Rise of the Wastelands Review: Waste Management

About Rise of the Wastelands, from BoardGameGeek:

At the end of this century a rain of meteors have slammed into Earth, drastically altering the landscape, killing the majority of people and erasing almost all signs of civilization. A few years after the impact, the remaining survivors began to congregate in the ruins of cities where the meteor effects were less severe to try to rebuild and establish a new society. Years have passed and some of those ruined cities have started to flourish, but their resources that could be salvaged are starting to run out. Infrastructures and developments are still too inefficient to generate the necessary resources for the growing population. So in order to survive, the people of these cities need to venture into the Wastelands. The Wastelands is a vast land area that was severely impacted by the meteors and only now becoming safe enough to explore again. It is known that there are ruined cities to salvage resources from, but there are unknown dangers as well. The need for resources, together with the different societies formed in these newly populated cities, has created conflict and distrust that has grown among these factions. So now a race has begun to gather resources, grow and develop as quickly as possible to become the dominant faction to rule, not only over the Wastelands, but over all the nearby factions as well. Summary Rise of the Wastelands is set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic world, where resources are scarce and the remaining human survivors fight to survive and rule the devastated lands. Players lead one of the four factions with their own unique abilities. Starting from their capital, they will explore the dynamically generated map, discovering new areas and establishing outposts to recycle materials. With these newly generated resources, they can construct buildings and units, all while striving to upgrade their technology and gain a strategic advantage. This will allow players to accomplish the ever-changing achievements and let them spread their influence to rule over the other players. Winning the Game The goal of the game is to spread at least 5 of your influence tokens among the other players. When the game is over, if only one player has been able to accomplish that, they are declared the winner. In the event that two or more players have achieved that, the player that has given away more influence tokens wins the game. Gameplay In Rise of the Wastelands there are no rounds or phases. Players take turns one after another until a player claims their 5th achievement at the end of their turn. Then, the rest of the players play one more turn. On their turn, players do the following in sequential order: 1- Allocate influence. 2- Perform actions. 3- Claim achievements. 4- Reset action points -description from the publisher