The Resistance game review

During GameALot my wife played a few random games while I was playing Twilight Imperium. One of these games was The Resistance. She loved it and convinced me that we had to pick it up.

The Resistance is an identity deducing game. It is genius in its simple design and quick to play. It is designed for 5 to 10 players. The story behind it is you are all members of a resistance cell attempting to work against the government. Hidden within this cell are a number of government spies attempting to thwart the plans of the resistance group.

The box includes a number of game boards that are more of a set of tracking boards than anything. Each has 5 spots for tracking success of failure of missions along with a vote track marker for tracking how many times a mission has been rejected.

Players are each given a secret identity: blue cards represent resistance and red representing spies. Players then all cover their eyes. One player then asks the spies to open their eyes (only the spies) then tells the spies to close their eyes again. The all players open their eyes. This allows the small number of spies to work against The Resistance together.

Play then progresses with a player being selected to organize a mission. This player checks the mission slot on the board to figure out how many players must be selected; anywhere from 2 to 5 players. He/she must then assign enough players. Once the mission is tasked all of the players vote on whether to approve the mission. If the mission is approved it moves forward, if it is rejected the next player is selected to re-organize the mission. Be careful in voting, if any mission is rejected 5 times the spies win.

Every player on a mission is given two cards: Success and Failure. The Resistance players will always select missions to succeed spies may choose either option depending on their strategy. Spies do want missions to fail. Cards are turned in face down to the organizer. This player shuffles the cards then reveals them. The organizer then places a marker on the board for success or failure.

Once play reaches 3 out of 5 missions as success or failure the game ends. 3 fails mean the spies win while 3 successful missions mean the resistance wins.

I really love The Resistance for its simplicity. There are no complicated rules, strategies, dice rolls, or game boards. Any player should be able to pick up the concept quickly. This leads to the game being played fast with multiple rounds in a night keeping the entire group entertained for a long time.

The Resistance is also perfect for its design for larger game groups. It is targeted for anywhere from 5 to 10 players so if extra people show up for game night this can keep everyone involved in a single game. The best part is every player is involved at every step: voting on missions, resistance players watching every move in an attempt to deduce who is a spy, spies working to deflect suspicion from themselves, and everyone trying to figure out who should be on a mission. Everyone is always involved in every play.

At its core The Resistance seems like a game of practicing deceit but if you look closer it’s more of a game of learning how to detect deceit or honesty. There are always fewer spies so players inevitably spend more game time trying to deduce the legitimacy of other players’ claims of innocence.

The downsides to The Resistance are that it’s an argument game. Players are going to spout unfounded accusations at each other and this could lead to some frustrations at the table. The recent game edition also includes a card expansion. Each card can be assigned to a player allowing a special effect: from influencing voting, to seeing another player’s identity card. While the cards are interesting and some players love them I find these cards slow the game down and take away from the brilliance of the basic game play.

To sum up The Resistance is a game you definitely need on your shelf. It’s fun to play and really saves the night when you end up getting extra players who bump you over the usual 4 to 6 player game limits. The game is easy to learn, fast to play, and really tests your skills at deduction or deception. I recommend The Resistance to any game group. It plays well with family and friends, the theme is universally understandable and it will get some serious play time.

Battle Masters board game review

Just before Christmas I managed to meet up with some guys I hadn't seen in forever. Of course we talked about board games. We talked about how some games define an era of our childhood. For me this was when I was thirteen and I got Battle Masters. This was my first fantasy miniatures war game and sparked my love of the genre. It opened my eyes to the world of "other" non-generic board games. Sadly my mother tossed this one out a long time ago and I've been searching for a reasonably priced replacement. One of the guys believes he has a copy in his attic and might be giving it to me sometime in the near future.

The big draw for me was the giant vinyl mat that was used for the play area. By giant I mean 4 foot by 4 foot square of floor space. It featured a river, and octagonal terrain markings. Battle Masters came with various terrain tiles: marshes, river fords and ditches as well as some hedges and a tower (which could be destroyed). Each of these had it's own special rules for either movement or combat effects. As a kid this allowed for a quick set up of a battlefield that didn't require modelling skill or elaborate planning. Getting the players directly in to game play and allowing the love of the game genre to grow from there.

There were two sides to Battle Masters. The Imperial Army and the Chaos army. The imperial army was the force for good and it featured archers, knights, men-at-arms, crossbowmen, and the imperial cannon. The Chaos army was evil and featured units like beastmen, wolf riders, orcs, goblins, Chaos Warriors, chaos archers, the Champions of Chaos and the Ogre. The units were set up on bases with usually 3 or 5 units per base. This gave the impression of battle formations. My young imagination ran wild with my vast armies deployed for war.

Link to the official rule book

The special units of the Ogre and the Imperial cannon had their own special rules. The cannon would choose a target when firing then the controlling player would lay down cannon tiles up to the target. Then the player would flip these over to reveal what the cannon ball did. It would either fly, bounce (causing damage to the unit in that tile) or explode ending it's flight and destroying whatever unit was in that tile. If the cannonball made it to the target it would be destroyed. If however the cannonball exploded next to the cannon it would be a misfire: the controlling player would pull a random cannonball card and apply its effect to the cannon. The Ogre had special cards that he would draw randomly and obey in order. Three said ogre moves and three said ogre attacks. These had to be done in the drawn order, but the player could elect not to take a drawn action. The ogre would draw one less card per wound. The ogre other special was that he had 6 health as opposed to the rest of the units 3 health.

Game play proceeded by drawing from a central deck of cards. Whichever units were depicted on the cards would then move and/or attack. Some of the cards revealed would be single units some would have multiple units (orcs, goblins and wolf riders) where all the units would be used. The randomness of the central deck could make it so one player had multiple moves before the opponent could respond. This made for a more interesting game as neither player knew who would be playing next. This means that Battle Masters is a great introduction to weird game play rules.

Of course this made for Battle Masters being Very light on strategy.

That is the biggest downside to Battle Masters, it's not really a strategy game. It is very reliant on luck of the draw and luck of the dice. For someone with a lot of strategy experience the game won't fit your ideal. However when playing with the novice or younger player it does level the playing field and is a nice light introduction to the genre.

I would recommend hunting down a copy of Battle Masters if you would like to introduce a young gamer to this genre of gaming or if you just want to play a quick simple fantasy game with a friend. Of course there are other better designed games out there but collectors should really consider adding this to their list.

Check back next week when I review The Resistance.