“Basic research at CERN expands the pool of human knowledge. It inspires the young, and provides an important impetus to scientific and technical education.”
~ Rolf Heuer
You’re part of a team of brilliant scientists working on the super secret lab: CERN. While experimenting with tele-transportation your team came across a wonderful discovery: portals to new dimensions!
Just imagine! Once a portal is open a whole new magical dimension is suddenly very close. All you need to do is take one step forward and you’re there.
The problem is… The crazy wild creatures from those other dimensions can now walk in.
Oh no.
Close the portals NOW!
So your goal in Multiuniversum is to close these portals. This will score you points and whoever has the most points wins.
The top 5 portals are spread around the board and you move from one transformer to another. This lets you try and close the portal next to it…
To do this, you have 3 action points on your turn. You can choose from several actions and you can do the same action multiple times…
Actions
One action is to discard a card from your hand and draw a card. This is important as the cards have different effects on them that change from transformer to transformer.
This is how I would use the Move ability on my cards above. I’d need to be at Transformer 4 (Blue) for the first 2 or 5 (Green) for the 3rd one.
You can play a card for its ability as one action which involves moving as mentioned. You can also draw cards or activate the abilities of the transformer you’re on. Eventually, you’ll be able to close a portal…
But before I talk about closing them I need to explain the 3rd action, claiming a card as a tool.
You tuck the cards underneath your player card to show only the ‘Tool’ side of them and it’s this combination of tools that will determine if you’re able to close your portal or not…
Portals
Each Portal has its own set of 1, 2 or 3 symbols (and BEAUTIFUL artwork) on them with the ones with more symbols being worth more points.
You spend those tools to gain the portal card, revealing the next one in the stack for that particular transformer.
The portal is kept under your card for final scoring.
They’re worth points individually but each portal is a ‘type’ and you get set collection points there for multiples of the same and sets of different symbols.
When a couple of piles of portals run out the game ends, you add your points for portals and the set collection bit, lose 1 point per unused tool you have, and most points win.
Multiuniversum Summary
It’s a decent game with fantastic artwork. The Worlds are a mix of scary almost familiar things similar to Malifaux to one with a Gummy Bear holding a blood-soaked Machete, very twisted, weird and great.
Multiuniversum is somewhat random… The cards you have determine what actions you have but only the actions for the transformer you’re on. So if you can’t do what you want to do on the transformer you’re on you need to move, but only if you have a move action matching that transformer… you can get stuck.
You can plan this and there is a great bit of hand management required, saving actions and tools to plan for a transformer, closing its portal and moving on. Well, you would be able to plan but a lot of the portal actions involve moving portal decks from transformer to transformer or cycling a deck around…
So, Multiuniversum seemed random but it’s quite fun and the art is amazing so I’ll give it another go before I make up my mind 100%
Jesta ThaRogue
Note: The copy I played was a review copy generously provided by Board & Dice, big thanks to them for this game.