Black Angel is a dense generation-ship board game with elegant but grinding mechanics

Black Angel, designed by Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, and Alain Orban, places players aboard a generation ship on a 3,000-year voyage as competing artificial intelligences vying to be the colony's sole steward. Gameplay centers on picking up and using dice: colors map to ship segments and numbers increase an action's power.

The game uses stars, minerals and debris cubes to buy or flip dice, a tech track to unlock effects, droid ships and missions that trade resources or invite attacks from “evil bugs,” and reset turns to replenish dice and clear personal boards. The review likens Black Angel to a busted pocket watch—many finely crafted parts that do not always run smoothly together.

It lists several ways plans can be undone: another player claiming a needed die, buying a die that forces an opponent’s reset and cancels a mission, awkward tech interactions that consume the very missions they were meant to enable, prohibited payment combinations, unappealing mission options, and forgotten steps that can reduce a die's value mid-action.

At its best Black Angel delivers satisfying engine moments when technologies chain and a player converts gains into endgame bonuses. More often, however, the experience is a slow churn of incremental moves and setbacks.

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Culture, Black Angel, Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, Alain Orban, Troyes