Fantastic Factories: Manufactions Preview

Last year was an excellent year for engine building games. One of our family’s favorites has to be Fantastic Factories. It’s a fast paced industry building game that we love to play with the kids. Players are rolling and allocating dice to build blueprints to our score their opponents.

If you’re a fan of Fantastic Factories, here’s some great news. Deep Water Games is publishing a new expansion that brings more depth and corporate factions that have variable powers. We spent some time with the game and here’s what we found.

Corporate Life

Fantastic Factories: Manufactions brings corporation cards to the game which is really cool. Players choose a corporate factions to play as at the start of the game. Each of these have star complexity ratings that will give you an idea of how tough they are to use during the game.

The corporation will give the player starting resources along with the number of blueprint cards you’ll start with. I especially love the corporations that allow you to pull 6 or 7 cards then pick 2 or 3 to start with. Having your choice of starting blue print cards can be a big perk.

Each corporation has an ongoing ability that players are able to use during the game. These abilities have a really wide range and can help players pick a strategy as the game begins. These can offer discounts on building monument cards, multiple activations for training cards, bonuses during the market phase, additional dice and more.

Blueprint and Contractors

Fantastic Factories: Manufactions adds loads of new blueprints and contractors to the game. Because players can only own 1 of each building (unless noted), this opens up lots of possibilities as you build. Some of these new blueprints have some more advanced mechanics. Buildings like the Think Tank award 4 identical die faces with 2 crates and a complete reroll of their dice.

Fans of training blueprints will love the City Park which reduces the activation cost of these buildings. The Pharmacy and Vending Machine buildings give players “vitamins” which allow players to change a die value by 1 in either direction.

Players who enjoy hiring contractor cards will have a lot to look forward to in Fantastic Factories: Manufactions. These new contractors add more depth to the game. It’s tough to pass up when the Recruiter (reveal the next 2 contractors and hire for free) or Tycoon (take all 4 contractor cards in the marketplace) come to the table.

Fantastic Factories: Manufactions is more of the engine building game that our family loves. The addition of the variable corporate factions is a nice touch and only one of the reasons why this expansion is worth checking out.

Check out the Fantastic Factories: Manufactions along with another expansion Subterfuge on Kickstarter now through October 27, 2020.

A prototype of the game was provided for this coverage. Components and rules covered in this preview are not finalized. Read more about our preview policies at One Board Family.