Wouter & Ymke 
As an alien explorer you’re on a mission to recover and sell artefacts from the uninhabited planet Earth!
1-4 players, ages 14+
Playing time: 30 min/player
Designers: Dávid Turczi, Wai Yee & Gordon Calleja
Artist: Philipp Kruse
Publisher: Mighty Boards
https://www.mighty-boards.com/
Excavation Earth is now live on Kickstarter, together with the new ‘It Belongs in a Museum’ expansion:
Excavation Earth is played over the course of 3 rounds, each one starting with a drafting phase after which players remain with a hand of 6 multi-use cards to use when performing actions in the second phase.
During the action phase, players take turns performing two actions on their turn by discarding cards from their hand. Some actions require you to keep in mind the color of the card, while others require the right icon, and travel actions will be as powerful as the number of fuel icons showing on the discarded card.
Next to traveling, other possible actions consist of excavating artifacts from dig sites and take samples of them, sell them at one of the 6 markets, manipulate the buyers in those markets, trade at the black market or deploy your crew members to the mothership for influence and power.
Once every player passes, the round enters a scoring phase in which players score majorities for each of 3 command centres in the mothership. Play proceeds to the next round, and at the end of the third and final round players receive additional points for their collected samples, and the player with the highest score wins the game!
Don’t let this short overview mislead you, this game’s quite a brain burner with a learning curve. Your first turn you’ll literally be overwhelmed by the possible actions and the ways to get to the things you actually want, but believe me, it’s totally worth the investment.
This is a eurogame with a neat theme and colorful artwork – Excavation Earth proves that not every euro has to come with only beige or grey! Also the theme works very well together with the mechanics, and the market mechanism is something I haven’t seen before in other games.
If you’re into medium-heavy euro games and looking for a game with a fresh theme and lots of replayability, Excavation Earth is now back on Kickstarter, together with the new ‘It Belongs in a Museum’ expansion:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyboards/excavation-earth-it-belongs-in-a-museum
