Proliferation Review
Combines secret economics, take-that, and chaotic diplomacy for U.N. satire.
Play as 1 of the 9 nuclear powers of the world, from North Korea, Russia, to the United States to win through wealth, or by being the last one standing! Ramp your economy, negotiate trade deals, and vote for sanctions as you rotate being speaker of the United Nations. Plays 2-9 players, 30-90+ minutes.
Video published August 16th, 2023
Grab a nation, grab some nukes!
Play secret mission cards, negotiate trade agreements, and threaten sanctions.
Constant negotiation, role-play as the U.N.!
This is a sponsored post.
DISCLAIMER
Yes, nukes are a bad thing when launched. I think we can all agree that getting nuked is not a pleasant experience. We do not condone IRL nuclear warfare. Proliferation is treating them in a lighthearted manner, and that’s how we have to approach them!
How much we played
We played Proliferation at 4 players, then another at 5 players with the included variant. Even though there is a 2 player mode, due to time constraints, we didn’t get to try it, and the spirit of the game resides in the multiplayer diplomacy.
What we’re reviewing
We have the economy edition from kickstarter, the base box. The game is available to buy at $80 from the War Games website, which looks to be the exact same game we’re covering.
Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!
Component/Learning Pros
Box has card dividers to make setup/takedown easier
Pencils are nice quality, pre-sharpened
Nuclear tokens feel exceptionally thick
Cards are good
Paper to write on has toughness between printer & construction paper
Player aids and sanction cards useful to explain game
Flavor text for the varying nukes (Trinity, Fat Man, Little Boy, etc.)
GAMEPLAY PROS — Nukes vs. Economies
Buying nuke is contrasted with helping your economy, as anyone can win through economic victory
Nuke is worth 10 EP which is expensive, can buy infrastructure/trade agreements to give more income instead
Decision to hide player’s EP is great to add uncertainty to who will economically win
Haziness trickles down into how to form economic/military alliances, how to play take-that cards
GAMEPLAY PROS — Nuke System
Filled with curious uncertainty
Don’t know what nuke is until you buy it
Don’t know opponent’s nukes until the start of their next turn
Allows for so much bluffing on nuke value, flexibility in giving threats
Tsar Bomba nuke puts game on timer as is guaranteed to kill someone, but requires 3 rounds to prime
Defense systems allow for chance to cancel nuke, but super expensive investment at 30 EP
25% chance of success, if roll 20 on D20 get to deflect nuke back
Mission cards you can sometimes play at any time add more volatility
Peacekeepers can be bought to counter mission cards too
Launching nukes immediately puts sanctions on you, have to ensure can kill someone when launch
Getting nuked has terrible consequences
Really hard to heal unless for lucky mission card
Nuclear winter from getting nuked reverts economy back to lowest level
Mechanics draw attention to either extremes of nuke buying
If don’t buy any nukes, are threatening economic victory, so people are scared
If buy nukes all the time, have to keep revealing them on turns to let others play around them
GAMEPLAY PROS — Negotiation Possibility
Trade agreements early on are great to boost 2 players, initial hustle is real
e.g. Trade Agreements: More money a turn, discount on nukes, re-rolls
Multiple trade agreements Tie 2 or more nations together through trade networks to make attacking tricky
Can only break off trade agreements during your turn
Don’t want to help your ally too much
Need to at least be mindful of option to break off agreements and start new ones
Breaking off trade agreements also gives more opportunities to bluff
Getting sanctioned demands players to try to get the condition off of them
Players can at any time go full-nuke buying mode, economic leaders need to discourage that
Buying many nukes is so expensive you will no longer be economic leader
Economic leaders can just have proxy war to have nations kill their enemies
GAMEPLAY PROS — Asymmetry
9 nuclear powers of the world is thematic
Tweaked Starting EP, win conditions, then 2-3 unique abilities
e.g. Pakistan
Buy nukes for 1 less cost
Can buy nukes on anyone’s turn (can buy nuke on turn right before them, removing priming time)
When launch 2+ nukes on turn, get 1 free nuke with the right die roll
e.g. North Korea (lol)
Never get Nuclear Wintered for very consistent economy (poor workers)
Kill them completely, or sanction them perpetually
e.g. Russia
Get additional vote if roll 3+, lots of Veto power
Get a free nuke any time nuke is discarded, want people to be grabbing nukes then discarding them through missions
PROS — Replayability
9 included factions with big decks of cards
Minimal repeats in the cards with abilities
Trade alliances are different
Advanced Diplomacy included variant
+2 decks of cards
Clandestine missions: start of game missions to let you strategize more
Alliance cards: expensive special abilities to unlock fun benefits
Makes game longer but more agency early game
PROS — Theme meets gameplay
Greedy chicken in how much money you can get by also helping enemies through trade
Buying nukes for ‘supposed defense’
Continually point fingers and threaten to unload your nuclear arsenal
Roleplay as North Korea allying with Russia
United States loves oil as their win condition
Visual/Component CONS
Central buying area is hard to read at high player counts
Nukes, peacekeepers, and missions don’t really matter
Trade agreements need to pick up and read
Wasted space on infrastructure on trade agreements could be re-tweaked
Mission cards are frustratingly named same thing but are different
60+ “Executive Decision” cards which is confusing in hand, can’t say it aloud
Massively different abilities
Purification/Sabotage/etc. missions cards similar abilities but not confusing
Some subheader work would help
No hand limit listed for each type of card!
Nukes, peacekeepers, trade, agreements, infrastructure all have their own cap
Not 1 area in rulebook that properly lists these, have to go that term and see the limit
Higher tier of kickstarter explains this cleanly through the mat (can purchase on website)
Can put hand limit on another player aid, or back of rulebook for those on a budget
Gameplay Cons — Event Cards
Too many “nothing happens” cards in deck
“Nothing happens” when it asks for countries that are not in game
Not gamebreaking issue, but buzzkill as have multiple turns where nothing happens
Can house rule that can’t have 2 rounds where nothing happens
Gameplay Cons — Player count
Uncertain because never played outside of 4 and 5 people
Taking turn as speaker is really important, don’t have a turn to do most of stuff unless speaker
Speaker turn can take a while because that’s where most of card play takes place
Can only buy trade agreements when not your turn, these aren’t too sought after mid-late game if setup
7+ player game may have to wait too long for speaker role to come back
Mechanical imbalance at high player counts, because going last means less turns
1st player can build onto their economy right away, others have to keep waiting
Later players in a round should get starting boost to EP (+2 for going last?)
Not a huge issue because game is self-balancing
Cons — Time length
Not the 60 minutes says on the box
30-90 minutes more accurate b/c 2 player variant
30-120+ minutes is better range
No idea how long each game will last because can be fairly short if you barely negotiate
Summit voting can be really lengthy with talkative group
Speaker policy phase invites analysis paralysis
If trying to win through surviving, lots of nukes that need to go off
Cons — Player Elimination
Not too bad in Proliferation
Early game fluke deaths don’t happen because of incentives, earliest can launch nukes is round 3
Waiting when dead is a problem when the game runs much longer than expected
2 Nitpicks
Box is too big, could be 2/3rds size
But is designed to fit all of the KS stuff
Weird honoring of people who died through nuclear detonations on the box for a lighthearted game
Recommender Score
YES, this is expensive at $80, but the replayability gives it enough legs to last you many many playthroughs, and at some point I wanted to give this a 8/10, but there’s just a little too much jank with that price point, so it sits at an comfortable 7/10.
Proliferating nukes has a really self-explanatory theme, that is really easy to visualize. Like you’re all at the United Nations, yelling at each other constantly, writing down secret money, then with tons of hidden cards to bluff about nukes or nasty missions to drop on each other. There’s the nuclear arms race that runs parallel to the economic domination, kind of like Civ, but think of it as MOSTLY using nukes and sanctions. Proliferation isn’t a game with a board, its just cards, but with that, it does run long-ish with all the politicking, which also goes to show how well the negotiating elements are set up with the distinct countries behind everything and all of the hidden weapons you have.
To explain Proliferation a little better, we want to bring up the party game Hellapagos, where you play semi-cooperatively to escape a deserted island, trying to get enough food, water, and rafts to escape. Wait, how is that related to Proliferation? Well both of these games can be seemingly very peaceful at times— in Hellapagos you can even win as a team. But the peace is shaky, and, if there’s problems, you gotta vote people in both games to punish them.
These are both games where antagonizing is the point of the game, and in Hellapagos there’s often not a concrete reason to turn on each other, in Proliferation you can’t really be too sure on WHO to turn on at some points because there’s so much hidden information. Think of a game with hidden objectives, Werewolf, or Bang, or even area controls (TI4) with their secret objectives. These give clear reason for players to be targeting each other.
Sometimes in Proliferation, you just have to say, I have an inkling of a feeling that person is winning, but the other guy is antagonizing me SO hard and I think his mission cards suck, so I’ll just nuke him for the heck of it.
Game states can math’d out for those with amazing memory, but economic scrutiny is not why you play this chaotic game.
Proliferation also has a much higher buy-in than Hellapagos, with more time, more rules, and more components, but it also has far higher negotiating possibility and you won’t ever get knocked out right away. You have SO much room to negotiate in Proliferation, but again, the game is so swingy and can be silly with RNG draws everywhere that you can’t take it too seriously- just think of spending all of your money on nukes and to just get 2 that detonate in your face at the beginning of next turn to lose you the game- might as well cause as much chaos as possible before that?
Anyways, if you like the constant bluffing, economic maneuvering, to make yourself seem slightly more threatening while your nukes are all duds and your nation is supposedly bankrupt again, this is a recommendation to get this game for at least 4-5 people. None of the cons are really that concerning for a group that size. Just make sure you have the personalities and time to dish out this drama, it’s very much a gamer’s party-ish game that is expanded to the length of a normal board game at 1-2 hours.
And especially get it if you just like the terms:
“Shut up I’m gonna nuke you”,
“You’re gonna say that while these nukes are all pointed at you?”
“Dude we gotta nuke him”.
And to go top off the more casual approach to game night, there’s LOTS of blank cards, I mean a LOT of blank cards to add your own abilities to the game, so you can add whatever you want!
