Vrtáci + promo Všehostroj (Drillers CZ)

Climb aboard your homemade mining mechs and venture deep beneath the surface of the planet Antevorta! In the strategic board game Vrtáci by the Czech design duo Adam Španěl and Říman, you’ll take on the role of eccentric miners in a forgotten mine shaft full of rare minerals. You’ll enjoy clever deck-building combined with movement across the mine’s vertical game board and the constant upgrading of your machine. But you’ll need to keep an eye on the clock and your opponents—as soon as someone reaches their mining capacity, the mine will begin to collapse unstoppably, and anyone trapped in the depths will lose valuable points.

The game features an original fuel management system, where you can play each card in your hand either to trigger its powerful main effect or, conversely, burn it to gain fuel. In addition, you’ll uncover new, unexplored levels of the mine behind barriers, expand the tunnels, and manage your own marketplace. Thanks to a full-fledged solo mode with four difficulty levels, you can also test your skills against a relentless corporate robot.

Each player’s turn consists of three consecutive phases: the action phase, the optional surface phase, and the final maintenance phase. During the action phase, the player plays cards from their hand, uses the mech’s basic functions and their drones, freely combining movement between mine levels and drilling. Drilling refers to loading minerals into the mech’s cargo hold, excavating new tunnels (which bring new resources to the level and earn the player a segment on the mining track), or breaking through massive barriers. Breaking through a barrier unlocks a new, deeper level with a new level card and its permanent rules. A key element is managing the fuel in the tank—players either spend fuel on actions and powerful card effects, or play cards without an effect purely to gain additional fuel.

If a player ends the action phase by moving to the top level—the surface—they enter the surface phase. Here, they visit local workshops, where they can use credits earned to purchase new and advanced cards for their deck or permanent upgrades. Furthermore, on the surface, they sell the mined minerals from their cargo hold at the personal marketplace, repair damage to their mech and unfavorable starting cards, expand the capacity of their fuel tank and cargo hold, and fully refuel their tank before descending back into the shaft. Players who remain underground at the end of the action phase skip this phase.

The entire turn concludes with the maintenance phase, which always takes place regardless of where the mech is located. The player discards played cards to their discard pile, pays fuel for any cards they wish to keep in their hand until the next round (they may keep one for free), and then draws 3 new cards from their draw pile (the top card of which is always face-down in the card holder). If cards were purchased from surface workshops during the turn, the supply is replenished. Players take turns in this manner until one of them completely fills their mining track. This triggers the mine collapse; opponents take their final turn, followed by the final scoring, in which not only the accumulated resources and drilled pieces count, but also whether you managed to escape the collapsing shaft in time.

Game Contents:

• Shared boards and tokens:
• 1 mine board
• 1 workshop board (consists of 2 parts)
• 33 underground tiles (including 29 tunnel tiles and 4 barrier tiles)
• 4 milestone tokens
• 43 credit tokens
• 105 minerals (plastic cubes: 13 silver, 21 gold, 27 sapphire, 23 emerald, 21 ruby)
• Cards:
• 66 workshop cards (8× starting, 14× damage, 12× drilling, 12× movement, 12× utility, 16× advanced)
• 12 floor cards (3× starting, 9× deep)
• Miniatures and personal components:
• 4 mech miniatures
• For each player (in their color):
• 8 starting cards
• 1 game board (assembled using 3 stickers)
• 1 fuel tank capacity token
• 1 hull capacity token
• 3 measuring sticks
• 3 drone tokens
• 1 restock token
• 1 assembled card stand
• rules

Review (EN):