Quantum

Eric Zimmerman (2013)

9/10

It's rare you'll get a chance to lay hands on this one, but if you do, take it. The inability to keep great games like in this in print is an indictment of the industry. Quantum is a dice game of area majority, where the pips on the dice represent what kind of scifi spaceship you have, how far it can move, and unique powers for each. It's a very elegant combination of mechanics in one piece and works great. Gameplay is simple but between these elements and healthy amount of simple upgrades you can get in the form of cards, there's a deep potential to combo things strategically if you know what you're doing. I didn't, but even I managed to pull off one cool move, even if only half the attacks worked out in the simple dice rollls.

There are people who loathe dice or randomness generally and I'm not one of them. The only rolls you do here are either your own luck pushing choice, completely unnecessary and I didn't do it once, or combat resolution. And it's great for combat resolution because it makes things snappy and has plenty of ways to be mitigated. Speaking of snappy, the teach and play zoomed along. Very few edge cases to worry about and nothing was complicated for its own sake. Just smooth clean fun.