Game Overview: Federation, or Spicy Space Politics and Worker Placement

by Candice Harris

At SPIEL ’22, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Anne-Catherine Perrier from Explor8 to get a gameplay rundown of Dimitri Perrier and Matthieu Verdier‘s 2022 release Federation, an innovative worker placement game all about space politics. Worker placement games, by default, have player interaction, but Federation pushes the needle further in an exciting way, which I experienced firsthand on a review copy provided by the publisher.

In Federation, 2-4 players compete to gain the most prestige points and become the planet worthy of joining the Federation. Federation features a unique double-sided worker placement mechanism combined with what feels like multiple mini-games, making for a highly interactive eurogame.

Federation was successfully funded on Kickstarter in October 2021 and available in Europe in Q4 2022. However, in January 2023, Eagle-Gryphon Games announced they partnered with Explor8 to bring the deluxe version of Federation to the North American market and launched a pre-order, which is targeted to release at Gen Con 2023. As a pre-order bonus, Eagle-Gryphon Games is also including an exclusive, full-color wooden President of the Senate first player pawn.

The version I played is the deluxe version with dual-layered player boards, upgraded ambassador tokens and components, whereas the retail version from Explor8 would have all cardboard components without the dual-layered player board.

The first thing you’ll probably notice when you see Federation sprawled out on the table is a large, busy-looking board with a lot of different components. It may appear intimidating initially, but once you understand the flow of the game, you’ll appreciate the excellent art and iconography by Miguel Coimbra. It not only makes the game easier to teach and play, but it’s also fully language independent, which is a nice bonus. In addition to the main game board, each player has their own player board for managing their ambassadors (workers), resources, special missions, and more. The setup for your first game may take a while because you need to sort through and place several tokens and tiles around the board. However, once you have your first game under your belt, you can easily divide and conquer to speed up setup if other players are down to help.

Federation is played over 5 rounds, and each round is split into 2 phases. In the Ambassador phase, players take turns in clockwise order, placing their ambassador tokens on action spaces within the Senate, then performing the corresponding action. After the Ambassador phase, there’s an end-of-round Executive phase where players may gain income and score prestige points for political influence in the Senate.

On your turn during the Ambassador phase, first you must play an ambassador token on an available action space of the Senate, either on its voting side or its funding side. You have two ambassador tokens with a voting value of 1, one with a value of 2, and one with a value of 3. On the opposite side of each ambassador token, there’s a funding icon which looks like a coin, and a checkmark in a green circle, which represents you gaining access to a special mission (on your player board). The 2 higher-value voting tokens also give you a resource when played on their funding side. That added bonus of gaining a resource is often very tempting, and often necessary, so it’s nice to have that option. Of course you have to decide if it’s more important to play those tokens on their voting side though.

The Senate area of the game board is divided into a left wing and a right wing. Most of the actions are available on both wings, but there are a few that are slightly different. Each wing has a 3×3 grid of action spaces, and at the top of each column are funding tracks. Each round, there will be 2 different law (scoring) tiles under each wing, which will factor into your decision of which action space to choose. There are also 5 different planet actions available on both sides which correspond to the matching planet actions around the board. Every section is color-coded, but there are also different shapes and icons to differentiate for clarity. The other action spaces represent rooms of the Senate, as well as an action space on both wings that allows you to spy, or spend a resource to copy another action space, which comes in handy since only 1 ambassador token can occupy a given space.

Close-up of the Senate w/ Ambassadors placed

During the Executive phase, after all players have placed all 4 of their ambassador tokens, whichever player has the most voting strength for each floor (row) in the Senate gains prestige points. Any columns that have ambassador tokens funding side up increase the corresponding major project funding track(s). Then you’ll see which side, left wing or right wing, has the most total votes (all players), and all players score prestige points according to the law tile on the corresponding side.

This worker placement system has so many interesting decision points to wrestle with. There are pros and cons to placing your ambassador token on the voting side versus the funding side at different points throughout the game. The voting side could lead to more immediate prestige points, but if you push the funding tracks where you have more influence than your opponents, you can score some big points at the end of the game. So you have to decide which side to place your token on (voting or funding), then you also need to decide which wing of the Senate to place your token on based on which laws might score at the end of the round. It’s a worker placement game, so your opponent’s may be blocking spaces you’re desiring and you often won’t have the option to choose which wing of the Senate you want to place your ambassador token on if you are hard-pressed to take a particular action. Ultimately, you’re playing this area influence game with the voting side of your ambassador tokens, while also trying to take the actions you need (and want) to, and support the wing of the Senate that’s going to score you the most prestige points if a particular law is passed.

As I mentioned above, there are planet actions and Senate room actions. Each planet action works a little differently and feels like a mini-game within the main game, but they’re pretty straightforward and can be executed quickly. Each planet action is going to increase your influence for the corresponding planet and give you a helpful benefit, but in its own way.

Blue planet w/ Alteration tokensWhen you take the blue planet action, you move your mage pawn 1 moon space forward, and choose an alteration token from the space you moved to. Alteration tokens are really cool because they allow you to temporarily modify/upgrade your ambassador tokens. They are discarded after you use them, but they are increasingly more juicy as you move to further moons and increase your influence on the blue planet.

The pink planet allows you to gain Erudite tiles that have special immediate or one-time use effects. Each tile you gain increases your influence by 1 for the pink planet.

At the yellow planet, you can carry out trades in different stalls. The first level stalls are each worth 1 influence, but if you trade at the same stall more than once, it’ll push your marker to the second level which has a better trade rate and is worth 2 influence.

There are 4 different types of resources in Federation: lavendium (pink), coppernium (green), oceanium (blue), and gold diamond (yellow). The blue resource can always replace pink or green, and yellow is most precious since it’s harder to get, and it can help you score points with the yellow planet action; in addition, it’s required to build megastructures on the green planet, which can be worth a lot of victory points.

The orange planet is a mining planet where you’ll move forward each action, similar to the blue planet, but instead of snagging alteration tokens, you gain resources. There are some randomly placed asteroid tokens which can be very tempting and lucrative, but instead of stopping to grab one, you can move 2 steps forward in some cases to increase your influence faster.

Yellow planet trading stalls

Last, but definitely not least, is the green planet where you can spend resources to either build a production structure which gives you an immediate benefit as well as end of round income, or you can build a megastructure to immediately score a chunk of victory points.

Your influence in these 5 different planets matters a lot for a few reasons. For one, you are racing your opponents to gain medals of honor. You can only have 1 medal for each planet, and they become increasingly harder to get the slower you are at getting your influence up. For example, in the 4-player game, the first person to have 3 influence for a planet gains the corresponding medal, then the next player would need 4 influence to gain a medal, the next would need 5, and so on. The more unique medals you have at the end of the game, the more points you’ll earn from them. The game incentivizes you to get there before your opponents, but you can’t do it all.

The other reason planet influence is important is because that is how the laws score during the Executive phase. The higher your influence for the planet that scores, the more prestige points you’ll gain. As an example, if the left wing has more votes in the Senate at the end of the round and there’s a green law token, it means all players score 2x their green planet influence level. The end-of-round scoring in Federation really fuels so many tough decisions during the worker placement phase.

Green planet Production Structures

Besides the planet actions, the Senate room actions are important too. There’s one that allows you to take the President of the Senate pawn to become the first player for the next round, and you also get a medal of honor of your choice from a planet that you don’t already have. When you get the medal, you take the one placed on the highest level of influence. Being first player didn’t feel tremendously critical in Federation and there are sometimes advantages to being last, since you might have the final say in which law is passed. Either way, the free medal is a nice perk when choosing this action.

There are Senate room actions that increase your accreditation level on your player board and some that help you gain spaceships into the hangar on your player board. At this point, you’re probably wondering why spaceships and your accreditation level even matter, so allow me to explain.

On your turn, in addition to placing an ambassador token and performing the corresponding action, you may optionally send 1 spaceship to accomplish a special mission on your player board, assuming you meet a few conditions. You must have an available spaceship in your hangar, the special mission must be accessible, and you must have the required accreditation level. If you meet all of these conditions, you can take a spaceship from your hangar, put it on the corresponding space and perform the action of the special mission. It’s basically a bonus action on top of your normal action, so while your brain is processing every other decision in this game, you’ll also be trying to set yourself up with as many special mission bonus action opportunities as you can.

On the left side of your player board, you’ll keep track of your accreditation level. As you bump up to the next accreditation level, you open up more special mission opportunities that are in the corresponding row, in addition to being qualified for any special missions below. The special missions are almost identical to the action spaces on the Senate board, but you have to make them accessible before you can send a spaceship. Earlier I mentioned an icon with a checkmark in a green circle, which you can find on the funding side of your ambassador tokens. When you place an ambassador token on the funding side, you can add a checkmark token to the special mission matching the action space where you placed your ambassador token. Then assuming your accreditation level meets or exceeds it, you can send a spaceship there after your main action to gain a bonus action, which can lead to some cool combos on your turn.

My player board w/ some completed special missions and lots of medals!

There’s also a Senate room action that allows you to increase your assistant die by 2, and make it available to you if it’s not already. During the Ambassador/worker placement phase, your assistant die can be placed with your ambassador token on its voting side to boost that token’s voting strength. This can be a tremendous help for winning majority scoring of each Senate floor at the end of the round, as well as influencing which wing’s law passes.

At the end of the round, after all players have played all 4 of their ambassador tokens, you begin the Executive phase. First, each player receives income for every production structure they built. Then players with an accreditation level of 3 or higher must pay a resource corresponding to their level. If you can’t, you have to lower your accreditation level back down to where you can pay the matching resource, or drop all the way back to the first space of level 2.

Then you increase the major project marker for each ambassador token on its funding side in the corresponding column. There’s a joint major project that increases based on any excess funding, and that track has player markers to keep track of who contributed the most, which might factor into final scoring.

After adjusting funding tracks for the major projects, you score each floor of the Senate. The player with the most votes on each floor scores as many prestige points as their level of accreditation. This is one of the main reasons you’ll want to focus some of your attention on increasing your accreditation level, besides the special mission bonus action opportunities.

The final push to fund projects before final scoring…

Finally, you determine which law is passed depending on which wing (left or right) had the most total votes and all players score prestige points according to their level of influence for the corresponding planet. There are 2 sets of 5 different tokens corresponding to each of the 5 planets, so you can expect to potentially score each planet twice, but you won’t know the timing of when exactly each law tile will appear, or which will be passed. Either way, you’ll always want to be ahead of the pack or push for the law that will benefit you most. I love that this votes mechanism lends itself to politics around the table. You may want to work with another player to help push the vote in a direction that’s favorable for both of you, or push it away from a player who’s in the lead.

At the end of the 5th round, the game ends and you proceed to final scoring. First, everyone scores points for their medals of honor, based on the lowest uncovered value. Then you score points for your remaining resources, followed by majority scoring for any major projects that funded, meaning the marker got to the last space on the track. In a 4-player game, whoever has the most influence for each funded major project scores 16 prestige points, the player with the second most scores 8, and the 3rd most scores 4. It’s a significant amount of points so be sure to pay attention to these funding tracks, on top of everything else.

I have been really digging Federation. It’s the kind of eurogame that’s right up my alley because it’s oozing with awesome, tough decisions and there’s so much player interaction from the unique worker placement combined with the scoring/votes mechanisms, and all of the competition for influence and medals on the different planets. Plus, I found the political theme actually shines through well as it leads to politics around the table as you’re deciding which funding tracks to influence, or which wing of the Senate deserves your votes. I felt this constant (good) pressure playing Federation, as I was trying keep an eye on my opponents, and at the same time, always eager push ahead of them.

I would say the rules make the game feel medium complexity wise, but all of the strategic decisions you’re faced with makes it feel more complex, and to me, more interesting. Besides the fact that you’re racing to beat your opponents to everything, from action spaces to medals, each planet action is very satisfying. You’re always getting something cool, and it’s a matter of figuring out what cool thing is going to help you most each turn. Sometimes you’ll try to increase your influence for the planet which seems like its law will pass, but other times you’ll march to the beat of your own drum and try to push harder for the law you want passed.

EGG Pre-order bonus pawn

(subject to change)Federation is a blast with 4 players, and when you play with less players, there’s a neat, easy-to-run, neutral player(s) which blocks action spaces, and influences the voting strength based off of blocking and voting tiles you place at the beginning of each round, which was designed to keep things tight and interesting at lower player counts.

There should be a decent amount of replay value from the variation of tiles and tokens on the different planets, in addition to the varied combination of law tiles that appear each round, but there’s also an advanced setup variant where you can change up the green planet from game to game by placing production structure tiles and megastructure tokens for even more variation.

If you’re a worker placement fan and thrive on heavy, indirect player interaction, be sure to check out Federation. I’m definitely looking forward to playing it more and I’m happy that it’ll be more widely available in the U.S. soon enough.