Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz had a high barrier to clear for me. I was born in November of 1987, which means that I’m precisely the perfect age to have experienced the Mass Effect trilogy during the stretch of years where I transitioned out of teenage-dom and into early adulthood.
I absolutely adored each of the original three games, but I also became so deeply invested in my Shepard and the choices she made that I could never bring myself to replay any of them, as doing so felt somehow like it was a betrayal of the truth of our journey together.
I also love a good board game, but am fairly picky about what clicks for me. Thankfully Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz fully reached my barriers, and then some.
Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority Hagalaz is a mouthful…
Taking place during the events of Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz takes Shepard and three companions on a dungeon crawl through a Cerberus research ship that has crashed upon the planet (you guessed it) Hagalaz. Though a run of the whole Hagalaz story occurs across only three mission maps, the game utilises a heap of clever ways to increase replayability.
At its core is a branching campaign system with the option to undergo up to two companion-specific loyalty missions on each run. All of these missions feature story tangents dependent upon side-objectives achieved, whether a renegade or paragon solution was attained, and whether or not Shepard was ‘killed’ in the given scenario.
The stacking design of all of these also go a long way to giving Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz the level of role-play agency and action-game unpredictability you’d expect from a Mass Effect adaptation.
Shepard and each companion (Garrus, Liara, Grunt, and Tali) all play quite differently and can be further customised and synergised significantly as your campaign progresses. As GamesHub’s resident miniatures tragic, I’m delighted by the fact that each comes with a beautiful 25mm-ish resin mini also, (and with separate unique minis for both FemShep and DudeShep too).
Enemies are represented by tokens, but the option to replace them with minis is available should you wish. Given that the enemy tokens are double-sided and each have unique stats and abilities printed on them though, I can’t help but feel that doing so will actually make playing the game a bit of a pain.
… but the gameplay is smooth as butter
I’ll admit that Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz intimidated me when I first unboxed it. It features three books, two card decks, six miniatures, a pile of custom dice, a blind bag, and a heck of a lot of cardboard tokens. In practice it all gels together with impressive elegance though.
Each mission requires you to take Shepard and three companions with you, regardless of how many players there are. The maps are laid out as hex grids with predetermined placement spots for your team and the varying objectives and obstacles featured.
Whichever specific mix of either Cerberus or Reaper enemy tokens the scenario calls for, they are drawn from the blind bag and placed upon marked spawn locations, before a single card from the matching ‘hazard’ deck is placed face-down next to each of Team Shepard’s four character sheets.
Each of the four hero characters are controlled individually on a rotating turn basis, with Shepard always going first at the start of a mission. Shepard first rolls all 12 of the white command dice, and then can place three into slots on their character sheet to perform those given actions matching the symbols rolled to those in the available spaces.
After all three actions have been enacted, their hazard card is flipped. This details which combination of the enemies get to respond, and possibly also summoning more from the blind bag. The turn then passes to the next character, who now can only roll 9 dice, and so on down the line until all 12 dice have been slotted. Dice cannot be saved. The round is then over, and the next character after Shepard in the sheet line-up gets to go first, rolling all 12.
The dice-slotting system is deeply akin to that featured in the Warhammer Quest games, and it’s one that I really like a lot. The unpredictability of the hazard card system and the often brutal lethality of combat on both sides makes time in the field engagingly stressful, though the fact that any character except Shepard can be revived once they’re down means that the brave and noble Commander can sometimes be left feeling as if they’re best kept wrapped in cotton wool a little bit.
Shepard’s ‘death’ doesn’t end the campaign at least though, it merely leaves you in an overall worse position when progressing to the next mission in the chain.
The rules themselves are spread about 90% of the way across the rulebook and 10% across the character sheets and campaign book. Frankly, I wish that the Mass Effect: The Board Game rulebook itself were a little thicker and featured a thorough index at the back to make it easier to reference everything. It’s not bad, it just could be a little more tidy.
Like its digital counterpart, I prefer it solo
I liked the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 much more than I expected, but I like the multiplayer in Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz much less. The board game’s brilliance is in how flawlessly it nails the feel of a Mass Effect substory arc, a side-quest for the crew of the Normandy that may aid them in their goal of saving the galaxy.
As a solo experience where you alone control the whole squad, everything just sings, and it transported me right back to my early 20s in front of the Xbox 360 on the futon at my old Northcote share house. As a co-operative experience with friends it just couldn’t help but hold a different vibe that didn’t resonate with me as much.
Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz is a crowning achievement in adapting a license for tabletop. It brilliantly marries depth and replayability with breeziness of play, and the fact that it achieves all of these feats while coming in at under AUD$100 is all the more impressive.
Now please give me an expansion featuring Jack.
Please.
Four-and-a-half stars: ★★★★½
Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz
Designers: Calvin Wong Tze Loon and Eric M. Lang
Publisher(s): Modiphius Entertainment
GamesHub reviews are scored on a five-point scale. GamesHub has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content. GamesHub may earn a small percentage of commission for products purchased via affiliate links.
GamesHub reviews were previously rated on a five-point scale. As of 29 July 2024, they are rated on a ten-point scale.
