Review: Shapers of Gaia (WizKids)

After a millennia of waiting, Gaia is ready to be reborn — and you and your fellow Shapers are ready to make it happen.

That’s where Shapers of Gaia (WizKids) begins. Each player has unique goals, ideas, and technologies to help this planetary rebirth, but you all share the same ultimate aim of returning Gaia to life. It’s not a typical cooperative game, but it’s not directly competitive either. It’s an engaging mix of the two where you and your friends adapt and build on each other’s actions.

Let’s look at the top five things you need to know as you emerge from the Vault and begin your work to bring life back to Gaia.

Asymmetrical Player Abilities

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The primary mechanic driving Shapers of Gaia is a set of six asymmetrical “shaper” organizations that give the players wildly different powers and abilities during the game. And when we say “wildly different,” we mean it.

For example, most shapers try to avoid taking toxicity tokens (more about those later), but some of the Synthara Lab abilities need toxicity to work. Likewise, players can’t normally introduce animals on water hexes, but a Maldera Rivers ability lets them do not only that, but also replace water tiles with land.

Despite their differences, though, the shaper organizations feel very balanced against each other.

Five Resources, Plus Toxicity

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The game doesn’t use money to accomplish things. Instead, the economy runs on five resources: three basic and two advanced.

The basic resources include crystal shards, mushroom spores, and plant seeds. The two advanced resources, nutrients and energy, power special abilities and help you place animals in challenging biomes. You gain resources from the biome tiles you place, from species cards (keep reading), and from special abilities on your shaper card.

Then there’s toxicity. You gain toxicity when taking shortcuts in the game, such as teleporting around the planet without spending energy tokens. Toxicity reduces your victory points at the end of the game. Most shaper boards include a way to eliminate toxicity, as do some species cards.

Two Options Every Turn

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Although a lot happens in Shapers of Gaia, the turn structure driving it all is very simple. On your turn, you either introduce an animal or restore biomes.

To introduce an animal, you move your shaper meeple up to three spaces on the board (or teleport anywhere), select an available animal from your shaper board, and pay the resources to put that animal into play. Then you select a species card matching that animal from the display and add the card to the matching biome’s section your shaper’s ecosystem. Finally, you activate all the cards for in your ecosystem for the biome where you placed the animal.

When you restore biomes, you look at the three biome tiles in your hand and consider the position of the massive caretaker robot who’s helping all of you restore the planet. You can only place biome tiles next to the caretaker, so you may need to spend an energy (or accept some toxicity) to teleport the caretaker into a better position. Place the biome tile next to the caretaker, move the caretaker onto the tile you just put down, and resolve the action on that biome tile. If the space has a DNA token, you take that and put it next to your shaper board for scoring later in the game.

The Tiles Giveth and Giveth Again

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Every biome tile contains two possible actions. When you place the tile, you must perform one of the actions. The actions include things like getting resources or trading one type of resource for another.

After performing your mandatory action, then all of your opponents get the option of performing the action you didn’t choose. This is one of the coolest mechanical twists in the game and beautifully reflects how everyone is connected through the planet’s biome.

Expanding Your Ecosystem

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The engine building mechanic of Shapers of Gaia lives in each player’s ecosystems.These cards grant all kinds of new abilities that get triggered whenever you add an animal to that ecosystem’s matching color.

Planning your biome restorations and animal placements lets you can build a powerful engine that kicks out resources, triggers special abilities, and even cleans up toxicity tokens.

Verdict

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There’s so much we want to tell you about this game because it seriously impressed us both.

No matter which combination of shaper organizations you select, you’ll enjoy a challenging yet balanced game experience. The game’s randomization elements give you new challenges every time it hits the table. Making all of that happen in an asymmetrical game design is pretty miraculous, and the team behind Shapers of Gaia pulled it off.

We don’t typically rave about the quality of a game’s bits, but we’ll make an exception here. The animals are chunky wood pieces with a very gorgeous finish. Likewise, the shaper and caretaker meeples are well-sized for easy handling and movement. Everything feels great to the touch and looks elegant on the board.

Shapers of Gaia earns a solid thumbs up from both of us.