Beyond the Horizon - Playthrough with Friends

Today I am joined by my friends Anastasia and Dave to play a full game of Beyond the Horizon! I will start with a brief overview of the game, and then we will teach the rules while we play.

Timestamps:
Introduction - 0:00
Game overview - 1:03
Game start - 3:53
Picking governments - 4:19
Placing action pawn - 7:50
Researching level 1 technologies - 8:09
Investments explanation - 8:53
Gaining population - 9:17
Gaining income - 9:37
Gaining constructions - 13:10
Researching level 2 & 3 technologies - 14:52
Making settlers & soldiers - 18:38
Moving units - 19:15
Exploring explanation - 19:24
Upgrading units - 19:49
Building a construction - 31:31
New government levels - 33:44
Joining a construction - 37:23
Settle actions vs settle tokens - 38:52
Settling explanation - 53:40
Fortifying explanation - 1:19:17
How the game ends - 1:46:47
Researching level 4 technologies - 1:59:15
Endgame scoring - 2:21:29
Endgame discussion - 2:24:54

[GettingGames]

CORRECTIONS:
15:34 - The bottom effect applies to ALL players, not OTHER players. So Jonathan should also have been able to return an active population to gain 3 coins.
51:06 - The bottom effect applies to ALL players, not OTHER players. So Jonathan should also have gained an active population.
2:20:59 - Jonathan mis-read the card, she can only put 1 soldier down with this effect.

[Frostation]

Great playthrough, thanks to you, Anastasia and Dave for the full play-through.
And kudos for the amazing camera work, it was very easy to follow what every player was looking at and considering on their turns.

[greglevy]

I'm a fan of Beyond the Sun and really enjoyed the playthrough of this sequel. Love the interaction between the three of you and that you talked through each of your turns. VERY helpful in understanding the game and appreciating what everyone was doing. Thanks, Dave, for the Graduate reference. Easy to miss as it was sort of "in passing."

[master]

Woo this isn't just a tutorial this is a game announcement for me! I had no idea beyond the sun was getting a sequel, so Excited!

[Skycroft]

Quite fun. I've somewhat come around on this and thinking it is slightly better than BtS. That said, between this and a few other videos I have seen, I am not convinced that the governments are well balanced. Nice to see Anastasia get some redemption though.

Thanks for the video!

[timjones]

i find so many of your videos helpful, in both deciding next purchases and learning of games, i am a big fan of Beyond the Sun but find it difficult to get buy in from gaming friends as it looks so text book/spreadsheet. Ive purchased Beyond the Horizon based on your video to hopefully mitigate this .

[Kaczim]

Dziękuję za gameplay. Pozdrownienia z Polski.

[williammartindale]

Looks interesting. It’s seems the pieces might be a little fiddly: easily to knock over combined with the little number chits.

[mkitten]

I've always been contemplating getting Beyond the Sun, never actually pulling the trigger on it. I love tech trees, but I'm not really keen on area majority. I just put in an Essen pre-order for this, this seems to better align with my gaming preferences.

[TheSludgeMan]

I pre-ordered this but feel a bit iffy about some of the component and gameplay issues I've observed in the playthroughs. Players build away from each other reducing any tension on the map. The rulebook and tiles have spelling errors and the tokens constantly fall off. It's a shame they're double-sided as I'd be tempted to put Velcro stickers on them or something.

[rogerburrows]

At 13:21 (Constructions) I noticed 2 typos on the cards: "Acqueduct" and "Amphiteater". Please tell me this is a prototype!

[auronmessatsu]

Thanks for the game. The tech government is too broken the game needs balance. I hope the designer fix it.

[joellekey]

At 29:48 Anastasia is not considering that Blacksmithing requires an active person while Iron Working lets her use an inactive worker. Also, she gained the coin for the hex when she played Marco Polo... but shouldn't she have gained it again when she actually moved one of her settlers onto that hex?

[InkyBloc]

Not that it matters really but at 2:21:00, Plastics only gives you one figure on the map, so Anastasia couldn’t have put down two soldiers.

[clvrswine]

Uli Blennemann mentioned you on the Speilworxx Bulletin (5G4D) recently.

[zhivik]

A bit late on this, but it reinforces my impressions from other playthroughs. In a nutshell, if you already own Beyond the Sun and enjoy it, then you don't really need this one. The additional elements are nice (like unlockable passive powers, buildings, etc.), but I don't think they add too much, including the new exploration map. For people who dislike the area control element in Beyond the Sun, though, this one may be the better option, as you can easily avoid player interaction on the exploration map if you so wish.

I do think that the first unlockable passive benefit on Anastasia's government card is too powerful and makes the game too unbalanced. I just don't see how even an average player can fail to win the game with that power. Being able to ignore population production entirely is huge, as there are plenty of other ways to get some population, either as one-time bonuses or through actions. It also allows you to advance in technologies too quickly, giving you a lot more actions than anyone else.

Moreover, I think this game was the worst possible scenario for a player having that government card, as Anastasia didn't get a tech card that would allow her to research level 3 techs early. If she had found such a card, it would have been an even bigger gap at the end, in my opinion. Thus, I feel no urge to get this one after I already own Beyond the Sun and enjoy it.

[benediktcz]

it looks great but is seems to me the invention deck is quite small

[timpavey]

I might be missing something but isn't Jon lacking one of the 3 pre-requisites for Level 4 tech : Computers 2 hours in?

[timoseppa]

IV is Einstein, III is Newton. II is a baker or something? (If I'm supposed to recognize this famous guy, or guess who he is, I'm failing.)

[brianstephens]

I love Beyond the Sun, but this seems less balanced and lacks the puzzle of running your economy as you are almost always poor.

You all seemed to be rolling in resources throughout the game. It was also, dissapointingly pretty much multi-player solo. The fiddilessness of the discs on top of the population pieces seems a massive design miss. (And what graphic designer thought that the best icon for population pieces was a toilet 🤢!)

Thank you for your playthrough, but I found the game enormously disappointing.