I have four Martin Wallace games in my collection. But only one of them hadn’t been played before.

Via Nebula had been on my radar a while before it finally joined my collection last year. An opportunity to get a second hand copy for a bargain price cropped up on the Facebook page I hang out on. I say hang out, more lurk waiting for bargains to appear.

Last night at the fortnightly Friday meet up of Fenland Gamers (hosted once again by the ever generous The Luxe Cinema) after nearly a year sitting on the shelf gathering dust, it finally had a moment in the spotlight.

As usual for us, this was a learning game. I had watched a rules video briefly during the afternoon, and scanned the rule book. So I felt I had a good grasp of the basic ideas and flow of the game. Specifics could be dealt with as we played.

Set up is a doddle. We used the basic side of the board as recommended for first plays.

The headline is we loved the game. Three of use playing the game for the first time, learnt the game and finished it in under an hour.

The rules really are simple and quick to learn. On your turn you get two actions to take from five available things you can do. Although one of those options takes two actions to do.

I really do like the combination of route building and pick up and deliver. You get some really difficult decisions to make. Because you might want to place a meadow tile to open up a path you need to get a resource back to your building site. But by doing so it also benefits your opponents. Possibly giving them a route they can use to get a resource they need back to their building site.

The same goes for exploiting resources. It’s these decisions that make the game more tactical and have more depth than first impressions give with such simple rules.

It’s nice that the points scored by completing contracts and exploiting resources is hidden. It’s nice having that bit of mystery.

There is a lot of replay ability in the game. The random position of resources during set up, the random private contracts, and deck of open contracts. No two games will be the same.

Via Nebula is a fun game that will definitely be coming to the table again. Despite Jonathan wining the game.

We finished off the evening with a couple of games of Batman Love Letter. The honours were split between The Usual Suspect and myself.

It’s getting a bit cliched but we had a great evening gaming, at a fantastic host The Luxe Cinema.