Onward to Venus Board Game First Impressions

Onward to Venus takes you out of Earth and towards… Mercury.

No wait, turn around, Onward to the Kuiper Belt!

Onward to Venus is based on the Doctor Grordbort graphic novels from writer/artist Greg Broadmore, with those books being a parody of sorts of the British Empire in the late 19th century, but instead of the race for Africa, we now have the exploitation of the Solar System, which is populated by various natives who resent the Earthling settlers.

This is a brief overview of the rules followed by my final summary.

Onward to Venus Summary

I initially thought I couldn’t really compare this to anything else I’ve played. However, if you imagine all of the planets as one board then yes, I’ve played something similar.

It just then becomes an area control, combat game. Games like Blood Rage, Rising Sun and even Mission: Red Planet.

Nothing directly like this with Chits and building. Unless you include Martin Wallace’s Mythotopia. This has you moving around, creating towns and holding onto them. It’s a fantasy setting which is also my preference.

But you know while it’s similar to a lot of games it is its own thing as far as I’m concerned.

A lot of these games are not for me due to the take that nature. I don’t like being attacked or being made to attack other people. It’s why I don’t like popular games like Scythe and Kemet.

But here PvP combat only occurs if a particular tile is drawn. For it to matter it would need to be drawn on a til where you have a Factory or Mine. So it’s fine…

Except it isn’t.  It’s a bit random. It could be that you never get one of those tiles on a Planet or Moon with one of your buildings. Or maybe it could be that you’re constantly defending from a random token draw…

Jesta ThaRogue