Eddie Inzauto reviews 51st State: The Complete Master Set, including a detailed rules and gameplay explanation.
Designer Ignacy Trzewiczek and Portal Games have done an excellent job with this comprehensive reimplementation of 51st State, New Era, and Winter using some of the updates found in Imperial Settlers.
51st State: The Complete Master Set is a fine engine-building card game that offers dynamic play and multiple paths to victory for 2-4 players, scaling well with good pacing to all player counts.
The game can feel too lucky, asking players to be a bit more tactically adaptable in a game that initially seems like it should reward long-term strategy. This nebulous definition of where the game stands on the strategic-to-tactical scale is its major negative characteristic.
Still, the various play options help to mitigate that effect, and because the game isn’t very long, the statistics of the card draws even out among players over all plays.
Rules explanation: 0:42
Eddie’s Critique: 15:43
