Review of Revolution!
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“Secretly bid against your opponents to gain the support of the people, win territory . . . and gather more Gold, Blackmail, and Force for the next round of bidding! Will you try to control the tavern or the fortress? The harbor or the plantation? Knowing where to push for support – and where to back away and let your opponents fight – is the key to victory. It's a game of bluff, counter-bluff, and surprise.”
This review with more pictures can be found on Kelly Adams blog BOP!
Actual Length: 35-45 mins Age: I would say 8 Players: 3-4 (expansion available for 5-6)
Prelude:
A lot of hard core gamers hear the name Steve Jackson and look the other way. Mainly because of Munchkin. They just don’t like it. I don’t know if it’s because they can’t get in tune with their humorous and silly side or maybe it’s due to the fact you can’t really formulate a winning strategy because someone will throw the ‘duck of doom’ in your face or steal your ‘really big rock’. Whatever the reason, a lot of gamers will miss out on Steve Jacksons newest game, Revolution, because of this.
Gameplay & Shortening of the Manual:
This game is very easy to learn and teaches within minutes. Everyone starts with 5 coins, and you blind bid on your bidding card. Once everyone is done bidding, you remove your cards and determine who out bid who for what spots. It’s kinda a crap shoot in the first round because everyone only has 5 coins and no one has shown which spots on the board they want. Let’s say for simplicity I won all my spots I played on.
General: Gives me 1 support point to move my marker around the edge of the board, gives me one Force token, and allows me to place one of my cubes on the Fortress.
Captain: Gives me 3 support points, gives me one Force token, and allows me to place one of my cubes on the Harbor.
Merchant: Gives me 3 support points, gives me 5 gold tokens, and allows me to place one of my cubes on the Market.
Rogue: Gives me two Blackmail tokens for the next round.
So on the next round I would have 2 Force, 2 Blackmail and 5 coins to play with. A total of 9 tokens! That would be a great score! (but don’t get excited, this doesn’t happen too often).
If I had won let’s say, only the Rogue that turn, then I would have 2 Blackmail to start the new round with. However, if you have less than 5 tokens total to start the round with you replenish your hand with gold up to 5 tokens total from the supply. So I would start with 2 Blackmail and 3 coins in this case. Or if you didn’t win anything at all, you’d take 5 coins from the supply to start the new round with.
You’re bidding shield has a quick reference of what beats what. You keep repeating the process until ALL spots have been filled on the board.
The person with the most influence on each area would get the corresponding support points to add to their support points. In the above photo, Red would receive an additional 40 points for the Harbor and 20 points for the Tavern on top of the 60 points he received during the game, giving Red a total of 120 points.
Additional notes:
- If a spot becomes filled with cubes, for instance, the Tavern. You can still play on the Innkeeper to receive the blackmail and 3 support points, you just wouldn’t get to place a cube there.
- To make the game simple, we would go through and resolve everyone’s bidding spots, getting our support, tokens and placing our cubes but we’d leave the ‘Spy’ and ‘Apothecary’ unresolved. When everyone was finished, the person who chose ‘Spy’ would get replace one of their cubes with another on the board. Then the person who chose ‘Apothecary’ would get to swap the two cubes they desired. This eliminates confusion during the resolution process.
Final Thoughts:
The game is extremely light and plays quite quickly. I really enjoyed it the first 10 or so times I played it. However, don’t introduce it to too many people too quickly because they will always want to play it, and then it can get cumbersome. So, space it out, don’t play it too often, and it will be a great game to break out every few weeks.
Final Final Thoughts:
Quality: 4/5 Fun: 4/5 Substance: 4/5 Re-playability: 4/5 5c3e
Revolution!, reviewed by KingKel (4/3)
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