A couple of months ago, I reviewed the cooperative 4x game, Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor. This game hit me out of nowhere and I immediately fell in love with it. It was unique, fun, and something more people need to play. Not to be content with their stellar base game, Nemesis Games has released their newest expansion for the Uprising system: Titans of the First Age.
What does this new expansion add? Let’s find out!
Expansion Overview:
This expansion adds in a pile of new content for the base game. The short of it is:
- Two new factions – Titans of the First Age and The Nethersea Pirates.
- Advanced Capitals – These alter the behavior of the Legions during the game.
- Banes and Elite Dice – Banes add special abilities for the Legions and Hordes to make them a bit harder (people want that?) and more unique. Elite Dice includes a star symbol that acts as a Wild. Only certain units and factions gain Elite dice.
- Mercenaries – 13 new elite units that can be hired by any player.
- Aether – These alter the way druids act during the game. There are 7 Aether tokens, and each Druid card starts with one of them. Aether can be spent either to reroll all of your attack dice or to use the druid power. Druids may earn back Aether during the Refresh Phase.
Game Experience with the Expansion:
Titans of the First Age is an absolutely fantastic expansion for Uprising. Not only does it add a ton of variety in a modular nature, but it also fixes some of the issues with the core game. But let’s get into the fun stuff first.
The two new factions are both fun to play and completely different from any of the previously released ones. The titular Titans of the First Age let you answer the question “what would it be like to play a legion myself?” Instead of an army, you have 1 unit, the Titan, that travels around the board smashing enemies and gathering resources by eating terrain tiles. They have their own threat track, much like the legion/hordes, and will have their abilities adjusted when they gain/lose threat. The play style of the Titans is completely different from any of the factions, and worth the cost of the expansion on its own.
The other new faction is the Nethersee Pirates. Instead of Havens, they have their fleet of pirate ships that can travel around the board, bombard enemies, and earn them resources. They are a flexible faction that can quickly move around the map, and use their mobility to ferry their troops faster than any other faction. I really liked their mobile “havens,” which was also on theme with them being nomadic pirates.
Besides the new factions, my other favorite additions are the Aeather and the Mercenaries. These both fall into the category of “I will never play without them again.” First up, the Aether helps deal with the swingyness of the base game’s dice rolls. Sometimes you’d have a fantastic army in combat and just roll poorly, causing you to lose your troops in battle. Now, you can spend an Aether from a druid to reroll all your dice. This is a fantastic and much-welcomed luck-mitigation system. I also like that Aether can still be used to power druids abilities, so even if you don’t need the full reroll, you can still activate a cool druid power. Druids can also earn Aether during the refresh phase if certain conditions are met. These are almost like catchup mechanics for the human players if the Hordes or Legion jump out to a lead.
The Mercenaries are also a no-brainer to include. You place a Mercenary token on each sea tower at the start of the game, and once someone reaches a tower, you draw a mercenary card and see who is available for hire. These are simply unique troops to be added to your army. What’s nice though is that you can hire them during the action phase (and they do not cost an action, just resources). But if you are about to battle and feel like you need just a bit more firepower, this is a great option since you normally can’t build troops during the action phase. This module also adds in a bit more variety to the game, so you can supplement your army with a more unique troop.
The rest of the components round out with Banes and Advanced capitals. These are additions that I don’t use that often. I’m not one who likes punishingly difficult coop games, so the idea of making my games even harder isn’t too appealing to me. That being said, I know there are people out there who like to have a 10-20% win ratio for their coop games, so this is here for you. I will say that the Advanced capitals do add a nice bit of variety if you are looking for it, but for me, I usually just stick with the default capital. Uprising has enough going on already.
Final Thoughts:
If you are fan of Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, then Titans of the First Age is a must own. It adds in new content, more variety, and even fixes some of the holes in the base game. This expansion may even change your mind about the core game, depending on what your reservations are. But Nemesis Games is going to have a hard time topping this expansion if they release another one. It’s pretty awesome.
Hits:
• Modular nature lets you add what you want
• New factions feel really unique
• Mercenaries add in more variety
• New Aether rules help mitigate some of the dice randomness
Misses:
• Need a big box to hold all the content for the game
No way to get this in Europe unfortunately.
Yeah, unfortunately its sold out most places. Outside of the secondary market, you’ll have to wait for the reprint. Although I’ve heard you can email the publisher and they have a few copies here and there to sell.
Ok,thanks for the heads up.