The Enlightenment Period spanned between the late 17th century up till the early 19th century. Also known as the Age of Reason, it laid the foundations of the modern Western world, by introducing concepts like: human rights, religious tolerance and education dissemination. It also…. hey where are you going, come back! Ok fine, I’ll drop the history lesson and tell you why you should play Pax Illuminaten.
Pax games are a niche and beautiful type of game depicting a certain period in history, with all its turmoil and aesthetics. They are known for two distinct mechanics, a dynamic card-market system and area control done via influence rather than direct combat. Just try to imagine a tableau builder and an area control having a baby. Pax Illuminaten is no stranger to these attributes. What sets it apart from other Pax games is that you will be fighting to influence intellectual Lodges rather than territory of a map so the theme is more palatable if you are not into warmongering shenanigans.
Game setup and flow
For such a small box (15.5cm x 15.5cm x 7.0cm) there is some setup to be done. Firstly, we need to shuffle the Luminary deck, and create a map by placing cards face down in the center of the table. The shape of the map will depend on the number of players. Create a court, basically the 5-card market from where you will be recruiting cards and then give each player 4 Luminary cards. Based on the number of players create the favors (resource pool). Each player gets an Areopagus card and contract card to place next to the created map. These will determine the resources you start with and first player (the lowest contract number starts). Based on the number of players select the faction cards, and reveal two public plot cards (these are the objectives you will be playing for). Each player receives a private plot card. Final step is to create the event deck, as you would do in any Pax game and you are ready to go.
The game consists of an unlimited number of rounds, play continuing until a player can either claim two of the plot cards or if 5 or more edict cards are in the event discard pile. During you turn you will be able to do 2 of 6 main actions and an unlimited number of free actions. You will be able to scout new members for your lodge (freemasons don’t grow on trees you know), influence famous people to join your ranks just so you can extort them later for favors (yes, there is an extort mechanic in this game). If any of your lodge members start getting the wrong ideas about freedom and equality you can expel them and replace them with more openminded people. Last but not least you can oust people and remove the influence of other player from cards so you can add yours (you are one of us now, Timmy).
The Good
I absolutely love the idea of creating the playboard out of the cards you add. Its fresh, innovative and dynamic to the extreme. Both the scout and the expel action lets you either add or replace cards from the board with cards in from your hand. You plan and strategize and hope your opponent will not remove a card from the board so that you can influence it to help you in your plotting. This adds a lot of tension to the game, a desired feature for any Pax game I assure you.
Another feature I love about the game is the multiple use for a card. You can play it for its real estate value and add it to the board, or for the scheme depicted on the card so you get a nice bonus for the round, or just discard it to get the resources printed on the card. This is one reason I love Pax games in general, their high flexibility and huge amount of agency around the way cards are played and Pax Illuminaten is no exception to the rule.
Speaking of trading cards for resources, another strong point for the game is its tight economy; there are 6 type of favors (resources) and each has a limited number of pieces (6/8/10 in a 2/3/4 player game). This means that you can actually choke somebody from an economic point of view and derail their plan by hoarding all the resources of one particular type.
However, the most important aspect of the game is its accessibility rules wise speaking. Don’t get me wrong it still requires some time to properly explain but the amount of time needed to go through it is significantly less than other Pax games. If you are a history nerd like me and you want someone to go into the Pax gaming business with you then Pax Illuminaten is you gateway drug… I mean Pax, gateway Pax.
The Bad
As much as I enjoy it, Pax Illuminaten has some shortcomings, and if some of them can be debatable, one issue is an outright problem. Let me get into it. The first item I can’t get behind is the lack of a placeholder for the board. Don’t get me wrong I love the idea about building your own board, but having to keep cards in place so they don’t spread all over your board is not the coolest activity when you have to joggle other items too. I mitigated this issue by buying a play mat for the game (see pictures), but I believe that should have arrived with the game. Still this complaint is minor and even a nitpick in comparation with my main quarrel with the game. The box advertises 2 to 4 players game and although it can be played with 4 player the game wildly differs from its 2-3 player version. This is mainly because of the dimension of the map. You see dear reader in a 2 players game you have a map composed of 14 cards to fight over. In a 3 players game you have the same map and in a 4 players game you have 19 cards to go around for your map. For a game that needs 9 to 12 cards to achieve your two objectives, having a 19 cards map when playing with 4 players means you are underservicing it badly. And if in a 2-player game you can elegantly outmanoeuvre your opponent and outthink him by planning long term, in a 4-player game there is no room to do that. To put it simply in a two-player game Pax Illuminaten is a brilliant duel between 2 master swordsmen in a 4-player game this devolves into a knife fight in a phonebooth scenario.
Conclusion
Usually this is the part where I say who is this game for, and although I will do that, I would like to leave a bit of a warning. The rules of the game are pretty simple and straight forward, for a PAX game. If you plan to play this with your friend that just recently decided he wants a more challenging game then Settler of Catan, then you are setting your self up for a bad time as at the end of the day this is a midweight game through and through.
Warning aside this is a great game to play with somebody who is a history buff, as each card depicts a real-life person and has historical references to their activity. Also, if you want to get people invested in the PAX world this is again a great title to begin with. After a few games with my wife of Pax Illuminaten we are jumping into Pax Pamir.
