Details
Game Design: Adam Španěl and Řiman
Artists: Jiří Kůs, Jiří Mikovec, Jakub Politzer, and Ondřej Hrdina
Publisher: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Player Count: 1-4
Estimated Play Time: 30 minutes per player
Box Size: 11.75” x 11.75” x 3”
Quick Debrief
This competitive deck-building game takes one to four players into an abandoned mine and tasks them with drilling, exploring, and collecting minerals to earn the most victory points. Each game will reveal a variety of different cards as players move through three phases: Operations, Surfacing, and Upkeep. You’ll need to customize your deck to give your mech the power and features needed to dive deeper into the mine and collect more valuable minerals and Mine Tiles.
Drillers is an instant favorite.The fun art and solid deck-building mechanics captured me during my first game. The ease of setup, the comfortable playtime, the face-up deck mechanic, satisfying combos, and the Drone Tokens are all highlights for me. There is also a great sense of tension as you weigh your options between staying inside the mine, racing for victory points, and strengthening your mech’s capabilities. I expect CGE to support and expand this game as a new flagship franchise.
Current Status: Essential Equipment (Must Own)
Overall, this is an excellent addition to my collection of deck-building games and offers some unique twists with a quirky, amusing theme. I’d recommend this game to fans of Lost Ruins of Arnak as well as deck-building games with quick turns. And if you really like mining and custom mechs, this also might catch your interest.
⬇️ Keep reading for my full thoughts ⬇️
Initial Observations
I have been a huge fan of Lost Ruins of Arnak to the point that I quickly went from owning just the base game to filling the Adventure Chest with expansions and promo cards. And thus, CGE immediately caught my attention when they announced a new deck-building game. Mining with customizable mechs and racing for victory points from Mine Tiles was enough to get me to preorder in April 2026.
I ordered Drillers along with the Upgraded Components and received the Omnidrone promo card as a preorder bonus.
Gameplay
Drillers combines many popular deck-building mechanics with some fun twists and thematic elements. The game is a race to collect the most victory points and become a Driller of Legend. Every player will start with the same deck of nine cards, many of which are worth negative victory points at the end of the game and represent the cobbled together assortment of scavenged parts used to build your mech. Once players have excavated the minerals, corridors, and floors, the mine will reach its critical limit and the game ends as the mine collapses. Hopefully, your mech isn’t still inside the mine, because you will lose victory points if you don’t escape before the collapse.
Each turn is divided into three phases: Operations, Surfacing, and Upkeep. Players will always have the opportunity to complete the Operations and Upkeep phase. If a player’s mech is on the Surface at the end of the Operations phase, they will conduct the Surfacing phase.
The Operations phase feels similar to many deck-builders in my collection such as Lost Ruins of Arnak, Star Realms, or Marvel Legendary. You can play your cards from your hand, one by one, in any order. Cards can be used two different ways: generating fuel (the main resource for playing cards) or burning fuel to activate special effects. You will need to manage your fuel gauge as you play cards for Movement and Drills. These two resources only last until the end of your turn, so you must use them wisely. Movement allows your mech to move between the surface and different floors of the mine, and Drills help you collect minerals, carve out new corridors, or break barriers to lower floors. As you upgrade your deck with new cards, you’ll have access to more fuel efficient and powerful abilities. New cards also provide you special effects, like the ability to upgrade minerals to their more valuable counterparts.
In addition to playing cards, your mech has a few other abilities like basic movement and drilling functions as well as Drone Tokens. While in the mines, you are too far away from the shops on the Surface, but you can send a Drone upward to sell minerals and buy new parts for your mechs. Your Drones are a limited use resource that will need to be refreshed if you want to stay in the mines longer while still collecting credits and upgrading your mech.
You can even intentionally damage your mech for more fuel. This could lead to negative victory points at the end of the game, but will allow you to push your mech harder down in the mines!
A key component of the mines are the Floor Cards and Mine Tiles. Each floor will have a randomly assigned card changing up the rules with mandatory effects that activate on reveal, when excavating a corridor, when collecting a mineral, and/or ending Operations. The Corridor Mine Tiles and Barrier Mine Tiles are worth varying victory points and change up the game by adding new minerals to each floor or opening up the mine to deeper levels. Like the Idol Tokens in Lost Ruins of Arnak, the Mine Tiles are worth a set amount of victory points, but you can flip them over, reducing the victory point value in exchange for bonuses like blue batteries that power upgraded cards’ special abilities, card draws, and credits. The final tiles you can collect are achievement tiles. Players earn them by racing across their Progress Tracks. The recipient earns victory points while providing a resource bonus to all other players. This provides Drillers with an elegant catch-up mechanic to prevent one player from gaining too big of a lead in victory points.
The Surfacing phase only occurs when you complete your Operations phase with your mech on the Surface. This unique twist along with the Drones forces you to decide when to sell minerals and spend credits on new cards versus seeking out more victory points in the mines. In Drillers, the upgraded cards you purchase at the shops aren’t worth victory points at the end of the game, but they are necessary if you want to accomplish more in the mines. Additionally, unlike the usage limits on Drones, while on the Surface, you can sell all of the minerals in your storage at once and buy as many cards as you can afford. Among the card shops, there are Advanced Technology cards, representing tech leftover from whatever corporation originally built the mine. A blue battery, only found on Mine Tiles, is required to purchase and power the Advanced Technology cards, accessing a whole new range of powerful abilities!
The final benefit of coming to the shops is that you can refuel your mech for free, upgrade your fuel and mineral storage for a fee, and repair your mech for a fee. Repair is this deck-builder’s version of trashing or removing unwanted cards from your deck. Because most starting cards are worth negative victory points, you’re incentivized to repair them out of your deck and replace them with cards from the different shops. And because the shop decks are organized by card type, you’ll always have access to cards that offer specific advantages you may need such as more Drills, more Movement, Drone refreshing, or Repair actions.
The final phase of a turn is the Upkeep phase. This is a pretty standard board game phase where you decide if you’ll keep unplayed cards in your hand for the next round, move played cards to your discard pile, draw three new cards, and refill the card shops. The fun part of Drillers is that there is no hand size limit so you could keep all the cards in your hand (if you have enough fuel) to build up for a big turn on the next round. And because you always draw three cards, you can plan ahead by buying specific cards, which will go on top of your deck.
This cycle continues until someone has retrieved enough Mine Tiles to fill their Progress Track and trigger the end of the game, then every other player will have one last turn before the Driller of Legend is decided.
Field Testing and Replayability
I’ve played against the solo bot, against one other player, and against two other players. And I really enjoyed each player count. They all feel different and I felt like I used a different strategy each game.
An aspect of the solo mode that I enjoyed the most was the bot’s ability to clear cards from the shops. While there were some frustrating moments when a card I really wanted was wiped before I could purchase it, it was fun having a built-in mechanic to circulate new cards in and out of the shops. One of the novelties of a deck-building game is the various cards and their abilities, and the Corporate Bot aids in seeing more of the shop decks.
While this is a competitive multiplayer game where you race for the most victory points, I appreciate that this game doesn’t feel mean or combative. You will certainly take a card or Mine Tile that another player wants, which can lead to some mild frustration, but I like that this is a game where I can happily watch another player pull off card combos. Seeing any player drill, collect, and sell multiple minerals in a single turn and still have the resources to buy a fancy advanced card is exciting.
Drillers has a casual, exploratory vibe where I feel comfortable applauding impressive actions and I don’t feel like I’m shut out from doing the same thing on my turn. In fact, the player interaction with the Mine Tiles is important because removing Barrier Mine Tiles opens up floors with more valuable minerals and collecting Corridor Mine Tiles releases a pool of minerals for the next player to snatch up.
I think the shop decks are large and varied enough that every player has the opportunity to purchase something cool and useful. The permanent cards are especially cool because these horizontal cards are never added to your deck and instead are placed next to your dashboard providing reliable effects each Operations phase. And there are enough corridor tiles, that you won’t be blocked from drilling some yourself. There is still a satisfying sense of tension in this game. Especially when it comes to racing to be the first to drill through a Barrier Mine Tile to open access to a new floor. Racing to complete your Progress Track with Mine Tiles and collect milestones gives this game the perfect balance of feeling competitive without being stressful.
The last aspect that I enjoyed was the variable game length. The number of rounds and turns will vary from game to game. It was around what ended up being two-thirds through a game that I felt like players were met with the question of pushing to end the game early or continuing to collect minerals and credits. Like a lot of clever game designs, you can only delay the end game trigger for so long before you reach a tipping point where it only takes one more Mine Tile or mineral sale to end the game and collapse the mine.
After each game of Drillers, I find myself thinking about what I want to do differently the next time I play.
Notable Discovery: Face-up Deck
Most deck-building games require you to remember which cards are in your deck in order to guess when you might draw the card you want. Different games have incorporated rules like placing new cards on top of your deck so you know what you’ll draw next. Other games provide foresight by avoiding shuffling so you can remember the order of cards played and the order they’ll come back. Drillers switches up the format by having your deck of cards face-up the entire game. There is even a cardboard stand to keep your deck facing you and hidden from other players.
I didn’t think always knowing the top card of my deck would make much of a difference, but I often found myself using that knowledge to plan my current and next turn. Do I want to play a card that will let me draw that face-up card staring at me? Do I recognize I can’t accomplish much this turn but could if I wait until my next turn? Adding purchased cards to the top of your deck also feels more impactful because I know the card underneath. The strategic depth is simple and satisfying.
Notable Discovery: Drone Tokens
The Drone Tokens provide a unique strategic element to the game. You can easily build a deck around keeping your Drone Tokens active which can allow you to stay in the mines longer to collect valuable minerals. With enough fuel, storage, and Drones, you can sell minerals for credits, buy new cards to upgrade your mech, and stay inside the mine drilling for valuable minerals and Mine Tiles all without going back to the Surface for several turns. This isn’t always easy to pull off, and may not lead to victory, but it is certainly a fun and interesting strategy!
Observer’s Notes
Before my first multiplayer game, I asked my partner which mech they wanted and they asked if they had asymmetric powers like the Expedition Leaders in Lost Ruins of Arnak. I think it’s worth noting that the base game is fun, has lots of room to explore different deck builds, multiple avenues to gain the most victory points, AND, in my opinion, has built-in room for expansions. The mechs could have unique powers, the shop decks can be expanded with more cards, new effects could provide variety on Floor cards, and there could be a new game board with a different mine layout. I’m left feeling excited for the future of this game.
Field Report Summary
Current Status: Essential Equipment (Must Own)
- Rules Accessibility: The rulebook is easy to follow and the three-phase structure allows for ease of understanding and teaching the rules. The added player aids are helpful for remembering the flow of a turn. I also found cards with special effects to be easy to interpret. I appreciate the clear reminders for unique effects that can only be performed once per Operations phase versus effects that can be performed any number of times in a turn.
- Replay Potential: Between the Floor cards, shop decks, and corridor Mine Tiles, there is enough variability to keep the game fresh and fun after dozens of plays. After a few games, you may have a few favorite cards that you’ll seek out, but you’ll never know when they might become available. Additionally, even if you remember all the Floor card effects, you can never fully prepare for them.
- Components: The dual-layer player dashboards with sliding gauges are thematic and provide a pleasing tactile element. It’s also rewarding to collect minerals on your dashboard as you drill and sell. The art is colorful and vibrant, and the quirky approach to mechs and upgrades is cute and amusing. I especially love the upgraded metal credits with engraved drilling-themed faces. However, I am slightly worried about the long term durability of the deck card stands which are relying on friction to hold their shape.
- Time Investment: The publisher’s estimate of thirty minutes per player is accurate. A solo game might take a little longer as you puzzle your way through optimal turns, but it won’t drag. There is room for analysis paralysis or AP, but you typically have a smaller hand of cards in Drillers than other deck-building games which will limit players from getting too overwhelmed with decisions. But the range of choices on a turn can quickly grow with the addition of Mine Tiles, permanent cards, and drone tokens.
- Portability: This game is very portable with a moderate-sized game box. The game doesn’t weigh very much and can easily travel with you to your next game night.
- Recommended Player Count: Two to four players. I really enjoy the solo mode, but I think the game shines best with more players. The race to collect Mine Tiles and minerals and the tension of wondering if another player will buy the card you want from the shop all adds to the fun. Additionally, more players means the mines will evolve faster as corridors are drilled dropping new minerals and new floors are explored as players aim for big victory from Barrier Mine Tiles.
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