Jaipur Review

Game - Jaipur

Designer: Sébastien Pauchon

Publisher: GameWorks

Artist: Alexandre Roche

Player Count: 2

Runtime: 30 minutes



Welcome to the Pink City, the beautiful, picturesque, Jaipur, forming part of the Golden Triangle tourist circuit of India. It is a superb spot to stop, spend a while and see the sites, perhaps enjoy one of the busy markets an treat yourself to some fine jewellery, gemstones, gorgeous, mouth-water cuisine and fine artisan textiles...I could go on rewording the Wikipedia entry for Jaipur, but no doubt I’ll just end up embarrassing myself to anyone who actually has a clue. But we’re not here to highlight my geographical ignorance, no, I’m here to write a review of the two-player tabletop game Jaipur, designed by Sébastien Pauchon and published by GameWorks. And you, of course, are here to read about it.



Jaipur is a two player only game about trading a variety of goods ranging from gold and silver finery to leather hides. It has a neat little economic engine at its core which makes this game utterly worthy of your attention if you haven’t enjoyed this light, quick game before. Mechanically this game is extremely simple, as the mechanics aren’t what makes this game interesting, no, it’s the simple abstraction of economics down to its core that makes this game as good as it is.

For a start, there is no money in this game, it is about trading, NOT buying as so many other “trading” games are. You have your hand of goods, and your opponent has theirs, these are your wares, with which you can do two things, first you can sell them off and get them out of your hand, or second, you can trade them at the market for other goods.

 



 

At the market every good is equal to another, so a leather hide is “worth” the same amount as a golden vase, which may seem odd, but bear with me here. You can trade any number and any type of cards in hand at the market to get just one type in return. So you could trade your gold, silks and a camel away for some leather hides. Why would you do this? Because of the other action, you can take next turn. With the three leather you just picked up and the two you already had in hand you can now sell all five of them, which is good. In fact, it’s very good.

Jaipur has this excellent representation of “the market” in the form of some little tokens. During the setup of the game, you’ll separate all the different types out and stack them in numerical order, with the highest on top. This is the demand for the goods, when you sell some spices you’ll take a number of tokens. If you are the first to sell spices you’ll earn more victory points than if you wait until later - when the market is saturated and everyone is eating really spicy food. Some things like gold and silver don’t lose their value as quickly as other goods, leather losing it the fastest.



So now you’re thinking, “Ok, sell quickly! easy, that doesn’t sound that interesting.”

Hold your camels, there’s more.

Remember our hand of five leather from earlier, when you said I was mad for trading away the gold? Well, now I’m going to sell it. Not only do I pick up the top five Leather tokens and bag myself some points, but because I sold five, and this demonstrates some real business savvy I also pick up a bonus token for selling so many. A bonus to the tune of ten. Ruby, Gold and Silver can only ever be sold if you have at least two, so although one gold plate is good, you can’t do anything with it. Two is better, but you won’t get any bonuses for two, you need more. In Jaipur, you always need more.

It is with these little tokens, Jaipur effortlessly manages to represent Demand and the economy of scale. It is simply more efficient to sell more of one good at one time and selling it when no one else is also making it extremely profitable, which all makes perfect sense.



Now let's talk about camels, as they will form a key part of any game of Jaipur. Camels are a commodity like any other, but unlike all the other goods, they don’t go into your hand, instead, they sit on the table in front of you, in a stable, if you will. This makes them act a little like a “cash reserve”, whenever you take camels from the market row, you must take all of them - camel traders are ruthless like that I’ve heard. But these ungulates are a double-edged sword, yes you get a lot of trading power, but you are also revealing lots of new goods to your opponent to snap up. Most interestingly though is that with a hand limit of seven, the camels also act as a “greed modifier”, by which I mean they give you the sense of having “too much cash burning in your pocket”, they force you to start making tough, less efficient choices based purely upon a player’s desire for more.

Jaipur is played over a best-of-three-rounds, each round lasting about ten minutes, with the winner of each earning a Seal of Excellence from the Maharaja. To win these Seals and be proclaimed the greatest Merchant in all of India you’ll need to balance and mitigate your risks. In Jaipur there are always options, focusing solely on trading only in the most expensive items may seem like a good idea but you’ll quickly become unstuck. The temptation to push your luck, see another flop of cards in the market row, to try and capture that elusive fifth card is a tough one to beat, but sooner or later the game and your opponent will coax and force you to behave below what you really want, because it offers up such an attractive alternative, even if it is leather hides.



There are a couple of other things that are note worth when talking about this game, more in reference to your game shelf rather than the game itself.

1. The insert is brilliant. Perfectly functional and pretty.

2. It is very transportable. It's an ideal travel/holiday game. A deck of cards and a bunch of tokens makes this very easy to travel with.

3. Footprint and Brevity: It doesn’t take up a lot of space at all, and its short runtime makes it a great game to fill the gaps in a game night, or to play on your lunch break.



Jaipur is a really, really good game, and is absolutely worth checking out if you play a lot of two-player games, or you want a good short game to play to plug those game-shaped gaps in your life. What Jaipur isn’t, however; is juicy. You’ll walk away from a game thinking, “That was nice.”, and sure you’d happily play it again, but it may not be the first game you reach for, it doesn’t leave you with a story, or leave you mulling over the decisions you made in the game- but it’s not meant to either. Jaipur is an Aperitif, it is light, pretty and friendly. Yes, it is very enjoyable, it whets the cardboard appetite wonderfully for games with deeper and more meaningful decisions and consequence.

Disclaimer:  This review was based on a full priced retail edition paid for out of my own money from my own pocket.

 

Onitama Review

Review: Onitama

Designer: Shimpei Sato

Publisher: Arcane Wonders

Artist: Jun Kondo and Mariusz Szmerdt

Player count: 2

Runtime: 10 minutes

“Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend.”

― Po from Kung Fu Panda

Onitama roughly translates as “Awesome Kung Fu themed abstract game”, which, like a tin of Ronseal, it does exactly as it says on the tin, or in this case, box. This game also graciously offers you the opportunity to constantly refer to your opponent as “Young Grasshopper”, to say things like, “Your Kung Fu is strong”, and of course, “Stop trying to hit me, and hit me”. There is such a thing as being a poor winner, so watch it, as the tide of battle can turn very quickly in Onitama.

[caption id="attachment_2592" align="alignnone" width="2776"] Say it with me now...TIGER UPPERCUT![/caption]

One cannot but notice the similarities between Onitama and Chess on first impressions, and although this is true, it is only fleetingly so, it is much like comparing a Harley Davidson to a BMX, more on this later, first bow into the dojo and we shall begin.

You and your opponent are rival Kung Fu dojos, who are battling it out for supremacy, and to the field of this great battle, you take four of your most skilled warriors. Facing off against one another across the tranquil arena you stretch and shake off that nervous pre-fight excitement, bow first to your master, and then respectfully to your opponent and go.

[gallery ids="2597,2588" type="rectangular"]

Fight!

Fight!

Fight!

Not quite, Onitama is a game of skilful, precise strikes, of calculated risks, and of considered judgement. Of knowing your opponent, and predicting their attacks and retreats. It is Kung Fu (well, as much as a board game can be Kung Fu). Unlike a game of chess, of near countless openings, strategies and moves, Onitama, deftly, and simply imposes restrictions and limits on your form and creativity. And it does this with a handful of cards. These cards are your movements, all of your attacks and retreats, all with an appropriately Kung Fu-ey related animal names, like Frog or Crab.

[caption id="attachment_2590" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Love the stylised Chinese writing here depicting the animal[/caption]

Each card further abstracts the game board and depicts it as a simple grid, with a number of the squares shaded, with one being darker than the others. This darkest square is your warrior, any of them, and the shaded cells are all the possible squares they can move to. Should you land on an opponent you take them and they are removed from the game. It is that simple, and yes, up to this point, the game may sound a little linear, and you’d be right, but obviously, that isn’t the game.

You see, you only get five cards per game, randomly drawn from the deck. These are the only moves any player can make. Five cards. Five attacks, five prescribed movements that both players can see, predict and plan for. Again, that may sound a lot more interesting, and it is, but that still isn’t the game.

[caption id="attachment_2595" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The Reds are making full use of the arena width[/caption]

These five cards total all the cards you’ll use, and you will share them with your opponent in a manner that makes this game very, very interesting. Two will be dealt to you, two to your opponent and the remaining card placed between you both. Any of your pieces can move as either of your cards show, but then you’ll place that card to one side and take the card that was previously left out of the game. Now your opponent does the same, sifting one card at a time between the cards in front, to the card at the side.

This mechanic creates a flow, almost a sense of a dance across the play area as you and your opponent/partner sway back and forth. It creates a harmony and a balance which sits right at home with the theme. One of the things I love about this game is how quick and accessible it is, there is no text to read, its a case of pattern recognition in the moves you can make now, what your opponent can make and what move you can make later. A game of Onitama is so very quick, I don’t think I’ve played a game longer than ten minutes, and in that way the game too feels very kinetic. Although Onitama is an abstract game, the production and these notes of energy and flow really capture and encapsulate that Hollywood-stylised essence of Kung Fu.

[caption id="attachment_2593" align="alignnone" width="4032"] That's a strong defensive opening from the Blue Guys[/caption]

So, how much like a game of chess is Onitama? You do move pieces back and forth across a board in varying patterns, the win condition is very similar, it is a greatly abstracted view f a battle, and here, I would say the similarities end. Chess can be “mastered”, there are opening moves that are better than others, someone who has played many games will have little difficulty besting a newbie. Onitama, on the other hand, has such a degree of variability that a “perfect” opening doesn’t exist, as it can’t exist every game. Likewise, chess is often considered a battle above the board as much as it is on it, and Onitama isn’t that. Each of your opponents pieces can only move in two ways, and you can see those two ways, the difference is in this joy of pattern recognition, of building up your opponents move now, and move next and layering that against what you want to do, and the cards/moves you do not want to give them.

[caption id="attachment_2596" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The luxurious, fancy-pants playmat[/caption]

The production of this game, heck, even the box screams “Hey, pay attention to me!”, it has a cool magnetic closed box that looks more like a fancy bottle of whiskey than a board game, the insert is moulded perfectly to fit everything nice and tidy, and of course, you have the neoprene plat mat and the gorgeous oversized cards. However, and it's sizeable, however, it feels overproduced. The moulds on the figures aren’t what I’d expect from a game made in 2014, but even then I think there is a degree of charm, the impression of ancient skill and strategy that this game wants to have is well overshot with plastic models instead of something more solid, timeless and classical. The playmat tough great and functional is, I can’t help but feel is a half inch too narrow, those oversized cards don’t align neatly with my compulsion towards the neat and parallel.

Am I being picky? Yes.

Am I acting like a teenager at a house party dissecting the latest arrival?

(what an odd analogy) Well, yes, I am. But, in my defence, the game is crying out for attention about how it looks more so than how it plays.

And that is the main point, isn’t it? How good is this game? In short, it is a great, quick game that offers an interesting array of game restrictions each time you play. Each game feels noticeably different, and yet fundamentally the same. Part of that greatness stems from its shortness, its brevity, but also for its ‘feel’, it is an abstract game that wears its theme like a well-tailored suit, you’ll see it on the board and the pawns, you’ll see it scrawled across the cards, but you feel it in the game with the flow and sway of combat. Onitama isn’t the type of game you'll play for hours on end, it is the type of game you play between games, while you’re waiting for your dinner, and it’s perfect to travel with or for lunch break games, and at around £25 you’ll get a lot of mileage out of this little gem.

SUPERHOT Card Game Review

Game - SUPERHOT Card Game

Designer: Manuel Correia

Publisher: Board & Dice

Artist: Paweł Niziołek

Player Count 1 - 3

Runtime: 20 - 40 minutes

[caption id="attachment_2569" align="alignnone" width="2783"] A very pretty picture of SUPERHOT the Card Game[/caption]

SUPERHOT the micro deck building game is based on the very successful video game of the same name the crux of which is the move you move the faster time passes, stay still and so does time. Add to this very unique twist in the FPS genre a very eye grabbing and minimal art style and it’s easy to understand why the video game garnered so much traction. These fundamental aspects of what made SUPERHOT the video game it is have been downloaded on to cardboard to create an equally unique tabletop experience. It is a deckbuilding, hand management game where your cards not only represent your attacks and your defence but time as well. How does it do this, and how well does it? Well, dear user, sit down and jack in: your SUPERHOT card game review is loading.

LOADING...PLEASE WAIT

I always like to envisage and describe this game as if the player is playing a retro computer game of John McClane, a Steven Seagal character or >INSERT ACTION HERO MOVIE REFERENCE THAT MILLENNIALS WILL KNOW< as they have to neutralise a bunch of bad guys who are raiding/robbing/bad-stuffing in a building. In typical fashion, our hero is unarmed and must use their smarts, their wits and an unbreakable will to overcome the massive odds stacked against them. That is what is going on in my head when I play this game, and it is just one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.

[caption id="attachment_2580" align="alignnone" width="3917"] In Play as seen from above[/caption]

SUPERHOT makes full use of all of the 82 cards in the box, they circle around the play area in a very different, unusual and interesting way and, depending on where they are, it changes how you need to use or react to them. Now, I say “they circle around the play area”, but I use the word ‘circle’ in the loosest possible way. It’s more like a swirling tendril of movement. Much like watching a swarm of woodcutter ants as they do their “woodcutter-ant-thing”, you know that they have a plan, that they know what they are doing, but from the outside looking in, the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ seem hard to define. It is within this maelstrom of cardboard that the magic and mayhem of SUPERHOT the card game surges into action.

I don’t often like to spend a lot of time writing about the components and the rules of a game, but if I try and tell you how this game feels and flows and how it is interesting and worthy of your time and money without first telling you about them, you and I will both get lost very quickly. In short, to adequately describe a cake I need to talk about the flavours, and SUPERHOT has a very special flavour.

There are three types of card, mission cards, which will outline the objective for your current level of the game, these stack up until level three which acts as the finale. Easy, got it.

Bullet cards. Bullets are bad. When they are in their neat little deck, they are thankfully, less bad. When they are in any other deck or in the play area, then they’re in flight. And that is bad. When they’re in your hand, well, that’s worse. Have four of them in your hand, and that’s, well; it’s game over.

[caption id="attachment_2571" align="alignnone" width="4032"] What you really, really don't want in your hand[/caption]

Every other card is an obstacle, and that’s a pretty broad term for something that you’re going to interact with. Mainly bad guys, dudes with guns, dudes with shotguns, dudes with katanas, tables, pillars and pliers - yes pliers. All of these cards are multi-use use cards, when they are in your hand you make use of the top of the card, and when it’s not you use the bottom. Again: easy.

[caption id="attachment_2582" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The Line.[/caption]

Then there is The Line. This represents everything that is immediately in your vicinity - try not to think of it as a queue of things to interact with, the line is a representation of three-dimensional space. Its radial space, not lateral, despite the name.

With me so far?

Good.

Now, the cards in your hand are both the actions you can take, and most importantly, each card is also a unit of time. For the sake of convenience let’s call them seconds. The Line is everything that you can possibly interact within the next six seconds. Taking on a dude with a shotgun is going to require some real clout, as you have to equal or beat his defence with your attack/dodge/combination of both. The more cards you use, the longer it takes to beat him.

[caption id="attachment_2574" align="alignnone" width="4032"] 2 Dudes with Shot guns. Thats four bullets they'll fire if I can't take care of at least one of them[/caption]

When you play cards you put them in the Used Cards section (time spent). The obstacles you interacted with become assets you get to use in the next few seconds, i.e. you’ve stolen a gun, dodged behind a pillar, flipped a table etc. these cards then come into your hand. You’ll then draw more cards from your deck up to four of them (if you play it right you can end up with more than the starting four cards in your hand, this is you doing something I can never seem to do, something I like to call “Being good at SUPERHOT”). This represents the passage of time for you, the player.

[caption id="attachment_2581" align="alignnone" width="3784"] A very nice play mat to play the game on. This was a paid for extra, but I think was well worth it[/caption]

Now, for every second you spent doing something, that time now passes in the game, the line moves along like a conveyor belt. If you used three cards/seconds those obstacles that formed the first three seconds of the Line now pass into your discard pile. They are now behind you (for the time being). Important to note here is that it is the three seconds that passed, not necessarily what happened in those three seconds. So you don’t remove the first three cards, but the cards that are in the first three spaces.

[caption id="attachment_2577" align="alignnone" width="4032"] A Bunch Obstacles between you and victory![/caption]

Then the bad guys have their go, that’s when they’ll fire their guns, or hack at you with a katana. And when they fire their dreaded bullets. You’ll take the appropriate number of bullet cards and put them in the Object discard pile. They are now in flight, but you’ll have a little time before you have to deal with them.

[caption id="attachment_2576" align="alignnone" width="4032"] A huge array of mission cards, with a range of difficulties - I love how they compound one another in later levels[/caption]

Do you remember those really simple mission cards I mentioned earlier, and how they stack to create a finale? There is an important piece of information I didn’t mention, you don’t reset the decks between levels. All those bullets that were fired in level one, unless you’ve dealt with them, they are still flying around. Upon completing a level all you do is reshuffle the decks, draw a new hand and new mission cards. This adds such a great level of complexity to the game, a wonderful scaling and compounding of danger making level three an utter bitch. It creates a gravitas to your decisions, as something ignored, or not dealt with properly now, will come back and bite you once those decks are reshuffled.

[caption id="attachment_2572" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Engage Bullet-Time[/caption]

SUPERHOT has a very distinctive look, and one of the things it does is it allows the player to imprint their own vision/theme over what is presented to them (much as I discuss at the top of this review), this is facilitated and indeed encouraged by the low polygon minimalist art style. These “bad guys” are beyond race or gender (okay maybe not gender there is a definite lean towards a male physique and they’re called dudes, but you can’t prove anything). This for me is a really interesting and innovative step for representation in board games. On the flipside of this, where I see John McClane taking out a bunch of guys doing terrible German accents, you could play this game from the point of few as the antagonist, taking out the security guards for your own nefarious gains! By not identifying anything, you get to tell your own story.

[caption id="attachment_2578" align="alignnone" width="4032"] In play close-up[/caption]

Alternatively, you’ll just see a load of red and black blobs that you just can’t connect with in any meaningful way, and the game just won’t connect and resonate with you, but you should be able to pick up on this when you look at the cover of the box.

There are but two more important things o say about SUPERHOT. The first of which is that this game is tricky. For me at least I found it initially hard to get my head around the flow of the game and the movement of the cards. It is one of those games that if I don’t play it regularly I find that I still need to refer to the rulebook occasionally just for a clarification or a refresh.

The second thing is that SUPERHOT is a solo game at heart. Yes, it can be played at two players, and it can even be played at three (and these are as a co-op, versus, and even semi-co-op). But, it is meant to be a solo game, if you do fancy taking it on in either of the other modes, all players need to be au fait with the game at the one player count first.

[caption id="attachment_2579" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Even the backs of the card are pretty![/caption]

Sounds pretty cool, right? It is. It really is. It may also sound a little confusing, and it is that too, but, as soon as you get into the rhythm of movement, of thinking of the cards not only as actions but as time itself, the game clicks. The overriding theme of computer hacking from the original video game is enhanced here by the card art and layout of the mission cards, it is all incredibly apt as it provides a metaphor for itself, looking beyond the mere mechanics of the game to experience the game itself. One cannot help but draw a parallel to that of the Matrix, and specifically, that moment when Neo sees the code and understands that it is both there and not there at the same time.

With SUPERHOT, as soon as you stop seeing the mechanics, you’ll see the game.

Disclaimer:

This review was based on a full-priced retail copy of the game, bought with my very own hard earned cash.

[caption id="attachment_2570" align="alignnone" width="1968"] SUPERHOT the Card Game[/caption]

EndNote:

On researching this game to gain a fuller understanding of the designer, theme etc. I did learn that the implied role the player takes on is that of an Agent Decker, with a game of the same name upon which the mechanics of SUPERHOT are based.

 

Disclaimer:

This review was based on a full-priced retail copy of the game and a paid for play mat - because, y'know  "Pimping", all of which I paid for myself, out of my own pocket.

Burgle Bros. Review

Designer: Tim Fowers

Publisher: Fowers Games

Artist: Ryan Goldsberry

Players: 1 - 4

Run Time: 45 - 90 minutes

 

Admit it, you've always wanted to rob a bank. But not really rob it, not in real life, with actual people, real security and a genuine risk of imprisonment. No, you want to rob a Hollywood bank, like Danny Ocean, robbing a bank with style, panache and in a way that can only be pulled off by making your escape in a mini cooper (yes, I know neither of those films actually feature a bank being robbed, but you know what I'm getting at I'm sure) Burgle Bros. from Tim Fowers lets you do exactly that. You and your merry band of crooks must break into a bank, crack the safe on each floor. Dodge security cameras, motion detectors and avoid at all cost the patrolling security guards, to finally escape with all the loot. And most importantly do it in style and to a great soundtrack.

[caption id="attachment_2549" align="alignnone" width="3757"] Burgle Bros. in full swing[/caption]

The bank is made up of three grids of tiles, each representing a separate floor in the bank, and each has its own flight of stairs and it's own safe to be cracked. There are also eight walls on each floor that your team and the security guards will have to navigate around. There is a wide array of characters to choose from, and in a typical co-op fashion, each brings something unique to the game. Now, put on your suits, balaclavas and stick a heist playlist on Spotify and you’re ready to play (In fact I’m going to listen to one while I write this review.

[caption id="attachment_2543" align="alignnone" width="2808"] This is your gang, all suited and booted[/caption]

With four actions a piece, each player will ideally want to creep around the bank, peeking at tiles before moving into the room revealed. You’re looking for the safe on each floor, but more than that you’re looking for the code to crack it, each tile is numbered 1 - 6, and these represent the pieces of the code needed, so once finding the safe you’ll need the other 5 tiles that make up its row and column. Spend some action points preparing the safe to be cracked allows you to put some dice on the safe tile, these you’ll roll when you attempt to crack it, trying to roll the numbers of the code. Thankfully, successes are cumulative, and once it pops open you’ll grab the Loot and a Tool (that is obviously stored in a safe y’know, because where else would you keep an EMP grenade or a pair of roller skates?) and head off to the next part of the mission.

 

 

[gallery ids="2551,2556" type="rectangular"]

Sounds pretty easy, huh? But then there are the motion detectors, heat sensors, fingerprint scanners, laser fields, open walkways, deadbolt rooms, and of course the guards. In short, navigating around this bank will not be easy, just on account of the rooms, but the guards! Well, they add something really special.

[caption id="attachment_2547" align="alignnone" width="2416"] Guards! Guards! Guards![/caption]

Each floor has its own guard, and it will take its turn moving after each player on that floor, and it will move towards its target room, - assigned by the route deck - for which you simply use one of the red/orange dice, and it will move in the most direct clockwise path a number of spaces equal to the pips on that die. Make it through that deck, and you turn the die up one pip. Crack the safe and turn it up again. Set an alarm off, and it’ll temporarily go up again, once for each alarm sounding - and here it gets super interesting. Setting an alarm off will obviously set the guard on duty into panic mode, he/she will start running for one thing, but they’ll now head towards where the alarm is going off - abandoning their original route. Why is this so interesting? Well, for one thing, it makes the game incredibly tense, watching a guard slowly make its way towards you, step by step is a great example of atmosphere and theme entwining brilliantly with mechanics, but, it also lets you the player interact with the AI.

[caption id="attachment_2536" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The rooms that will no doubt cause you a lot of trouble[/caption]

In many games, where the “game” is playing too, it often relies on a deck of cards to dictate what the AI does, however, unlike Burgle Bros. the interaction is one way. This card is drawn, you as a player are limited somehow (like the solo mode of Viticulture) as the AI fills that space on the board or this thing happens to force your attention and action elsewhere (like Pandemic). This is still true of Burgle Bros. but in this game, you can act back, not simply react to it. And this, this makes this game brilliant.

 

 

[gallery ids="2542,2540" type="rectangular"]

Burgle Bros. is a game you can tell was design with theme at the forefront, each of the different types of rooms makes sense - ending your turn in a Thermal detector room would set the alarm off as your body temp changes the environment (just think of the trouble Redford went through to get around that one). A laser field would slow you down (unless you’re the Night Fox). Each of the rooms makes sense - which is good because the description on some of the tiles is sadly lacking in clarity. True Story: when my brother-in-law played it for the first time, he said: “It probably has something to do with a poor translation from a foreign language or something like that.” Once you’ve played the game through, even only once, he tiles click, but on first impressions, these descriptions are quite jarring. The same is sadly true of some of the tools, and the special rules on some of the Loot. It’s a minor thing, but irksome, and in some cases painfully noticeable.

[caption id="attachment_2538" align="alignnone" width="3024"] The language can be a little jarring on some tiles and cards[/caption]

The retro cartoon movie poster style artwork had me, it is whimsical and silly and takes a game which is based on a highly illegal activity, and makes it okay, and fun, and helps lift this game off the table. With each game you’ll tell a heist story, some of the success and some of utter failures, but in each one I can pretty much guarantee there will be a memorable moment, accentuated by this artwork, you’ll be able to very easily imagine the Rigger barreling down a corridor with a dog under one arm and a painting under the other as he is chased by a rapidly approaching guard. Burgle Bros. does what every great game does, it draws you into its little cardboard world, exposing you to this adventure.

There is one problem I’ve experienced with this game, and it’s one that is quite unique to this game as it is essentially a 3D game played in two dimensions. The three grids represent three floors of the bank, which on the whole makes sense but there are a few rooms such as the walkways and the arboretum where you can move/see into different floors - this has caused some players to miss obvious errors as they’ve had trouble converting the three separate grids into one tower. The simple solution, don’t play with people that have poor spatial awareness. Another option (one I’m very seriously considering) is getting yourself a Burgle Bros. Tower, by either building your own or buying one.

After hearing of this game I was immediately interested, and the more I looked around about it the more interested I became. The glorious artwork, the massively underused theme, and fantastic fun gameplay has made this one of my best purchases of 2017. With standard, advanced, and a “Fort Knox” variants all in the box, plus the ability to easily make your own blueprints this is a game that can and will hit the table over and over again, you could, in fact, call it a steal!

[caption id="attachment_2560" align="alignnone" width="1944"] Me, on the train home with Burgle Bros. after a great day at Dragonmeet 2017[/caption]

This review was based on a full priced retail edition of the game that I paid for with my hard earned money