Review: Nucleum – Gilbraltar

Introduction & Overview

As the world plunges headlong into the energy revolution, governments investigate new ways to harness nuclear power, including applications for military advancements. In a historic collaboration, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, and Morocco have launched a joint initiative to develop the first nuclear-powered submarine, selecting Gibraltar as the focal point of this ambitious endeavor. Build unprecedented, groundbreaking structures, fulfill military demands, drive industrial progress, and leave your mark on history!

This is the premise behind Nucleum: Gibraltar, the fourth expansion for the design by Simone Luciani (Grand Austria Hotel, Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar) and Dávid Turczi (Imperium, Tawantinsuyu: The Inca Empire). First published in 2026 by Board&Dice in an English edition. The illustrations are handled by Andreas Resch (Istanbul, Il Vecchio, Great Western Trail) and Piotr Sokołowski (Loot, Merchants).

Published in Spanish by Maldito Games (remaining language-independent, just like the base game). It retains the core parameters of the base game: games for 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 14 and an approximate running time of 60 to 150 minutes. The MSRP is €35. For this review, a copy of the Spanish edition from Maldito Games was used, kindly provided by the publisher as a review copy.

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 29.7×29.7×4.1 cm (a square box similar to Ticket to Ride expansions), we find the following components:

• Double-Sided Gibraltar Main Board (punchboard)
• Urban Development Offer Secondary Board (punchboard)
• 2 Secondary Board Overlay Tiles (punchboard)
• 16 Special Urban Building Tiles (punchboard)
• 8 Military Contract Tiles (punchboard)
• 9 Military Technology Tiles (punchboard)
• 6 Contract Tiles (punchboard)
• 6 Action Tiles (punchboard)
• 4 Special Shipping Action Tiles (1 in each player color) (punchboard)
• 1 Milestone Tile (punchboard)
• 13 Setup Cards (62.5×88 mm)
• 3 Neutral Ships (wooden)
• 16 Ships (4 in each player color) (wooden)
• 16 Urban Development Markers (4 in each player color) (wooden)
• 4 Additional Player Aids (punchboard)
• Rulebook

How to Play

Nucleum: Gibraltar is an expansion that introduces a new map centered on the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. It adds navigable maritime routes using ships to connect networks and transport coal or uranium, alongside military contracts that reward exclusive technologies when linking Gibraltar to various points across the board. Furthermore, it incorporates special urban buildings—more powerful alternative tiles that replace standard buildings to provide advanced effects—and a new type of chaining action tile that allows players to execute two tiles in a single turn. If you are unfamiliar with the base game, I recommend checking out the corresponding tocho-review, as many concepts explained there are referenced throughout.

Key Concepts

Let us start with the Main Board. It is a double-sided board tailored to player count, depicting the Iberian Peninsula, Morocco, and the strait separating them. It displays a network of cities and railway lines, while introducing several distinctive elements: the city of Gibraltar itself, considered colorless when connecting tracks; the Imperial Cities of Morocco, which award additional points for electrified buildings within them; a central staging area for military contracts; shipping sea lanes; and dedicated spaces for the permanent and regular import of coal from Turkey and England.

Next up are the Urban Development Offer Secondary Board and the Special Urban Building Tiles. The secondary board serves as an auxiliary display with four spaces hosting the four levels of these special building tiles, while also detailing the extra coin cost required to construct them. These tiles represent advanced structures (factories, laboratories, residences, government offices, or composite buildings) that players can draft from this display to replace and remove from the game the matching-level, standard building from their personal player board during an urbanize action. Once energized later on, these tiles grant substantial immediate bonuses and additional endgame scoring criteria.

Closely tied to this are the Urban Development Markers, which are placed atop each special urban building tile the moment a player builds it on the map. They serve to permanently establish ownership of the structure and prevent other players from interacting with it, while simultaneously capping the number of special urban buildings any single player can erect during the game.

The Military Contract Tiles are arranged in the designated Gibraltar area on the main board, displaying specific connection criteria that demand linking Gibraltar to designated cities or infrastructure types via the player’s own network. Once completed, they are neither discarded nor removed from the offer for other players; their core role is to serve as prerequisites to immediately and exclusively unlock one of the available military technologies in play, with higher-level contracts also demanding a uranium activation cost.

Positioned beneath the military contracts are the Military Technology Tiles, divided into three tiers that are revealed at the start of the game. Unlike standard experiment technologies, these tiles provide permanent ongoing benefits or endgame scoring conditions that slide directly underneath the player’s experiment board once the matching military contract is fulfilled, activating immediately without counting toward the standard technology limit.

The expansion also features New Contract Tiles and a New Milestone Tile. The contracts are shuffled into the silver, gold, and purple decks of the base game, offering requirements tailored to the new geography—such as connecting key cities across the map or energizing buildings in the Imperial Cities to reap points, income bumps, or technologies. Meanwhile, the milestone tile is shuffled alongside the base game milestones, introducing an endgame goal rewarding players based on the number of special urban buildings constructed on the map.

Turning to action tiles, we find six standard Action Tiles added to the general supply (some tied to special urban buildings) alongside the Special Shipping Action Tiles. Each player receives one of the latter as a starting tile featuring the chaining mechanic: it allows executing the action to place a ship in the water and then, immediately within that same turn, playing a second, non-chaining action tile directly on top of it to resolve its actions, effectively expanding each participant’s starting tile hand.

Ships were originally introduced in Nucleum: Australia. Their functional purpose is to occupy maritime shipping spaces on the board via the appropriate action, operating as sea lanes that expand the player’s network across open water to transport coal and uranium, or to enable importing coal from overseas production hubs to connected coastal cities; however, they cannot conduct electricity.

Finally, we have the Setup Cards, a set of thirteen illustrated cards replacing those of the base game during initial deployment. Their role is to randomize the initial layout of components on the Gibraltar board, outlining the starting position of the initial nucleum, neutral urban buildings, rubble markers on construction spaces, and neutral ships on sea lanes.

That is enough to get started.

Setup

In addition to standard base game setup, apply the following steps:

• Place the Gibraltar main board in the center of the table showing the side matching the player count, placing the auxiliary board beside it.
• Place the coal import wagon tiles faceup on the indicated spaces within the Turkey import area.
• Next, place the urban development offer secondary board next to the main board.
• Sort the special urban building tiles into four stacks by tier and shuffle each stack separately, placing them onto their designated spaces on the urban development display.
• Set aside the two special action tiles bearing the designated icon and position them beside the urban development board.
• After separating the 20 basic action tiles from the base game, add the four action tiles from this expansion to the remaining 30 and shuffle them together, proceeding with regular action tile setup.
• Place the endgame overlay tile over its corresponding slot on the endgame conditions area of the auxiliary board.
• Next, set the milestone overlay tile over the second Nucleum slot of the auxiliary board, rather than placing a Nucleum token there.
• Shuffle the new milestone tile in with the base game milestone tiles before drawing the four used for the match.
• Remove contract cards C06, C13, C24, and C26 from the base game.
• Add the new contracts to their respective stacks before shuffling them, incorporating two silver, two gold, and two purple contracts.
• Place the victory point flag marker beneath space “75” on the score track, or beneath space “95” if also playing with the Court of Progress expansion.
• Set the coal power plant stand in Melilla and three power plant stands in each city displaying the matching icon, returning the spare stand to the box.
• Using the new Gibraltar setup cards, place the starting Nucleum, neutral urban buildings, and rubble tiles following regular rules; in cities showing the corresponding icon, the rubble tile is placed over the special urban building space.
• Place neutral ships on the sea routes depicted on the first revealed setup card, using three neutral ships in two-player games and two neutral ships in three- or four-player games.
• Randomly select three military contracts and place them onto their designated spaces on the main board, returning the rest to the box.
• Draw one military technology tile at random from each of the three tiers and place them faceup below the military contract row: tier I on the slot without uranium, tier II on the slot showing one uranium icon, and tier III on the one showing two uranium icons, boxing the remainder.
• Each player receives the new special shipping action tile, adding it to their starting hand, alongside four ships in their color, four urban development markers in their color, and an additional player aid.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

This expansion introduces new mechanics, actions, and strategic avenues that shape turn structures as follows:

• Chaining Tiles. Enable players to execute a sequence of actions within a single turn:
  • They can never be placed as railway tracks on the main board, and no more than one may be played per turn.
  • The player places it on their personal board, completely resolves its printed action, and immediately plays a standard action tile (or their special directive tile) directly on top to carry out those actions.
  • They do not allow fulfilling an extra contract during that same turn.
• Maritime Routes and Ship Placement. Using the new ship placement action, a player may position one of their 4 ships onto any sea route where they do not already have a presence, without needing it connected to their existing network:
  • The cost is 1 thaler plus 1 additional thaler per ship (friendly or opponent) already present along that route.
  • A sea lane occupied by your ship expands your network exactly like a completed railway track, allowing transport of your own coal and uranium. However, it cannot transmit power, nor does it grant access to opponents’ ships.
  • They do not count as railway track tiles for contracts, milestones, or scoring technologies.
  • Linking shipping routes to England or Turkey allows importing coal into connected cities. Importing from England incurs a flat fee of 2 thalers per coal (up to a maximum of 2 coal per energize action). Direct connections along Bilbao–England and Melilla–Turkey remain permanently open to all players without requiring ships. These long-distance sea lanes do not belong to player networks.
• Special Urban Buildings. When performing an urbanize action, a player may swap out the standard urban building they were about to construct for a tile from the Special Urban Building display:
  • It must match the tier and type of the building removed from the personal board (with the exception of composite buildings, which can be placed on any building space and substitute any type). The replaced building is returned to the box.
  • The player must pay the thaler surcharge shown on the offer board and place an urban development marker on the tile to claim ownership (they are not neutral buildings).
  • The game board features designated spaces reserved exclusively for these structures.
  • Once energized, they yield unique immediate perks and effects, while functioning as standard buildings for all other gameplay purposes.
• Military Contracts and Military Technologies. The board provides military contracts linked to exclusive military technologies:
  • They cannot be acquired via standard contract actions.
  • To fulfill them, the player must encompass both Gibraltar and the specific requirement detailed on the card (designated buildings, cities, or board elements) within their unified network.
  • They are claimed in the same manner as purple contracts as soon as the condition is satisfied. Contracts in the second and third slots require paying an additional uranium fee to complete.
  • Upon completion, the player claims the linked military technology and tucks it under their experiment board. They are treated as immediately active, do not replace experiment technologies, and do not contribute toward the 8-technology endgame trigger. Military contract spaces are never refilled.
• Gibraltar Board Specifics:
  • The City of Gibraltar. Functions as a colorless space. Color matching with railway tracks connecting to it is impossible (even when using wildcards); therefore, at most 1 action on the placed tile can ever be resolved. In return, nearly every track space leading into Gibraltar awards an immediate printed bonus collected prior to resolving the action.
  • Track Placement Rewards. Select connections on the board grant immediate rewards upon building the track (such as uranium, thalers, or income track steps) before resolving the tile’s actions.
  • Power Plants. Placing a Nucleum on any power plant across this map allows players to either unlock a tier 1 technology or gain 1 uranium.
  • Milestone Track. The first player to reach the second space on the track removes the overlay tile and immediately collects 1 worker or 2 thalers (instead of placing a Nucleum token).
  • Imperial Cities (Fez, Marrakech, Meknes, and Rabat). Feature dedicated associated contracts and grant built-in endgame victory points for buildings energized within them.

Game End

The game end is triggered when a set number of endgame conditions are fulfilled (in 3- and 4-player games, 3 conditions are required instead of the customary 2, whereas 1- and 2-player games retain the threshold of 2 conditions). Once triggered, the current round is completed, and each player gets one final turn before moving to final scoring. When tallying a player’s score, alongside the standard base game scoring avenues, evaluate the following:

• Energized Buildings in Imperial Cities: 4 additional victory points for each energized building located in Fez, Marrakech, Meknes, or Rabat.
• Tier III Military Technologies: Variable victory points based on the objective outlined on the acquired Tier III Military Technology tile (bonus to Milestone multipliers, points per Special Urban Building built, or points tied to advanced income markers).
• Special Urban Buildings: Victory points printed directly on each tile if energized, which grant either a flat point reward or a variable bonus tied to a specific printed scoring criterion (similar to government buildings).

Personal Opinion

Board&Dice operates under a rather peculiar publishing model. By editorial decree, virtually every heavyweight eurogame they release must receive an expansion barely a year after hitting shelves. Far from creating hype, this persistent cadence breeds skepticism across the board gaming community. And understandably so: it fosters the nagging impression that base games ship with cut content or unrefined development, turning subsequent expansions into an almost mandatory toll just to experience the complete design intended from the start.

Reflecting on their catalog, few titles from the Polish publisher feel truly rounded straight out of the box. In this regard, Nucleum proves to be the exception that proves the rule, largely thanks to Simone Luciani’s guiding hand. The Italian designer keeps a firm grip on Dávid Turczi—a creator known to drift toward conceptual clutter and baroque mechanical excess—tempering the system into an engine where every cog meshes naturally without relying on artificial gimmicks.

Yet if the publisher already stretches designs that merely pass muster, what did you expect would happen once they struck gold with a genuine crowd-pleaser? Naturally, they threw open the floodgates to churn out expansions as if there were no tomorrow. The volume of physical components has reached that critical mass where fitting everything into the core box is impossible, making the eventual announcement of a big box to organize this mountain of cardboard and wood feel all but inevitable.

For now, we turn our attention to the latest expansion, the second to provide an alternate map board following Nucleum: Australia (read the tocho-review here). Let us see how this addition fares on the table, but not before thanking Maldito Games for providing the review copy that made this extensive write-up possible. As always, if you need a refresher on the base game, head over to the corresponding tocho-review for all the foundational background.

This expansion shifts the focus of the atomic revolution to the Mediterranean basin, specifically the Strait of Gibraltar. Set in an alternate history steeped in military geopolitics, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco join forces on a massive joint project: building the world’s first nucleum-powered submarine. The strategic outpost becomes a hotbed of investors and industrial tycoons eager to forge cross-border networks between Europe and North Africa, where military arms racing and civilian growth unfold side by side.

Mechanically speaking, Nucleum: Gibraltar brings two key additions to the table. The first is special urban buildings. These inject tremendous dynamism into urbanize actions by offering a market of structures that replace standard player tiles. When taking an urbanize action, players may forfeit a regular personal building, pay a thaler surcharge, and construct a special building instead, marking it with an urban development marker in their color.

This alternative dramatically alters typical payout curves; for instance, erecting an advanced level-three laboratory demands five extra thalers, but energizing it rewards two potent level-two technologies instead of the standard level-three payout. Consequently, players enjoy asymmetrical avenues of growth with virtually zero added mechanical friction. The only minor drawback is that, with an open public display, early plays can feel overwhelming as players struggle to process the diverse abilities on offer—a sensation reminiscent of Caverna (see its tocho-review) and its sprawling wall of room tiles.

The second core element revolves around the submarine project and military contracts, creating an engaging race dynamic. Because Gibraltar is a colorless hub, it never triggers double rail actions, yet it offsets this downside with lucrative printed connection bonuses and access to exclusive military technologies. For example, connecting Zaragoza to Gibraltar allows fulfilling a military contract (provided the uranium cost is paid) that unlocks permanent perks, such as boosting ship deployment or escalating endgame scoring multipliers. Players who adapt their rail lines southward quickly enough will reap significant rewards.

The third mechanical element is not brand new, having debuted in Nucleum: Australia, but it makes a welcome return here: maritime shipping routes and ship placement, providing an alternative means to forge links across the Strait. While these sea lanes do not count as railway tracks for specific milestones or scoring tech, they expand personal networks and enable the movement of coal and uranium without solely relying on overland lines. This is vital for tapping into North African uranium or utilizing coal deposits in Melilla and the UK. Best of all is the additional starting action tile, which accelerates board development and helps players cycle through their tile racks toward maintenance phases with greater agility.

Looking at the board design, the geographic rift formed by the Strait of Gibraltar works wonderfully, generating constant tension when weaving networks and connecting the Iberian Peninsula to North Africa. This divide strains logistics while transforming the rail approaches toward the submarine into intensely contested territory. The immediate rewards granted by these neutral connections offer such a critical early boost that no player can safely afford to bypass them.

Ranking the game’s expansions, Nucleum: Gibraltar might very well be the most satisfying release so far. For starters, it introduces virtually no extra rules overhead beyond ships—which players of Nucleum: Australia will already know inside out—unlike Court of Progress (reviewed here), which, while enjoyable, noticeably bogs down game flow. Nor does it require exhaustive analysis of vast option trees like Innovation.

Component quality matches the standard set by previous expansions and the core box. The punchboard pieces feature good thickness with slightly loose die-cutting, while the setup cards have decent linen-finish cardstock and solid snap (sleeving is unnecessary since they are only handled during setup). The rulebook is logically organized, packed with helpful visual examples to clarify edge cases. Visually, it preserves the game’s bold aesthetic, utilizing high-contrast, vivid hues that excel functionally during play. As mentioned earlier, if you own prior expansions, you know everything will not fit inside the base box; keeping at least one expansion box on hand is mandatory to store the entire collection.

And let’s wrap this up. Nucleum: Gibraltar stands out as an exceptionally polished expansion that enriches network building, urban development, and resource logistics without bloating the core design. The special urban buildings introduce deeply satisfying asymmetry, while the neutral route into the submarine and its military contracts foster an exciting logistical race loaded with indirect interaction. The Mediterranean split forces players to rethink coal and uranium supply chains amidst tight geographical competition. Although the public building market can induce initial analysis paralysis, the overall package delivers remarkable dynamism, variety, and tactical bite, making it an essential addition to any Nucleum collection. For all these reasons, it earns a…