Assembling Your Resources

Your ship has been destroyed and your crew are still asleep in their cryostasis pods, scattered among the wreckage. Can you use tech at your disposal to scavenge the resources needed to rescue them and survive the cold planet?

Try Cryo on Tabletopia, and order it online or through your local game store today.

SCAVENGE FOR RESOURCES

The core of Cryo and its worker-placement design is resource gathering. Be they materials to expend for other actions, cards to gain vehicles, upgrades, and missions, energy to fuel your exploration, or crew pods to help you explore the depths of the planet, gathering these resources is what compels each player forward and influences their actions.

Luckily, all of the scavenging you do launches from your platform.

At the top of the platform is where your three drones are docked. At the beginning of each of your turns, you may send out a drone to a dockable space on the board and collect whatever resource tile is adjacent to where you land, gaining the material associated with the tile. Alternatively, you may take an adjacent action such as rescuing a crew pod, exploring a cavern, etc.

MATERIALS AND ENERGY

Much of the resources you gather will be one of four types. They are Crystals, Organics, Tech, and Nanites, each representing a different type of resource from your ships wreckage. These are tracked on your platform in numbered squares (0-4) next to the corresponding material symbol. When you gain or lose a piece of material, you move your marker to the appropriate number. Any excess beyond 4 is lost.

For the most part, Crystals, Organics, and Tech are used when their specific type is required for an action. However, Nanites are a special type of material that can be used in place of any of the other three, giving you a bit of choice and variety in how you spend your resources depending on what you have gathered.

Energy is another precious resource that is tracked on the far right side of your platform.

Like the other materials, you move the marker up and down when you gain or lose energy. Unlike the other materials, energy is a more specific resource. Primarily, energy will be used to fuel your ship’s exploration into the caverns for end game scoring.

When planning to explore, you will need to expend the appropriate amount of energy needed to reach the target cavern. If you do not have enough energy, then you cannot explore that deep.

SPENDING RESOURCES

Below your drone docks are associated actions connected to them. From left to right, they are Custom, Awaken, Charge, Custom II, Fabricate, and Compute. Each one accomplishes a specific action when the requirements are met.

As you will notice, they are all incomplete. These can be filled with the resource tiles you gather with your drones. Once filled, when a drone is called back and lands in the corresponding dock, you may take that action below the arrow by paying the appropriate material (if any) above.

UPGRADES AND VEHICLES

When you do get a chance to play cards, they will come in the form of Upgrades, Vehicles, or Missions. Each card has one of each, and you decide which one you will use when played. Missions are played face down and to the side, allowing only you to know about them. Upgrades and vehicles, however, are attached to your platform for either continuous or future use.

Upgrades are just that. When placed at the top of the platform, upgrades offer special abilities that you can utilize for the rest of the game, possibly giving you an edge over your opponents in some way.

Vehicles are much different. Stationed at the bottom of your platform, vehicles have a set capacity of crew pods that you can place in them, noted by the number of pods illustrated on the card. If your three crew pod spaces, located to the right of your material counters, are occupied, then you can load any excess pods onto a vehicle as long as you don’t exceed its maximum occupancy. When ready to explore a cavern, you may load up your vehicle with crew pods and send them to the target cavern, which affects end game scoring. Some vehicles even have special attributes that grant some kind of advantage or boon to the player.

Materials, energy, crew pods, vehicles, and upgrades will all play a part in how you advance within the game. Use your platform to catalogue and strategize on how best to use what you’ve gathered to your advantage and gain more.

Can you survive the harsh world long enough to save your crew, or will you succumb to the cold when the sun sets? Try the game on Tabletopia, and order Cryo wherever board games are sold!