How to play Terra Nova

How to play Terra Nova, a route-building, resource management game.

Title: Terra Nova

Year Published: 2022

Designer: Andreas Faul

Publisher: Capstone Games

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~90 minutes

Set-up Time: ~5 minutes

Ages: 12+

Theme: Fantasy

Mechanisms: Route Building, Resource Management

How to win: Score the most points by building buildings and expanding your nation

Game Description

Terra Nova is a simplified version of the strategy game Terra Mystica.

How to play Terra Nova

A quick but comprehensive how-to-play video for Terra Nova

Theme

This is set in the world of Terra Mystica (TM for short) which I like but don’t really understand. It occurs to me I never thought to look to see why these races are terraforming and building.

Setup & Rulebook

The setup is really easy. I do like that the rulebook has a suggested setup for everything for the first game. It can be overwhelming so having a decent start will really help players settle in and start building.

The rulebook is great but I was coming at it as a game I already understand so it wasn’t too difficult. I do like that they also simplified the terminology from TM too.

Components & Artwork

The components are nice, I do like the wooden ones over the plastic ones from Gaia Project. I also don’t mind the art style. It’s a slight upgrade from TM but close enough that it fits in. The cartoony look matches the feel of the lighter version of the game.

I would say the component quality from TM is lower. There are slightly faded paint and wooden flarey bits on some of the buildings. The rest of the stuff is great.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

The game is easy to teach, easier than TM anyway. Removing the workers, priests, sanctuaries etc as well as the cult track and the cult track-related end-of-round bonuses really streamlines the game down a lot.

They also simplified gaining power when opponents build next to you which makes it much easier to teach.

It’s still heavy-ish, lighter than TM obviously so it’s more accessible. It doesn’t really play much quicker. I think if I remember it’s one round shorter than TM and the rounds in both games take a similar amount of time.

Terra Nova Summary

So Terra Nova is purely Terra Mystica taken down to its simplest form. They removed a few resources and mechanisms, made others more simple and tidied up some language but kept the basic game the same.

There isn’t really much more for me to say at this point. TM is my favourite game of all time so making it more accessible while keeping the core gameplay is perfect. They removed enough, but not too much.

I would like to see more races added to give a bit of variety. I’m thinking about those from the Fire and Ice expansions that use the existing player colours, such as the Shapeshifters. Or those that add extra terrain tiles like the Dragonlords.

Also, the ability to play with 5 players would be perfect! It’s very tight at 4 so we’d need a bigger board! Get on it guys!

Terra Nova Round-Up

I didn’t know what I was going to think,, but I love it!

Rating

I give it 10/10