideally suited for experienced strategy players who enjoy heavy eurogames with a strong sci-fi space theme, multiple simultaneous scoring paths, and an elegant dice-as-workers system. The solo mode also makes it appealing to solo players seeking a complex strategic puzzle. Fans of earlier Pearl Games titles Troyes en Ginkgopolis Recognize the designer's signature immediately in the system.

Why this game is worth it

The most original element of Black Angel is the threefold function of dice as worker, currency, and color resource all at once. In most worker placement games, dice are a separate system. In Black Angel Every die you place is a three-dimensional decision. That, combined with the sliding board that changes action spaces each round, gives the game a dynamic lacking in static worker placement games. The production quality of Pearl Games aligns with their reputation as a publisher of visually and component-wise high-quality eurogames.

Comparison with other games

Black Angel is in the same tough eurogame segment as Troyes en Viticulture: Moor Visitors regarding the use of dice, and compares itself thematically with Terraforming Mars as a heavy sci-fi strategy game with multiple scoring paths. Compared to Terraforming Mars is the dice system mechanically more innovative but the game scope comparable. Whoever also likes Solenia, the other Pearl Games game with a sliding board, immediately recognizes that designer signature in Black Angel.

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Black Angel is a heavy and mechanically innovative strategy game where dice function as a triple resource on a sliding spaceship board during a millennia-long journey to a new world. Includes solo mode. English language. Order Black Angel Now at Boardgameshop.nl.