Review: Revenant

Introduction & Overview

From the void between dimensions, an ancient cosmic entity appeared with the sole intent of corrupting and devouring everything. In the wake of the cataclysm known as Voidfall, the admirals of the fallen Novarchon Empire devised a desperate contingency plan. To preserve the treasured knowledge that might one day answer the threat of the Voidborn creatures, an ancient imperial flagship, the Revenant, was refitted to house the Empire’s databanks. Safeguarding humanity’s last hope and accompanied by the vessels of the Empire’s vassal Houses, your duty is to escort the fleet to a safe sector while managing your influence with the Great Houses to secure your own political future.

This is how we are introduced to Revenant, a design by Allan Kirkeby (Itchy Monkey). First published in 2026 by Mindclash Games in an English-language edition following a successful crowdfunding campaign. The illustrations are handled by Ian O’Toole (Pampero, Lisboa, Speakeasy).

It is published in Spain by Maldito Games (although the base game is language-independent, with the exception of the rulebook). It allows games of 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 14 and an approximate duration of 90 to 120 minutes. The retail price is €75. For this review, a copy of the Spanish edition by Maldito Games was used, kindly provided as a review copy by the publisher.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 40×33×5.5 cm (a large rectangular box similar to Lisboa or Vinhos, but noticeably shallower), we find the following components:

• Double-sided Main Board (punchboard)
• Double-sided Influence Board (punchboard)
• Sequence Board (2 halves: left and right) (punchboard)
• 4 Double-sided Crew Boards (punchboard)
• 4 Frigate Boards (punchboard)
• 80 Small Cards (44×67 mm):
  • 63 Hidden Influence Cards
  • 13 Secret Agenda Cards:
    • 9 Personal Agendas
    • 4 Fleet Agendas
  • 4 Solo Mode Cards
• 134 Standard Cards (63×88 mm):
  • 90 Operation Cards:
    • 30 Cadet Cards
    • 30 Frigate Cards
    • 30 Command Cards
  • 11 Revenant Failure Cards:
    • 7 Hull Failure Cards
    • 4 Core Failure Cards
  • 29 Planet Cards
  • 4 Ark and Revenant Action Aid Cards
• 54 Large Cards (70×110 mm):
  • 45 Scanner Cards (15 for 1-2 players, 15 for 3 players, and 15 for 4 players)
  • 7 Colony Cards
  • 2 Solo Mode Cards
• 3 Rift Dice (1 for 1-2 players, 1 for 3 players, and 1 for 4 players) (resin)
• 32 Influence Markers (8 in each color) (plastic)
• 4 Captain Rank Markers (1 in each color) (plastic)
• 12 Crew Miniatures (1 Captain and 2 Cadets in each color) (plastic)
• 4 Frigates (1 in each color) (punchboard)
• Revenant Flagship (punchboard)
• 7 Ark Ships (1 for each House) (punchboard)
• 7 Fighters (1 for each House) (punchboard)
• 7 Shuttles (1 for each House) (punchboard)
• 7 Landers (1 for each House) (punchboard)
• 32 Voidborn Ships (punchboard)
• 4 Rift Tiles (punchboard)
• 15 Discovery Data Cubes (plastic)
• 14 House Power Tokens (2 per House) (punchboard)
• 3 Phase Skip Tokens (punchboard)
• 4 Turn Order Tiles (punchboard)
• Phase Marker (plastic)
• 12 Shield Tokens (punchboard)
• 2 Revenant Protection Tokens (punchboard)
• 26 Corruption Markers (punchboard)
• 30 Damage Markers (plastic)
• 3 Gain Tactics Tokens (punchboard)
• 3 Contain Corruption Tokens (punchboard)
• 80 Resource Tokens (punchboard):
  • 20 Science
  • 20 Energy
  • 20 Material
  • 20 Neutronium
• 7 Solo Mode Envelopes (cardstock)
• Corrupted Tactics Token for Solo Mode (punchboard)
• Scorepad (paper)
• Rulebook
• Solo Rulebook and Appendix

How to Play

Revenant is a game set in the Voidfall universe where each player takes on the role of an admiral coordinating the defense of a fleeing starfleet against the Voidborn threat, all while seeking to increase their political influence with the Great Houses that manage to survive the exodus. The game takes place over four cycles structured into several phases, with the lion’s share of playtime devoted to the Action Phase. In this phase, players alternate three turns following the initiative order; on each turn, the active player places a crew member onto an unoccupied space of a ship (House ships, their own frigate, or the Revenant itself), gains public influence or draws hidden influence cards with the corresponding faction, resolves the ship’s action, and executes an additional action on their player board. Through these actions, players acquire resources, engage and destroy hostile ships with fighters or frigates, maneuver vessels into safe sectors, touch down on planets with landers to retrieve discovery data or reap benefits, play operation cards to trigger abilities, advance their captain’s rank, or power up the flagship’s hyperdrive. At the end of each cycle, crews return to their boards, turn order is updated according to the tactics track, and the Voidborn assault the fleet during a skirmish where damage must be distributed across ships in each sector (spilling over onto the Revenant if no other allied ships remain to absorb it, and triggering catastrophic failures if it suffers too many hits), potentially destroying House ships and diminishing their military standing. Finally, players resolve the emergence of new threats through spatial rifts or initiate a hyperspace jump that wipes the map and relocates the fleet to a new system, depending on whether the engines were charged. Following the fourth cycle, the final prestige tally takes place, adding up points earned from accumulated influence across each House multiplied by its surviving power (the number of its remaining ships), fulfilled secret agendas, played operation cards, captain rank, leftover resources, and potential colony bonuses, while subtracting points for lingering corruption on the frigate. The player with the most prestige claims victory.

Key Concepts

Let’s begin with the Main Board. This is a double-sided board with alternative illustrations divided into twelve sectors: eight numbered outer sectors lining the perimeter and four inner sectors surrounding the central area. Each outer sector has printed capacity limits governing how many ships may occupy it. Across this board, the fleet is deployed and maneuvered throughout the game, serving as the staging ground for movement, combat against hostile threats, and planetary landings.

Different classes of vessels make up the bulk of the allied fleet: the Revenant, Ark Ships, Fighters, Landers, and Shuttles. The colossal flagship Revenant commands the center of the board, offering two action spaces with costs and benefits designed to bolster defenses or prepare the convoy’s jump. Ark Ships represent faction motherships that never break formation, remaining anchored in their sectors and providing two action options when boarded. Fighters are agile combat craft tied to the Houses that maneuver and strike enemy ships, boasting the distinct ability to strafe to an adjacent sector immediately after destroying a target. Meanwhile, Landers maneuver and touch down on revealed planet cards in their sector to exploit natural resources or indigenous populations. Lastly, Shuttles are civilian transports without corruption slots or hull durability of their own, joining the fleet across rounds via scanner cards or specific actions.

Each player commands their own Frigate, a personal warship in their player color. Frigates navigate and fight across the map’s sectors through crew commands, while also retaining the versatility to land on planets just as a lander would. Unlike House vessels, frigates cannot sustain damage or be destroyed in combat, nor can they be boarded by rival crew members.

Hostile forces are embodied by the Voidborn Ships. These enemy craft spawn in outer sectors during initial setup, pour through rifts, or appear following hyperspace jumps. During the skirmish phase, each hostile ship in a sector inflicts one point of damage on the fleet, forcing players to absorb hits using shields or by damaging and destroying Great House ships, with leftover damage striking the Revenant if a sector is stripped of allied craft.

Space is also threatened by Rift Tiles. Placed in specific outer sectors of the main board, they function as dimensional invasion portals. New hostile ships spawn through them during the rift phase and, in addition, they spread corruption to House ships in their sector whenever damage is suffered during a skirmish.

The spread of these threats is dictated by the Rift Dice, specialized dice whose faces scale with the player count. When resolving the corresponding phase, a roll is made for each active rift tile to determine how many Voidborn ships surge into that sector and its two immediate neighbors.

Direct combat hits are tracked using Damage Markers. These acrylic cubes are placed onto the hull slots of House ships whenever they suffer attacks during a skirmish. If a ship fills all its hull slots and takes further damage, it is destroyed and removed from the board, reducing the military power of its respective House. By the same token, if an attacked sector has no allied ships, these markers accumulate on the Revenant’s damage track.

The fleet’s operational backbone rests on Resource Tokens, divided into four types: Material, Energy, Science, and Neutronium. These resources are stored inside the cargo bays of each admiral’s frigate board, subject to strict capacity limits. They are acquired through resupply actions, planetary mining, or tactics advances, and spent to fund operation cards, execute special Revenant maneuvers, or promote the captain.

The game’s progression is paced across the Sequence Board, a two-piece puzzle board that coordinates rounds and cycles. This board houses the phase track traversed by the round marker, spaces for phase skip tokens that dictate whether a rift or hyperspace jump occurs, the tactics track with its tiered milestone rewards, and a display area where Revenant failure cards are laid out and triggered.

Concurrently, political standing is tracked via the Influence Board and House Power Tokens. This board features seven influence tracks numbered 0 to 8, corresponding to each of the Great Houses escorting the fleet, offering milestone bonuses at steps 2, 5, and 8 for the first player to reach them. Atop each track sits a stack of House Power Tokens whose face-up value indicates the number of active ships that faction still maintains on the board, acting as an endgame victory point multiplier.

Player standing with each faction is tracked with Influence Markers. Each admiral has a set of discs to record their standing along the sequence board’s tactics track and across the seven Great House tracks on the influence board, publicly reflecting their allegiance with each house. An eighth disc is used to mark position on the sequence board’s tactics track.

Turn order is governed by the Turn Order Tiles, initially dealt at random and redistributed at the start of each cycle. This reshuffling reflects player standing on the tactics track, granting priority initiative and the power to break ties when assigning skirmish damage to whoever sits farthest ahead.

Each player possesses a double-sided Crew Board offering unique asymmetric abilities. This board houses crew members while they are not assigned to a ship. It also displays the captain rank track with its tiered perks and designates slots to tuck cadet-linked operation cards.

Rank progression is marked by the Captain Rank Marker, a cube that advances along a scale from 0 to 3 by spending science. Moving up this track immediately boosts card draw at cycle end, expands choices when drafting hidden influence, raises the baseline tactics level following a hyperspace jump, and grants flat victory points at game end.

Each player’s crew is physically embodied by three Crew Miniatures in their color: one Captain and two Cadets. During the action phase, players take turns deploying these crew members to board ships across the main board. Boarding grants influence with the host faction and allows the vessel’s intrinsic actions to be taken, triggering crew-specific perks or attached card abilities in the process.

Every admiral’s personal setup is completed by their Frigate Board, featuring top slots to install frigate cards for ongoing benefits, a void waste containment bay, and five lower cargo compartments. These compartments store gathered resources and provide five bonus actions that can be triggered at the end of a turn, such as purging corruption, playing affiliated cards, promoting the captain, or activating printed effects.

Alien contamination is tracked through Corruption Markers. These tokens are taken whenever a player boards an infested ship or exploits hazardous planetary options, and must be placed into designated slots within the frigate’s cargo compartments. A contaminated bay becomes locked down: it cannot store new resources, prevents stored goods from being spent, blocks its associated bonus action, and docks victory points at game end unless contained and shifted into the void waste area.

Strategic capabilities are expanded through Operation Cards, divided into three decks: Cadet cards, Frigate cards, and Command cards. By paying their resource costs, cadet cards attach to the crew board to grant reactive abilities to pawns, frigate cards slot onto the personal board to unlock synergies and instant perks, and command cards trigger one-shot tactical events. Every card is affiliated with a specific House, granting a one-resource discount when played as an additional action if a matching House vessel was boarded that turn.

We also have Hidden Influence Cards, representing covert favors held with the seven Great Houses. Acquired through specific actions, milestones, or by cleansing sets of void waste, they remain secret in hand until game end to add to visible track standing, or can be discarded at any moment on a turn for a wild resource.

Personal end-game ambitions are outlined by Secret Agenda Cards, dealt at setup across two varieties: Personal Agendas and Fleet Agendas. Every player keeps one of each class throughout the game, rewarding six victory points each at game end if conditions are met—whether through hoarding personal assets or seeing a specific fleet composition survive on the board.

Structural degradation of the flagship is tracked via Revenant Failure Cards, comprising hull and core failures. These cards are slotted into the sequence board displaying two harmful passive effects; whenever the Revenant absorbs six damage hits across skirmishes, the exposed effect of the active failure card triggers immediately, penalizing all admirals at the table.

To counter persistent danger, Shield Tokens provide a temporary defensive buffer. Produced by certain Ark ships, tactical milestones, or scanner cards, they are deployed to threatened sectors. Each shield token absorbs and negates one point of incoming damage from the Voidborn during that sector’s skirmish, discarded once its protective duty is fulfilled.

Outer space is dotted with Planet Cards, dealt face up to outer sectors during setup or following a hyperspace jump. Each planet presents two action options when touched down upon by a lander or frigate: a clean resource extraction or a corrupted exploitation that yields richer spoils at the cost of taking a corruption marker.

Exploring uncharted worlds uncovers Discovery Data Cubes. The first player to land a ship on an unclaimed planet immediately takes its data cube onto their frigate board; collecting three data cubes automatically converts them into a drawn hidden influence card.

Lastly, the expedition’s path is plotted by Scanner Cards and Colony Cards. During the first three cycles, scanner cards offer routes that provide immediate boons, draft shuttles into the fleet, and dictate which sectors will spawn rifts, planets, and enemy craft should a hyperspace jump occur. In the fourth and final cycle, scanner cards are replaced by colony cards, which pinpoint humanity’s final sanctuary, grant a permanent power boost to their affiliated House, and establish an endgame scoring condition for all players.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

1. Place the main board in the center of the table on either side (they have no mechanical impact).
2. Place the Influence board to one side.
3. Assemble the two halves of the Sequence board and set them near the play area.
4. Create a general supply with Damage markers, Corruption markers, Resource tokens, Shield tokens, Discovery Data cubes, and Voidborn ships.
5. Sort the Operation cards by type (Cadet, Frigate, and Command), shuffle each deck separately, and place them face down next to the board.
6. Shuffle the Hidden Influence deck and set it face down.
7. Take the fifteen Scanner cards corresponding to the player count and return the rest to the box. Randomly reveal three cards displaying the first-cycle icon to form the display and box the remaining two. With the rest of the cards, form two separate face-down decks for the second and third cycles after shuffling each independently.
8. Shuffle the Colony cards and form a face-down deck.
9. Place the Rift die matching the player count next to the Scanner deck, returning the other two to the box.
10. Place the Revenant flagship in the center sector of the main board.
11. Place one random ark ship in sectors one, four, and six, and two random motherships in sectors three and seven.
12. Likewise, place one random fighter in every sector except sector four. If a fighter shares a faction with a mothership in that same sector, swap it with the fighter in the next sector clockwise.
13. Place one random lander in every sector except sector six.
    Spawn Voidborn ships across sectors according to the player count table in the rulebook.
14. Next, place a Rift tile in sectors one, three, five, and seven.
15. Shuffle the Planet cards and deal them face up into the sectors indicated by the player count: sectors two, five, and eight for one, two, or three players; or sectors two, four, six, and eight for four players.
16. Place one Discovery Data cube on each revealed Planet card.
17. On the Influence board, stack two House Power tokens on the top space of each House track, with value two at the bottom and value three on top.
18. Place the seven shuttles at the top of the Influence board.
    On each of the seven House tracks, set the corresponding token onto spaces two, five, and eight: Material on Fenrax, Contain Corruption on Shiveus, Data cube on Yarvek, Science on Belitan, Neutronium on Zenor, Gain Tactics on Novaris, and Energy on Dunlork.
19. On the Sequence board, place the Phase marker on the start space of the Phase track and the three Phase Skip tokens on their marked slots.
20. Assemble the Revenant Failure deck by shuffling the four Core Failure cards, drawing one at random face down, and boxing the rest. Next, shuffle the seven Hull Failure cards, draw three at random face down, and stack them on top of the Core card. Reveal the top card of this four-card deck and slide it into the top slot of the Sequence board’s failure display.
21. Set the two Revenant Protection tokens beside the Failure deck.
22. Determine turn order randomly by distributing the turn order tiles.
23. Each player chooses a color and takes:
    • One Captain Rank marker.
    • One Captain miniature.
    • Two Cadet miniatures.
    • One Frigate.
    • Eight Influence markers.
    • One Ark and Revenant action aid card.
24. Seven markers from each player are placed on the bottom space of each House track on the Influence board.
25. Each player’s remaining marker is placed on space zero of the Sequence board’s Tactics track, stacked according to turn order with the first player on the bottom. In four-player games, the fourth player advances their Tactics marker one space to the right.
26. Starting with the last player in turn order and proceeding counterclockwise, each player selects a Crew board on their preferred side.
27. In that same reverse order, each player selects a Frigate board.
28. Each player places their Captain and two Cadets onto their designated spaces on the Crew board, sets their Rank marker on the bottom space of its track, and sets the aid card aside.
29. On their Frigate board, each player places one token of each of the four resources (Material, Energy, Science, and Neutronium) into the four resource slots of the leftmost bay, sets a Corruption marker on the upper right slot, and leaves their Void Waste and Discovery Data slots empty.
30. Each player draws two Hidden Influence cards into their hand.
31. Separate the Secret Agenda cards by their backs. Each player draws one Fleet Agenda card and two Personal Agenda cards, keeping one personal card and returning the other to the box without looking at it.
32. Each player draws three Operation cards: one Cadet, one Frigate, and one Command. Optionally, players may discard any of these cards once to redraw another of the same type.
33. Finally, in reverse turn order, each player chooses a different Great House, advances one step on its Influence track, and places their Frigate in the sector containing that House’s mothership.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Revenant is played over 4 Cycles. Each cycle consists of five phases.

Phase I: Action Phase

In this phase, players alternate turns following the turn order established on the Tactics track, taking a total of 3 turns each (one for each member of their crew: Captain and two Cadets).

On each turn, the active player must resolve the following steps in order:

1. Board with Crew. The player takes a crew miniature from their board and places it into an unoccupied action space of a ship on the main board (boarding another player’s frigate is not permitted). Alternatively, the player may trigger an Emergency Action: set the crew member aside on their frigate board to gain 1 Hidden Influence card and then either 1 resource of choice or 1 Tactics step, proceeding directly to the Additional Action step.
2. Gain Influence. Depending on the vessel boarded:
   • Faction Ship (Ark, Fighter, or Lander): advance 1 space on that faction’s Influence track.
   • Revenant: advance 1 space on any faction’s Influence track of choice.
   • Own Frigate: gain 1 Hidden Influence card (drawing cards equal to their Captain’s rank, keeping one, and discarding the rest).
3. Crew Action. The player resolves the intrinsic action of the boarded ship. The options based on ship type are:
   • Ark Ship. Each mothership offers two options, choosing one:
     • Belitan. Resupply (pay any 2 resources to gain any 3 resources) or Ascension (gain 3 Tactics and/or place up to 2 shields in a single sector).
     • Dunlork. Resupply (gain 2 Science) or Charge (gain 2 Energy and place 2 shields in one sector or 1 shield in two different sectors).
     • Fenrax. Control (copy and fully resolve the action of your own frigate) or Mobilization (move faction ships other than motherships up to 4 steps, exercising caution into sectors with equal or fewer Voidborn ships).
     • Novaris. Resupply (gain 2 Material) or Reconnaissance (draw 2 Operation cards and contain 1 Corruption token from your frigate or a faction ship).
     • Shiveus. Purge (destroy 2 Voidborn ships in one sector or 1 in two different sectors) or Calculation (play an Operation card with a 1-resource discount and draw 1 Operation card).
     • Yarvek. Resupply (gain 2 Neutronium) or Manufacture (pay 3 Material to deploy a Shuttle into any sector).
     • Zenor. Cloning (discard an Operation card from hand to copy the action of another occupied mothership) or Replication (discard an Operation card to copy the action of an occupied planet as if landing there).
   • Fighters. Allows Maneuver (move the ship to an adjacent sector) and/or Attack (inflict 1 damage in the sector to destroy a Voidborn ship and gain 1 Tactics) in any order. After each successful hit, the fighter may execute a strafe run to immediately move to an adjacent sector.
   • Landers. Maneuver to an adjacent sector and, if possible, touch down on an unoccupied planet in that sector. Upon landing, claim the Discovery Data cube (if present) and resolve one of the two printed planet options (the bottom option incurs corruption).
   • Frigates. The player may choose between maneuvering and/or attacking (without the fighter’s strafe ability) or resolving the effect of a lander.
   • Revenant. Offers two distinct action spaces:
     • Reinforce. The player spends 1 Energy, 1 Material, and 1 Neutronium to deploy a ship to the board and place a Revenant Protection token over one of the two visible effects on an active Failure card.
     • Overcharge. The player selects one of the three visible Scanner cards (or Colony cards in cycle 4), pays its Neutronium cost, claims its benefits, discards the other two, and slides that cycle’s phase skip token to cover the Rift space (triggering the Hyperspace Jump).
4. Gain Corruption. The player must take 1 Corruption marker into an empty compartment slot on their frigate board if their crew member boarded an infested ship or resolved a corrupted planetary action (maximum 1 per turn). Corrupted bays block the storage, spending, or shifting of goods held inside and disable their bonus action.
5. Additional Action. The player may resolve one of the five printed actions on their frigate board, provided the corresponding bay is not locked down by corruption:
   • Purify. The player discards an Operation card and/or pays 1 Energy to contain 1 Corruption marker (shifting it into the Void Waste slots).
   • Affiliate. The player plays an Operation card by paying its resource cost. If it matches the faction of the ship boarded this turn, they may reduce its cost by 1 resource or play a second card by paying its full cost.
   • Promote. The player spends 3 Science to increase their Captain’s rank by 1 level.
   • Activate. The player fires off all abilities featuring an activation icon across their crew board and installed frigate cards.
   • Supply. The player takes any 1 resource from the general supply.

At any time on their turn, a player may discard any number of Hidden Influence cards face down to gain 1 wild resource for each.

Once this sequence is complete, the turn passes to the next player in initiative order. The phase wraps up once all players have deployed their three crew members.

Phase II: Upkeep

Elements are reset for the upcoming cycle:

1. Retrieve all crew members, returning figures to their respective player boards.
2. Return landers and frigates from planet cards back to their sector’s space area.
3. Update turn order for the next cycle based on relative positions on the Tactics track (breaking ties in favor of whichever token arrived at that space first).

Phase III: Skirmish

Voidborn forces assault the fleet, resolving sector by sector from 1 to 8 in ascending order. In each sector, execute the following steps:

1. Assign Damage. Each Voidborn ship present generates 1 hit. The player whose frigate is closest to (or inside) the sector determines how damage is distributed. Sector shields must absorb 1 hit each before being discarded. Any unshielded damage must be allocated by placing damage tokens on present faction ships, destroying them if their hull capacity is reached (immediately dropping that faction’s Power by 1). If no faction ships remain in the sector, hits strike the Revenant directly.
2. Revenant Failure. If the Revenant takes its sixth hit (after accumulating five damage markers), the unprotected visible effect of the lower card on the Failure display triggers immediately, followed by clearing the 5 markers. If it takes another six hits, the upper card resolves.
3. Spread Rift Corruption. If the sector holds a rift tile and any ship suffered damage during the skirmish, the active player must place 1 Corruption token onto an eligible faction ship in that sector (it may go on any ship, not necessarily the one that absorbed damage).
4. Clear Shields. Discard all remaining shields from the sector.
5. Update Failure Display. Once all 8 sectors are resolved, discard the bottom card from the Revenant failure display, slide the top card down, and reveal a new card from the deck into the top slot (in cycles 1 through 3).

Phase IV: Rift

This phase takes place only if the Rift space remains uncovered by the phase skip token. Proceed as follows:

1. Roll the rift die for each rift tile on the board and spawn Voidborn ships into that sector and its adjacent sectors according to the roll (respecting the limit of 6 per sector).
2. Replenish 1 Discovery Data cube onto every planet card lacking one.
3. Discard the 3 face-up Scanner cards from the offer.
4. Each player draws Operation cards according to their Captain’s current rank.
5. Reveal 3 new Scanner cards matching the cycle (or 3 Colony cards at the end of cycle three).

Phase V: Hyperspace Jump

This phase takes place only if the Rift space was covered by the phase skip token. Proceed as follows:

1. Clear all Planet cards (along with their data cubes), all rift tiles, and all Voidborn ships from the main board.
2. In reverse turn order, reset the Tactics marker to the baseline dictated by Captain rank, gaining Hidden Influence cards if on step 8 or higher, and bonus faction influence if reaching steps 11 or 12.
3. Populate the map according to the Scanner card selected during overcharge (spawning new Voidborn ships, rift tiles, planets with data cubes, and the designated shuttle).
4. Discard the resolved Scanner card.
5. Each player draws Operation cards based on their Captain’s rank, and a fresh display of Scanner or Colony cards is dealt for the upcoming cycle.

With that completed, a new cycle begins.

Game End

The game ends following the skirmish phase of the fourth cycle. Before proceeding to scoring, evaluate the tactics track. Players on space 8 or higher gain hidden influence, and those on spaces 11 or 12 gain 1 additional influence step with a House of their choice.

Each player then calculates their total prestige across the following categories:

• Colony. If a colony card was chosen, score prestige points as dictated by the achieved condition.
• The Seven Houses. For each House, multiply that faction’s final power (equal to its surviving ships on the main board, adding 1 if the House matches the chosen colony) by the player’s total influence with it (the sum of steps on its track plus revealed hidden influence cards for that House).
• Secret Agendas. 6 prestige points for completing the personal agenda and 6 prestige points for fulfilling the fleet agenda ship requirement.
• Cadet and Frigate Cards. 2 prestige points for each cadet card played and 2 prestige points for each frigate card installed on the player board.
• Captain Rank. 0/2/4/6 prestige points for reaching rank 0/1/2/3.
• Command Cards. One prestige point for each command card played throughout the game.
• Resources. One prestige point for every set of 4 resources in personal storage, regardless of type and including goods locked inside corrupted bays.
• Corruption. Subtract 2 prestige points for each corruption marker remaining in frigate cargo bays (excluding contained void waste).

The player with the highest prestige is crowned the victor. In case of a tie, the draw is broken in favor of whichever tied player sits farthest ahead in the final turn order.

Variants

Solo Mode. The human player squares off against an automated adversary known as the Corrupted Crew, which always claims the initiative on every turn. The bot operates via two mechanics: it reveals a card from its House deck to determine which faction it aids by bumping its influence, and shifts a token across a grid of action cards to dictate which ship it attempts to board, triggering automated effects and generating corruption. During combat skirmishes, control over who assigns damage in a sector hinges on relative standing along the Tactics track versus the human player’s frigate, with the bot prioritizing the destruction or corruption of ships belonging to Houses where it has little sway or where the human player holds deep influence. Once all rounds wrap up and final scoring arrives, the player tallies their prestige against the bot—which scores based on accumulated tactics progress and consolidated influence—winning only if they manage to outscore the enemy crew.

Personal Opinion

Mindclash Games has carved out a unique reputation in the international hobby as a publisher with an unmistakable identity, famous for releasing demanding eurogames where thematic integration strives to go one step further. Far from settling for interchangeable backdrops, the Hungarian outfit has always pushed to make its mechanical frameworks breathe the setting they establish. To pull this off, their designers and developers never hesitate to weave dense, intricate webs where every mechanism attempts to mirror some aspect of the world brought to the table.

This philosophy has yielded titles such as Trickerion: Legends of Illusion (tocho-review here) and Anachrony (tocho-review here). In the former, backstage prep, apprentice delegation, and the stagecraft of illusionist tricks interlock through structural layers that genuinely evoke nineteenth-century vaudeville. Meanwhile, the latter leans into temporal manipulation where quantum paradoxes and borrowing assets from future rounds anchor a worker placement engine rich in interaction. In both instances, theme serves as the keystone justifying an intricate rulebook that can occasionally feel overloaded with minutiae.

However, this compulsion to pile on layers and sub-systems frequently bogs down the experience, leaving a lingering impression that certain mechanics exist merely to prop up worldbuilding rather than fulfill an essential structural role in the core loop.

This is precisely why I approach every new release from this studio with caution, and here we find ourselves once again. Let us see how Revenant handles on the table, not without first thanking Maldito Games for providing the review copy that made this deep dive possible.

In a cosmos shattered by the fall of the Domineum, humanity faces its twilight hour before the relentless tide of the Voidborn. The sole glimmer of survival rests upon the Revenant, a colossal imperial flagship hastily repurposed to safeguard the accumulated knowledge, history, and legacy of an entire civilization.

Yet this exodus toward the rim of known space is anything but a peaceful voyage: the fleet travels under siege from lethal corruption and shadowed by the remnants of the Great Houses—factions whose fragile truce barely conceals a cutthroat political struggle to claim dominion over tomorrow’s uncertain dawn.

A game of Revenant spans four cycles partitioned into phases, centered around the action phase where players take three turns deploying their crew—a captain and two cadets—to board ships across the shared fleet or their own frigate.

Boarding advances influence with the corresponding House and triggers the vessel’s specific action, allowing players to maneuver, engage Voidborn craft, mine planetary resources, or prime the Revenant’s internal systems, closing the turn with a secondary action chosen from their personal frigate board.

Once actions are spent, a skirmish phase resolves where enemy ships assault every sector of the formation. Frigate positioning dictates which player allocates incoming damage, determining which allied vessels take hits or are destroyed, and when to let damage spill onto the Revenant itself. Subsequently, depending on player choices, the game triggers an alien invasion wave or a hyperspace jump that wipes the board clean and recalibrates key parameters before launching into the next cycle.

Victory is decided in an endgame count dominated by faction scoring. The lion’s share of points comes from multiplying total influence with each House (across public tracks and secret cards) by that faction’s surviving power, represented by the count of its ships still floating on the board. Added to this are points earned from secret agendas, crew specialization, frigate enhancements, and surplus resources, offset by penalties for uncontained corruption.

With this structural summary, you should have a solid grasp of what Revenant brings to the table, allowing us to dive into gameplay dynamics and table feel. What strikes you first upon setting up is that quintessential publisher hallmark: a heavy conceptual load.

This is not necessarily due to deep mechanical complexity—at its heart, the core framework was laid out in those preceding paragraphs—but rather down to a relentless accumulation of corner-case rules, placement constraints, procedural exceptions, and an overwhelming volume of iconography.

The sheer density of symbols and cross-dependencies clutters the visual space during opening turns, requiring constant deciphering that stumbles a flow that should feel far more direct and intuitive. Across initial sessions, keeping the rulebook and glossary within arm’s reach is unavoidable, especially when subtle graphic variations carry radically different mechanical meanings.

Sadly, this heavy cognitive load fails to yield an emergent narrative that justifies the steep barrier to entry. Beneath its veneer of desperate space opera, the layers of sub-rules and visual clutter collapse into an almost rudimentary core: push up the tracks of your chosen Houses and ensure those factions keep as many ships alive on the board as possible.

As a result, the military struggle against the Voidborn loses its tension, boiling down to a sterile math exercise where the sci-fi setting barely conceals a classic stock-holding system reminiscent of titles like The Rich and The Good (tocho-review here) or Airlines Europe (tocho-review here). Each step along a House track functions like a company share, whose value is tied directly to the number of that faction’s ships floating on the board.

Alongside this market struggle, the design offers an alternative, self-contained scoring route rooted in upgrading personal infrastructure. Specializing your crew by attaching cards to cadets, souping up your frigate, or advancing your captain’s rank provides a dependable pool of points immune to board fluctuations.

Building out this personal engine requires significant resource gathering, meaning many of your turns must be spent stockpiling goods. Naturally, every action devoted to personal upgrades is one less opportunity to maneuver, protect, or boost the faction ships that truly drive endgame scores.

I would love to report that once this steep learning curve is conquered, the design takes flight and hums smoothly, but that is far from reality. Compounding the friction of its dense visual language is an upkeep procedure between rounds and phases that proves downright tedious.

The procedural chore of checking standings, working through skirmish attacks sector by sector (determining who assigns hits each time), replenishing cubes, updating Revenant failures, and drafting new scanner decks breaks all momentum, dragging the game down to a crawl.

While player turns do speed up once the sequence becomes second nature, the maintenance never quite fades into the background. Consider that a full game of Revenant amounts to just twelve actions per player, yet keeping playtime under 35 or 40 minutes per person remains a formidable challenge.

This downtime does not stem from analysis paralysis during worker placement, as individual ship actions are fairly straightforward: move, shoot, or resolve a printed effect. Even though cadet upgrades, ranks, and frigate bonuses allow for satisfying synergies, the real bottleneck lies in upkeep phases that pause play for five to ten minutes to adjust tracks, allocate damage, and maintain board state without procedural errors.

Revenant ends up being a textbook case of over-engineering—much ado about very little. What we have here is a game that brings an enormous conceptual weight, a rulebook packed with fussy caveats, and an iconographic maze simply to frame an ordinary core premise. All that mechanical scaffolding and plastic fleet dressing fails to generate a spark of emergent storytelling on the board.

Admittedly, friction does arise around the table when coordinating fleet defense and preventing incoming hits from overwhelming the Revenant. Even so, this interactive layer lacks real bite. The prospect of flagship failure usually resolves into a shared, blanket penalty that, in most instances, feels minor rather than crippling.

Because damage hurts everyone equally (or brushes off harmlessly if a player’s setup happens to sidestep that specific penalty), the threat feels muted, sapping urgency and reducing what should be a dramatic survival crisis into an acceptable operational cost.

If forced to highlight Revenant’s strongest asset, it would be the tactical maneuvering involved in shaping fleet formation. The shared armada functions like a collective neutral entity that players manipulate to serve their own ends, recalling the dynamic seen with Frederick II in Stupor Mundi (tocho-review here).

Watching players feather their own nests by repositioning fighters to clear out danger in pet sectors or steering enemy fire toward rival House ships sparks genuine table talk and competitive posturing.

This dynamic makes Revenant shine brightest at four players. For starters, information symmetry works much better here: everyone knows each competitor holds an agenda pushing them to preserve specific ship types. At lower player counts, certain ship categories reward no one, softening the tug-of-war over damage assignment. Furthermore, even with scaling rules for hostile spawns, a full table weathers the storm with greater tactical flexibility, to say nothing of the volatile, cutthroat swings across House power tracks.

Replayability is harder to champion; once the eurogame core reveals its conventional nature, enthusiasm to bring it back to the table wanes. The staggering variety offered by different ark ships, planet decks, operation cards, and captain boards cannot compensate for a stop-and-go tempo that smothers long-term engagement.

The retail release dropped alongside an expansion, Reason and Faith, offering two modular, mutually exclusive expansions that primarily amplify conceptual overhead and decision branches without delivering substantial depth. The Reason module introduces an independent faction vessel granting global upgrades whose final scoring hinges on how many of these ships survive. Conversely, the Faith module introduces edicts that trigger during upkeep based on a marker’s track position, which shifts according to which Houses players board during the action phase.

While the former simply broadens tactical paths for players hunting variability, the latter attempts to inject player friction via a branching event, forcing players to weigh how their worker placement moves will sway the outcome. In essence, it amounts to more choices and more administrative upkeep tacked onto an already overloaded system—making it an expendable expansion for a largely expendable game.

For full disclosure, I have not played Voidfall, so I cannot assess how closely this title echoes the feel of its predecessor or whether it merely borrows the IP as a commercial umbrella. Even so, the design contrast is glaring: where Voidfall is a true 4X, Revenant is fundamentally a stock-holding speculation game wrapped in space opera clothing.

It clearly yearns to capture the desperate exodus of Battlestar Galactica, both in narrative premise and board game heritage, but you will find neither paranoia nor cinematic dread here—just calculated stock manipulation masquerading as fleet defense.

Turning to production, the retail edition feels measured and practical. The highlight is undoubtedly the dual-layer ship boards, which neatly lock crew pawns and damage cubes in place during play. Otherwise, the punchboard elements offer standard thickness and density, accompanied by nicely sculpted plastic markers. The cards boast excellent linen-finish cardstock with great elasticity. The rulebook is structured reasonably well, though it remains easy to overlook fine details such as fighter strafe mechanics.

Visually, the cover presents a striking, highly dramatic vertical composition dominated by warm volcanic hues as the flagship climbs against the horizon, contrasted by an intense cyan engine wake. Component art pivots toward functionality: cards feature clean iconography, utilitarian borders, and retro-futuristic UI layouts. Planet and maneuver illustrations, while small, inject a welcome vintage pulp sci-fi flavor. It is a sleek and understated package, even if it lacks true visual grandeur. Where it falls short is in its tangled, overburdened iconography, which could have benefited from a simpler graphic design pass.

And let’s wrap this up. Revenant blends worker placement with a speculative stock-driving engine centered around faction ship survival and track advancement. Maneuvering the communal fleet and offloading enemy fire onto rival factions delivers glimpses of sharp table interaction, but these highlights end up buried under suffocating cognitive bloat. A dense web of exceptions, unintuitive iconography, and stop-and-start upkeep phases continuously sabotage game tempo. Despite teasing an epic space opera, the theme fades into cold arithmetic where combat damage lacks bite and emotional stakes. A production packed with excess baggage that ultimately lands flat. For all these reasons, I give it a…