#simone luciani

This is quintessential euro territory: lots of tracks to move on, lots of small cardboard pieces, lots of brown. Yeah, lots of brown, but we’ll come back to that.

Newton is a game about the scientific revolution. The game may have taken its name from the man responsible for penning Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica back yonder in 1687, but Newton (the game) also includes a handful of other scientific contributors like Kepler, Copernicus, Fahrenheit, Halley, and Pascal. And while there are a number of scientific masters in the game, the real heart of this mechanical puzzle comes from action selection, minor deck building, and optimizing your turn to score the most points.

Lowdown (How to Play–in a Nutshell)

Like so many euros, the point of the game is to score points. Newton is played over six rounds and in each round players will alternate playing action cards from their hand and taking the action. Simple enough. The actions are 1. Work to earn money; 2. Improve technology; 3. Travel on the big map; 4. Take Lessons, aka buy a card to add to your hand; 5. Study, aka meeting conditions to work towards end-round bonuses. The first three actions are essentially done by moving pieces or workers on different tracks and gaining bonuses based on where you stop. Working earns you coins based on how many spaces you moved, technology gives you bonuses like board improvements or coins depending on where you stop, and traveling allows you to move on the map and helps you meet studying conditions.

Studying is hard to explain, and I was very confused by it when I first read the rules. Essentially, in addition to the main game boards (of which there are two), each player has their own small player mat. On that mat is a bookshelf made up of individual spaces that can be filled in with books. In order to fill a space, you must meet the requirements listed in that space. When it’s completed, you can cover the space in question with a small tile. Requirements can be that you’ve visited specific cities or have a specific number of books on cards that you’ve played. When you completely fill a row or column on the shelf, you’ll gain bonuses each round, whether that be points or money or other niceties. Studying is really one of the less enticing actions, probably because it’s the most abstract, but it’s really the scoring engine of the game.

At the end of each round, you will have five action cards on your player mat, the five cards you played that round. During cleanup, you must take one of these cards and tuck it under your board, so only the icon for that specific action shows. And here’s a really great part of the game: the more icons that are visible on your board for a specific action, the stronger the value of the action you can perform. Let me explain.

Let’s say that at the end of round one, you tucked an icon for Lessons (the action that lets you buy new cards). When you play a lessons action card in round two, you’ll have two visible icons, one on the card you tucked in round one and one on the card you played in round two, meaning you can buy better cards than if you only had one visible icon. This works with all of the action icons. More work icons mean you can move farther, thus earning more money; more technology actions mean you can advance farther on the tech track, thus moving to potentially better bonuses; more travel icons mean you can move farther on the map, hopefully getting your travel meeple to those cities you needed to reach; and more study icons allows you to reach different shelves on your player mat.

As the game continues, you’ll cover more shelves, visit more cities, advance on the tech track to scoring objectives, and finally meet those scientific masters, all allowing you to score those sweet, sweet euro points.

Tea for Two (Scaling for Two Players)

Like I said, this is quintessential euro territory. I don’t want to lie; this game is multiplayer solitaire. I think the only difference in a solo game from a four player game is game length. Seriously. The rulebook contains no scaling beyond laying more tiles for higher player counts.

I Like Dirt (The Bad Stuff)

The graphic design/artwork are the main lightning rod for criticisms here. When you set the game up, it’s a lot of brown. The graphic design is very functional, if a little drab. It’s also funny that the art is by go-to euro artist extraordinaire Klemens Franz, known for his nice cartoony style seen in most Uwe Rosenberg games. That being said, there seems to be so little of his art present in the actual game, it feels like a bit of a waste.

Not to sound like a big square, and I know this is the ‘bad stuff’ section, but I really like the theming here. The idea of working in a university or inventing technology or simply learning (!!) is unique in a world of games about farming or civ building or trading in the Mediterranean. Honestly, while I don’t really understand what I’m thematically doing when I play Newton (Come on, you say, you’re doing science!), I like that it’s a game about science. But this is probably going to be a bad thing for most people. No really, what are you doing in this game??

Beyond aesthetics, one thing I’m not sure about is how viable each action is. Player mats are unique, which I like, but I wonder if the player who starts with the Study icon on their starting mat has a big advantage (especially compared to the player who starts with something like Working on their mat). I fear all actions are not created equal in Newton, and this is really the main problem. And while it’s definitely a problem, it’s not enough to hamper the experience–yet. When I feel that certain actions are underpowered, I often wonder if I simply haven’t learned how to maximize that actions benefits. While studying seems to be the best road to victory, I wonder if alternate paths will present themselves over further plays (e.g. I do think that travel’s strengths are more understated).

[It] Blinded Me with Science (The Good Stuff)

As with Great Western Trail (2016), Newton proves that–for me, at least–deckbuilding is a great mechanic, but perhaps best utilized in a secondary capacity. Meat and Potatoes deckbuilders like Star Realms (2014) or Dominion (2008) tend to feel a bit rote after repeated plays, but when you implement deckbuilding as one mechanic among many, I feel it helps freshen a mechanic that gets a bit worn out. If deckbuilding is all about building combos, making that deckbuilding one cog among many in a machine really opens the door to so many other interesting interactions, and that’s definitely true about Newton. Cards you’ll purchase by playing the lesson action have not only the action icon, but also different bonuses on the top half of the card, giving you colored books to complete requirements while studying, or bonuses you’ll gain each time you play the card. Keeping in mind what cards you’ve previously tucked from your set starting hand, you’ll definitely need to buy specific cards as the game continues or else you won’t be able to take certain actions. At the end of each round, however, all unpurchased cards are removed and a new set is laid out to buy for the next round, meaning that if you see a card you want, you have to buy it immediately. Again, the deckbuilding in this shouldn’t be overstated, it never feels like a huge part of the game, but if is impossible to ignore.

Set-up in Newton is also interesting. Everything on each board is variable. When you first pull out the two game boards and open them, you’ll see nothing but empty spaces. All bonuses, city icons, tech developments, and objective bonuses are laid out during set-up, so they’ll change in every game, making games feel similar, but not play similarly, which is something I really appreciate.

Speaking of variability, the scientific masters in the game, of which there are 20 total, each offer powerful bonuses. At the start of the game, each player has a hand of four, and you’ll pick-and-pass draft them (a la 7 Wonders (2010)) until you have a starting hand of four. You’ll need to find ways to activate these masters throughout the game, and if you want to get your money’s worth from them, you’ll really need to work to activate them. Activating masters is accomplished through excelling at different avenues in the game. For example, once you’ve traveled to a certain number of unique cities, you’ll get to activate a master. Only ever using eight of the possible 20 master cards in a game means you’ll see limited repeats.

Scoring objectives are one more facet I’ve glossed over, and while I won’t go into too much detail on how they work, these are also places on the board that are laid out variably during each game’s set-up. Being as they never change during a game, you are able to optimize play throughout a game so that when you reach a scoring objective, you’ll be able to max your points.

Perhaps the sweetest surprise from Newton is how fast a game it is with two players, coming in at an hour or so. That variable set-up will slow you down, unfortunately, making said variability a bit of a double-edged sword, but I think it’s more than worth the time based on what it offers.

The End (Final Thoughts)

Newton has a nigh legendary pedigree within the hobby, as one of its designers is known for co-designing perennial euro favorites Tzolk’in (2012), The Voyages of Marco Polo (2015), Grand Austria Hotel (2015), and Lorenzo il Magnifico (2016), all hovering around 100 or better on the Board Game Geek top 100 rankings. In all honesty, Newton is our introduction to this designer, making me infinitely more curious to play the other games. From many plays of Newton, and plenty of reading online about the others, I think Newton will be seen as the dark horse here, because while it is very solid, it seems to be described as the least remarkable among these five games. It’s interesting to see how groundbreaking Tzolk’in (2012) was seven years ago, versus how steady and solid Newton is today. Like Kraftwagen (2015), Newton isn’t reinventing any wheels, but rather combining many strong mechanics into one solid package, and in doing so turns out to be a workhorse of a game. In twenty years, it may not be looked on as a revolutionary game like Tzolk’in (2012), but it will give you a tight, rewarding, and reliably good experience.