Stats:
No. of players: 2-5
Amount of time to play: 60+ min (depending on the number of players)
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 5 minutes

The New Era Rules Description:

The New Era is a stand-alone expansion for 51st State. This card game is set in the post-apocalyptic world of Neuroshima. Much like in the first game, you must manage your resources, workers and actions to score more victory points than your opponent.

This article assumes you have played 51st State or at least have an understanding of how to play the game. If you haven’t tried it out, read my review of 51st State here. I’m mostly going to talk about the differences and new things that The New Era adds to 51st State.

The New Era adds more player interaction to the game. You now have two ways you can interact with an opponent’s locations. One is to make agreements with them. The other is to blow them up. Each location in The New Era has a number showing you the distance that location is from its opponents.

Using a cooperation action to reach an opponent’s location lets you gain the resource in the bottom blue section of the card during each production phase. You may make up to three agreements this way.

If you use a conquest action you can attack an opponent’s location. You receive the spoils from the card and the owner of the building receives the resource in the blue bar. A few locations are defensive in nature and allow you to protect your locations from conquest actions.

You may reconstruct locations that are destroyed. The rules are almost the exact same as when you redevelop a location. You need a brick but don’t worry about matching icons on the cards. A reconstruction action only scores you one point.

You also get new components in this expansion. Many people did not like the small chits from the 51st State. The new chits are bigger and resources and workers are represented by wooden disks and meeples. I liked the symbols on the old resources. But once you learn which colored disks represent each resource, you should be good to go.

There is a new faction introduced, the Hegemony. That means you can play with up to five players. The next big difference is something that is missing, leaders. There are no leaders in The New Era.

Quick Review of The New Era:

The New Era feels and plays very much like 51st State. You try to get the most you can out of the resources you have each turn. There are many choices and the more people playing the longer the game will take.

The ability to interact with other player’s locations is a great addition. Destroying their buildings allows them to rebuild, but maybe the building you destroy is so good it doesn’t matter. You also might redevelop a building just because another player has an agreement on it. This is one of the only ways to remove them.

The game still has a steep learning curve, but removing the leaders helps make teaching it easier. The leaders were hard to explain and often confused first-time players.

There is an actual “board” to keep score with and it even includes a guide to the icons. I wish that the bigger chits fit on the scoring spaces and that there were five player guides. This is not a big deal but since many other components were upgraded, this would have been nice.

If you own 51st State and like it try out The New Era. If you don’t have either I think The New Era is the better buy. Either way you are getting a fun card game with a good theme, with a variety of strategies and lots of replayability.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 5 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6