Pax Transhumanity

The Game

Pax Humanity is designed by Matt Eklund, nephew of Phil Eklund, who is well-known for designing complex and challenging games on specialised and unconventional topics. There are some aspects which will remind you of the Pax series. If you are familiar with the series, you'll know this will be no walk in the park.

The setting is the modern day and near future. Humanity is facing many problems. You are tech entrepreneurs trying to solve these very real problems. You raise funds, employ scientists, research new technologies, and commercialise them. You will find solutions to problems. You will establish companies that bring such solutions to the world. Whoever is most successful in finding the solutions and founding the companies most needed by the world wins.

This is a player board plus player aid designed by a player. It is the size of one full piece of paper. The player board which comes with the game is at the top right corner of this photo - much smaller. Cubes on your player board represent money. Once the game starts, they may be used in other places to represent other elements like scientists and patents.

There is no central game board. You have four sphere boards instead, representing four different technological spheres. A game is set up like this photo above. The cards are different technologies which you will research and eventually commercialise.

Let's take a closer look at a technology card. The two coloured edges represent two tech types related to this tech card. Sometimes the two edges can be of the same colour. In order to commercialise a tech, you need to make it viable. Viability can be achieved by having patents in the two required tech types, or having a think tank already working on this exact combo, or having this combo in humankind's technological progress track.

To the left of the main picture, there will be one or more icons, representing the rewards for commercialising this tech. In this photo above, the reward is founding a green company. Other reward types include solving a world problem and gaining a cube.

Those square tokens at the very top are world problems you get to solve. Each is named and can only be solved once (of course). Cubes on the sphere boards are scientists. When they move along the lines on the sphere boards, they do work, which is either researching a tech, or commercialising a tech. That's all they do all day.

When you need to pay for something, one way is fiddling with the cubes on your player board. Each downward movement of a cube is worth $1. In this photo, you have $3 to spend, if you are willing to go broke. One important action in the game is to raise funds. When you do so, you first move all cubes from the top box down to the middle box. Then you move as many cubes from the bottom box to the middle box. Finally you move all cubes from the middle box to the top box. This is how you "make money", or reset your cubes. Effectively what this means is you should try to avoid too many cubes in the bottom box.

Cubes may be taken from your player board to be used in other places. This strains your money engine because you will have fewer cubes and thus less financial flexibility. Cubes being used elsewhere will later return to your player board, after you are done with them for the other purposes, or sometimes because they are forced away. Managing cubes is important.

The card at the top - the patents card - is very important. It has four coloured stripes. You place a cube here when you gain a patent in a particular colour (i.e. sphere / tech type). Patents can be spent to commercialise a tech. They can also be sold for money when you need money.

Some cards are tucked under the patents card, showing only one of their coloured edges. The game starts with one card tucked. Subsequent cards are tucked whenever a player commercialises a tech. The player tucks the commercialised tech card here, and decides which edge to show. The series of colours displayed represents human progress, and also determines the world trend. E.g. when 2 out of 3 of the latest colours are blue (like in the photo above), then blue (or cloud technology) is the dominant sphere. This is the current world trend. It affects the scoring criteria and thus determines who wins. It also affects some rules. Research work becomes free. Blue patents are worth double. These are specified on the card at the bottom.

Here are a few other different world trends. The top grey card is in play if all of the latest three colours on the human progress track are different. It makes any work done in the developing countries sphere column (green) cheaper. If green is dominant (middle card), then recruitment becomes free, and green patents are worth double.

One important element of the game is manipulating the game end condition. You need to control and time the world trend. This will be familiar if you have played other Pax games. You do have to work hard to score points, but more importantly you need to manipulate the end game condition such that what you've achieved are worth points in the first place. It is not just about performing actions that give points. You need to secure the value of your actions. The "safest" scoring method is starting companies, because when you start your fifth company, you win instantly, regardless of the world trend at the time. However getting to five companies is not easy.

Achievements that are potentially worth points do include starting companies. Solving humankind problems may also be worth points. Having monopolies on techs in the human progress track may be worth points. The monopolies are called Future Shock Agents in the game, and I have no idea why. So I'll just call them tech monopolies. Under different game end conditions, different things in different colours (techs) will be worth something, or nothing.

At the start of the game, everyone selects one secret agenda. This is a secret tech colour, and it is revealed only when the game ends. Under some game end conditions, companies and problems in your secret colour are worth points. So usually you want to start companies and solve problems which are in your colour. This also means by observing your opponents, you may be able to guess their secret colours.

Each sphere board has left and right halves. The light bulb half on the left is for research work, and the hand half on the right is for commercialisation work. When you recruit a scientist, you need to place him in the appropriate half or on those central / shared positions, to make sure he can do the work type you need, whether it's research or commercialisation. Each time a scientist does work, he moves one step. When he reaches the bottom, his job is done, and you can use him (he's just a cube) for other purposes. E.g. you can make him a scientist again, or bring him back to your player board to become money.

Our game had progressed further, and we now had more cards in the human progress track, i.e. those cards tucked beneath the patents card and splayed. Cubes on this track means certain players have monopolised certain techs (in-game term is Future Shock Agent). When you want to commercialise a tech, one requirement is its viability. One way to have viability is the tech combo being present on the human progress tech. E.g. a blue-yellow tech is viable, because you have blue adjacent to yellow on the human progress track (see photo above). However, both the blue techs are monopolised by the blue player, which means the blue-yellow viability can only be enjoyed by him, and not by other players. Other players who want to commercialise a blue-yellow tech need to use other methods to gain viability.

One other method for gaining viability is discarding two patents. E.g. if the blue player wants to commercialise a blue-orange tech, he can achieve viability by discarding his blue and orange patents, i.e. those blue cubes on the blue and orange stripes of the patent card on the right.

The discs on the sphere boards are companies founded by players. As more companies are founded on the sphere boards, the cost of getting scientists to work decreases, because this cost is calculated based on the number of empty spaces on the board (no company and no scientist).

The Play

Pax Transhumanity is not an easy game to learn and digest. The topic and the terminology are unusual. The mechanisms too. It feels unfamiliar and alien, almost like I'm a complete boardgame newbie trying to learn a non-mainstream hobby game. However, once you get past that initial learning curve, this is not all that complex a game. The rules are not that heavy, and there aren't many exceptions. It's like getting to know the weird new guy at school. Once you become friends, he's cool and not that hard to understand.

When we started our game, I was quite clueless about what I was supposed to do. I played quite a few rounds rather aimlessly. It took me a while to realise the importance of manipulating the world trend and the game end condition. If you have played other Pax games, this will be familiar. Often it is the game end condition which determines the winner, so manipulating it becomes even more important than just performing actions which may be worth points. You need to balance both of these - manipulating the game end condition and performing actions worth victory points, and you need to time them well.

As you observe your opponents' actions, you will have some idea what their secret colours are. It is not easy to start companies and solve world problems, so most players will try to do these in their secret colours. Doing these in other colours for the sake of confusing competitors is costly and may not be worthwhile.

The Thoughts

Pax Transhumanity is a gamer's strategy game. Even seasoned gamers will find this challenging to absorb, so don't pull this on new gamers. You'll scar them and drive them away. This game is certainly something different. It is a game about the future of humankind and Earth, and it sees hope. It is a game about manoeuvring and positioning. There are multiple aspects you need to juggle. Player interaction is high. Everyone is watching everyone else, working out one another's intentions and thinking about how best to manipulate the world trend. This is not a game where you steadily progress in building your own peaceful empire. Depending on how well you manipulate the game end condition, your efforts may be worth 6VP, or they may be worth nothing, and 6VP and 0VP can be the difference between winning and coming last.