Designed by Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone, published by Stonemaier Games, and released in 2013, Euphoria feels like it’s from another world of board games. It was the pre-Scythe era of the publisher when the name wasn’t immediately recognizable in the hobby. It was eight years ago, which seems like a lifetime in the tabletop industry given what’s been published since then. And it was really before I entered into the hobby in full-swing.

There are a slew of games in the hobby that haven’t aged well. Games have released more recently that do it better. Are more trendier. Have nicer components. Et cetera.

But six years later, in 2019, the expansion Ignorance Is Bliss was released. And the game is in the top 500 of all time on BoardGameGeek, a list to which many people ascribe much import.

So, it’s definitely worth a look to see whether the mechanics and feel of the game still hold up in 2021.

Overview

You can see the seeds of future Stonemaier games when playing Euphoria.

It’s a worker-placement game that uses six-sided dice to represent the people controlled by the players and the knowledge that each worker possesses. The numbers directly translate into certain categories of resource gathering on the board. More knowledge means more resources, at the cost of potentially losing those who gain enough perception to see through the lies.

Jamey and Alan merge the themes of dystopian classics like 1984 and other notable authoritarian societies with the mechanics of dice-rolling, worker-placement, and the management of cards and resources. Players must gain control of the dystopia by establishing rapport with the different factions, signified by authority tokens placed on the board. When one player places their last authority token, they have won and the game is over.

Control and influence are garnered through the collection of resources, the gathering of additional workers, the activation of recruits from different factions, the subversive tunneling between faction locations, the construction of valuable markets, and the spreading tendrils of authoritarian pressure.

Theme

I don’t miss 1984. I don’t miss much of the classic dystopian literature. It was forced upon me at a time when I didn’t appreciate the message and it wasn’t contextualized in a way that appealed to my adolescent self.

However, if the ideas of iconic novels like that were distilled as accessibly as Euphoria and other innovative forms of entertainment or storytelling like it, I would have been much more amenable to the experience.

Enjoy flavor text because it’s not always filled with cynical umami like this:

You find yourself in a dystopian cityscape with a few workers at your disposal to make your mark on the world. Like most people in dystopian fiction, your workers are oblivious to their situation. This world is all they’ve ever known. You may use them at your whim.

The world as we know it has ended, and in its place, the city of Euphoria has risen. Believing that a new world order is needed to prevent another apocalypse, the Euphorian elite erect high walls around their golden city and promote intellectual equality above all else. Gone are personal freedoms; gone is knowledge of the past. All that matters is the future.

The Euphorians aren’t alone. Outside the city are those who experienced the apocalypse firsthand—they have the memories and scars to prove it. These Wastelanders have cobbled together a society of historians and farmers among the forgotten scrap yards of the past.

There is more to the world than the surface of the earth. Deep underground lies the hidden city of Subterran, occupied by miners, mechanics, and revolutionaries. By keeping their workers in the dark, they’ve patched together a network of pipes and sewers, of steam and gears, of hidden passages and secret stairways.

So, the world sucks. At least, this world of Euphorians, Wastelanders, Subterrans, and Icarites.

But if you’re going to change the world, you need to do it from within. And, in order to achieve that lofty goal, you’ll need workers. Preferably ones that stay dumb and stay happy.

Accessibility

It’s worth noting that Euphoria is currently on the third edition of the rulebook and a newer printing of the game. It’s eight years old, but has been updated and improved upon multiple times.

And the inclusion of Game Trayz inserts further increase the accessibility by providing players with streamlined set up process: 1) Take out the two resource trays and keep them between players; 2) Grab the requisite multiplier card, dice workers and tokens for each player from the other insert tray; 3) Take the artifact deck out from the remaining box insert and shuffle both the recruit deck and market stack from the same place and finish setting up the board; 4) Finally, place the final player tokens and allegiance tokens down on the board, with any unused territory locations covered by punchboard markers.

That’s it. It can be finished quickly given the organization of the inserts and the approachable setup of Euphoria in general.

Also, the game doesn’t requires miniatures, modules, or other intricate components and mechanisms that might slow down the player. It’s controlled by the few gameplay elements that I mentioned earlier and it continues at comfortable speed until you’re done.

At lower player counts, you’re looking at 60 minutes or so for the game. That’s really nice for a solid medium-weight game. A lot of titles in recent years creep up to 90 minutes or more, which makes them harder to get to the table sometimes. Euphoria avoids that by having a trimmed-down focus and a consistent play speed.

Gameplay

Lemme break it down for you.

Recruit cards are drawn by players and these determine in-game bonuses that you’ll either immediately have access to or that you’ll unlock when the specific faction has allied with the controlling parties of the dystopia.

Players start with two dice. Whenever dice are acquired (at the beginning of the game, when paid for during the game, and when retrieved at any point off of the board), the dice are rolled. Those values dictate where the worker can be placed and what rewards or consequences accompany that action.

Then players alternate placing dice (workers) on the board and completing those actions.

Through the process of gaining resources, digging tunnels acquiring new workers, constructing markets, establishing authority, and building allegiances with the factions, players will start to grow their influence and spread it across the dystopia—between the Euphorians, Wastelanders, Subterrans, and Icarites.

Once per game, a player has the opportunity to resolve an ethical dilemma—which either provides an additional recruit or grants an immediate authority token. The dilemma either sends players down the path of offering a reprieve from the dystopia or tightening the hold.

How do the factions factor into this, though?

Each one generates a particular resource that is valuable in other parts of the board and which will spur effective turns down the road. However, each one greedily wants what the others have. Except for the Icarites, though. They’re pretty chill. The Euphorians, who generate electricity, are trying to tunnel into the Subterran territory to access water. The Subterrans, who control the aquifers, are trying to reach the Wastelanders farmland for food. And the Wastelanders, who produce the sustenance for the people, are trying to tunnel into Euphoria to siphon electricity. It’s a vicious cycle of exploitation, which is fully understood and manipulated by the players as they try to seize control of the dystopia.

The engine for securing authoritarian supremacy in Euphoria, though, must be balanced with the careful management of Morale and Knowledge. Those two trackers influence how effectively your workers will be disseminated across the different factions.

When players understand the interplay between recruit card abilities, ethical dilemmas, worker placement, and increasing faction control and benefits, then the elegance of Euphoria starts to emerge.

Three intriguing mechanics worth mentioning are:

1. The placement and retrieval of workers (dice) with low values and high values offering different outcomes; and the locations that can allow workers to be bumped off without adverse effect, initiating a slow waterfall trickle of movements when engineered purposefully

2. Active and hidden recruit effects give players a visible motive for all actions that opponents can assess, but it also creates uncertainty and strategic doubt as players evaluate how and when a hidden recruit might start to benefit another player

3. A draft variant that is applicable to several parts of the game that increases player agency and strengthens replay value

Modes of Play

Many players will have only played the traditional rules for Euphoria, but there are multiple draft suggestions in the “Advanced Variant” sections that would gift more agency to players and more variability to the gameplay.

The recruit draft, market draft, as well as the knowledge and moral draft all invigorate the planned strategy of players from the outset.

For recruits, instead of drawing four cards and keeping two, players will draw four and then keep one and pass the rest, continuing the process until each player has picked four cards. Then, of those four, players will choose two.

In a similar fashion, the market draft doesn’t randomly assign markets to the faction spaces. Players each draw two and then pick one. Any remaining markets from the ones discarded are added randomly until six in total have been selected.

And then the knowledge and moral placements are chosen in a snake draft, with the first player getting the initial pick of either track, the last player selecting both knowledge and moral placement at the same time, and then the initial first player ending the draft by placing their second token on the respective track.

All of this deepens the potential of each game as players have more say over what happens in their player area and on the board.

Also, the Ignorance Is Bliss expansion adds Stonemaier’s Automa system to enable solo play. But that’s an additional purchase.

Innovation

I’m always a fan of Game Trayz inserts or other well-designed organizers for games. It’s one of the first things I notice and I feel like it immediately impacts gameplay in a positive manner. The inserts for Euphoria gets the resources and player components on the table quickly, and the base piece keeps everything else tidily put away during and after play.

I think the thematic connection to the mechanics feels very tangible in this game. Sometimes themes or narratives appear pasted on or superficially present. That’s not the case here. The combination of these two design elements reminds me of the anatomy books where human musculature is laid over the skeleton. Each half informs the other and makes the whole immediately more accessible and understandable. Morale and knowledge are dual layers of a spectrum that operate in contrast to each other—move toward any one side and you distance yourself from what’s at the other end.

Euphoria is eight years old, but it doesn’t feel that way when playing. In tabletop gaming, that’s an achievement.

Pricing

$70 is going to make many gamers pause. Not too far beyond that and you’re in deluxe and Kickstarter territory.

Stonemaier Games, though, has not avoided quality components and design in this game, though. Players are going to get wooden components instead of cardboard. They are going to get custom inserts for all of the pieces. Custom dice—and components colored for each player—are tailored to the theme of the game. Workers are just cogs in the machine and the visuals reflect that.

The illustrations and artwork from Jacqui Davis really stand out on the cards and the board.

And the box has room for the expansion content.

On the Stonemaier webstore, the current average game price is approximately $63, so Euphoria is not much beyond that. But players will need to consider what they normally pay for games and what they’re willing to spend.

I personally feel like the price is fair, but I imagine interested parties would also be able to find it for cheaper if they looked elsewhere.

Euphoria is…