Skyward Republic Review - Grounded

About Skyward Republic, from BoardGameGeek:

Skyward Republic picks up where Skyward left off. In just four short years, Skyward has become a bustling metropolis of humans and robots living and working side by side. The Wardens have successfully launched their city into the sky, but what do you do once you've achieved the impossible? The Airborne City is now a culture in its own right, and the cultural luminaries have declared the city a Republic. To mark their independence from the old ways, the Wardens will construct an entirely new district showcasing the technological, cultural and economic achievements of Skyward. The four factions will cooperate to show off everything they've achieved so far, and together, look to the future of the Republic. In Skyward Republic, players build a sky city together. As they do, they aim to score the most victory points (VPs) from Buildings, Extensions, Vehicles and Critters launched into their airspace, and from Benefactors whose requirements they can meet by building Buildings and Extensions to match Benefactors' resource requirement icons during the game. Benefactors also grant useful bonus abilities. Players gain cards to launch through a 'flip or pick' open draft method that incrementally adds cards to the card piles on offer to the players, building the pressure to pick them early. They then use Faction (resource) cards they draft and cog tokens they earn or produce to pay for cards and launch (build) them into their airspaces. Play continues over multiple rounds, until one player has 8 Buildings in their airspace. After adding end game bonus points from their leftover cogs, and some cards, the player with the most VPs at the end of the game wins. Skyward Republic reimplements Skyward with twice as many cards, an all new draft method suited to multiplayer drafting, larger tableaus of combinational card abilities and a race to gain Benefactors bonus points and abilities as you play. -description from the publisher