Barrage

The Game

Barrage is a recent and popular heavy Eurogame. Set in a fictitious 1922, it has nations vying for power, literally. They compete to build hydroelectric dams to generate power. You will be constructing all sorts of structures and completing hydroelectric projects. You compete for choice locations for dams and power stations. You will get to manipulate the flow of water. The core mechanism in the game is worker placement. This is a development game. 

This is the main game board. On the right you have a map with four rivers. They begin as four rivers upstream, but they will gradually merge, and by the time they get downstream, there are only two rivers. There are lakes along the rivers, and these are where you will build dams. The left side of the board has the worker placement spots. The actions you can perform are listed here. 

This is a player board. There are four types of structures you can build. These game pieces are unique for every player, but the functions are the same. 

The four structure types are dams, dam extensions, conduits and powerhouses. You need dams to hold water. Without dams, water simply flows downstream. To generate hydroelectricity, the first thing you need to do is to capture water using dams. A basic dam stores one ton of water. If you add extensions to a dam, you can store up to three tons of water. If the water flow exceeds the capacity of a dam, the surplus water continues to flow downstream. Conduits divert water to powerhouses, and the powerhouses generate electricity. 

The icons on the left side of the player board show the costs for constructing each type of structure. The costs vary depending on where you build. It is generally more expensive to build upstream in the mountains. Above some of the pieces you can see rewards shown. You gain these rewards when you build those specific pieces. You must build starting from the leftmost piece. 

Those on the left are your workers. At the top right you have money. At the bottom right you have tools. Tools are a resource type. They don't behave like a currency though. 

This is the construction wheel. Everyone has one. When you perform the build action, you need two things. First you need one of those fan shaped tech tiles, which specify what kind of structure you can build. You also need some tools. The brown ones are excavators, the grey ones mixers. To build a structure on the main map, you place the tech tile and the required tools into one segment of the construction wheel, and turn the wheel one step. The tech tile and the tools are now temporarily tied down in the wheel. They need to go full circle before they are released. The wheel normally only turns when you perform a build action. However there is a type of action which let you turn the wheel to speed up the release of your tech tiles and tools. You don't actually expend your tools like a currency. They are just temporarily committed to the wheel. 

The worker placement spots for the build action is on your player board, so you don't need to compete with your opponents. Most worker placement spots are on the main board. The first time within a round you perform a build action, you only need to place one worker. The second time round you'll need two, and the third time three. You can do it a fourth time. It'll still take three workers, but you'll also need to pay money. 

This section of the main board tracks how much power you have generated during a round.  Every round there is a minimum requirement to meet. If you achieve that, you get some benefit. If you don't, there's a penalty. Every round the player who generates the most power gets a prize. 

These are the worker placement spots on the main board. The number of workers needed vary from one to three. The spots with red borders require an additional cash payment. 

This small side board has worker placement spots too. You use this to buy new tech tiles. They are better than the basic tech tiles you get at the start of the game. You will be able to build more efficiently, and you will have more flexibility. 

These are contracts. When you generate power, if the amount of electricity generated meets the requirement, you may complete the contract and claim the associated rewards. Rewards can be victory points, money, water, resources and other bonuses. Taking a contract is one of the worker placement actions in the game, so it's something you need to compete in too. 

The lakes in the game all have two dam construction spots, one upstream and one downstream. The upstream spot costs money and is the better spot. You have priority in catching water. Only surplus that you cannot store flow through to the second (downstream) dam. If you can afford it, it's probably better to pay for the upstream spot. Conduits will divert water from the upstream dam to a powerhouse, and this water will not reach the downstream dam. The conduit paths in the game usually cross to other rivers. 

The Play

The game is played over 5 rounds. You have 12 workers to use every round. However this doesn't mean you'll perform 12 actions. Many actions take more than one worker. To be able to generate power, you need quite a few things in place - dam, conduit, powerhouse, and of course water as well. You will be performing actions to put things together. You compete with other players for choice locations and water. During game setup, you already know the rainfall for all five rounds, so you can somewhat plan ahead. One action in the game allows you to create rainfall, so you are not relying only on the predetermined rainfall. 

We played some rules wrong, which made the game easier for us. We misplayed the construction costs. In the early game we all built in the mountains (upstream). It should have been quite expensive. Normally players would start construction on the plains (downstream), then expand upriver as they became wealthier and could afford it. This expansion would normally lead to disruption due to how water from rivers will get diverted by conduits. This disruption is what makes the game challenging and interesting.  In our case, we started development upstream then expanded downstream. So we didn't have the kind of disruption I'd expect to see in normal games. Our later expansions let us use water more times for generating power. 

Another rule we played wrong was the special player abilities. We used them right from the start. Normally we should have access to them only after we build our third powerhouse. We made ourselves more powerful than we should have been. 

The game components are pretty

By late game the board was quite full (4 players, i.e. max player count)

By game end there were still some structures I hadn't build

The Thoughts

Barrage is the quintessential heavy Eurogame. It's a worker placement game and a development game. You patiently build the multiple structures needed to complete hydroelectric projects, and you generate power. There are several ways you earn points. On the map you compete for locations and water. 

I don't find anything particularly new or interesting in Barrage. I can understand why it is popular. I can see the strategic elements. The setting is interesting - an alternative universe set in the 1920's. Hydroelectricity is a rare topic in games. Barrage doesn't entice me to play again because I prefer to experience something new. I like games which surprise me. It feels too same-old to me. If you like heavy Eurogames, you will find the game familiar and comfortable. It's currently ranked 34 on www.boardgamegeek.com.