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

Tortuga 1667 Review

Publisher: Façade Games

Designer: Travis Hancock

Artist: Sarah Keele

Players: 2 – 7

Run Time: 20 – 40 mins

“A dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.” - Jack Sparrow, on the issue of hidden role board games.

You're right, sorry; Captain Jack Sparrow.

There is little doubt or argument that Walt Disney and Johnny Depp made Pirates cool[er] again...a least for a little while, until the whole Mermaid thing - anyway.

Pirates = awesome.

Boardgames = awesome.

Boardgames that look like books = erm...

So, what else could a triple-decker awesome sandwich be, other than timber shiveringly awesome? Ladies and gentlemen, polish your brass monkeys, as I present to you a review of Tortuga 1667 from Facade Games.



You’ll play as a dubiously real pirate, in and around the island of Tortuga in, well 1667. You’ll hop back and forth between the Flying Dutchman, the isle itself and the Jolly Roger all in an attempt to horde as much of the treasure in the hold belonging to you and your countrymen. However, you don’t know who your countrymen are. Also, the whole hoarding thing is a little bit tricky, as it depends where you are, who you are and, who is with you.



This game has a smattering of worker placement, area control, variable player powers, bidding, and hidden roles to label just a few of the core mechanics. If that sounds like jumble ingredients doomed to failure then you are in for a pleasant and sweet surprise because it is the blending of these that makes this game worthy of your gaming table and shelf.



Picture this, you're on a ship in the bay of Tortuga, across the halcyon blue waters are two other ships. One with loads of gold, the other bustling with another group or unruly pirates. Now, if you’re the captain (taking the number one spot on the ship) you can order an attack against it to try and get some of that treasure. If you’re the first Mate (number two spot), you can try and mutiny against your captain and dispatch him to the Island. If you are the very last in the line on the ship, you’re the Cabin Boy (Roger!), and you can shift one of the treasure chests from the French hold to the British hold or vice versa. With the exception of the cabin boy, everything comes down to a vote (I know, I know, these must be the most democratic bunch of pirates in the history of Piracy) where everyone (except the captain during a mutiny) on the ship gets to cast their vote, plus the top card of the Vote Deck. Failures don’t do any harm, except potentially reveal whose side you’re on. Successes result in capturing a treasure chest- and then placing it in a hold (careful now), or you get promoted. But may also reveal whose side you’re on.



 

About this voting business, it’s not quite as clear-cut as saying “yay” or “nay”, your hand of just three Vote cards dictate how you're going to vote on any one of the three viable actions: Attacking, Brawling (vying for control of the island) and Mutinying. An attack needs at least one cannon and one torch - where each bucket of water nullifies a torch. The brawl action is either British or French flags, suggesting who piles into the fight to half-inch the treasure, and Mutinying boils down to a steering wheel or skull and crossbones (obviously). What makes this interesting is that depending on the action, your allegiance and perhaps, more importantly, the allegiance you are trying to present, you can only vote with the cards you have in hand. And you have to vote (hand management, there’s another mechanic for you). This creates an interesting mix, as there are cards you really want to keep for your actions, your plan, but you have to vote when called upon, and that can mean giving up a card you want for a result that might favour you, use a card you don’t want to hang on to, but in doing so you’re either sending the “right” message about your allegiance, or the “wrong” one.



If that wasn’t interesting enough, you’ve also got the Event Cards, a whole deck of them, and these set the pace for the game. The game-ending card - the Spanish Armada - hidden at the bottom. Until that card turns up though, there is a whole deck of shenanigans to get through, and most of these are varying degrees of bad, from the innocently named albatross to the ominous Black Spot. How you get these cards is one of my favourite parts of this game, in your turn, regardless of where on the board you are, you can interact with these cards in a couple of interesting ways. You can look at any two of these cards, you can demand that another player chooses between any two cards, or you can reveal one yourself. Knowing, and keeping track of these cards is almost like a metagame that goes on throughout, this part of Tortuga is about memory, manipulation and backstabbing.

On top of all of this, you’re trying to figure out who everyone is.



Being a hidden roles game, there is the potential downfall of it being very easy to suss out who is on which side, but, I’ve found that to be hugely player dependant. How good you are at lying, bluffing, and how much of a risk you are prepared to take as that deck whittles down. The deck acts not only as a countdown to the end of the game but to a player’s plans. Remaining hidden is of the utmost importance in this game, but you want to strike that delicate balance of also finding out who is on your side. When its crunch time, you need to ensure that you can shift that treasure quickly, you need to know who you can rely on, and who you throw overboard. Be wary of the honest ones!

There is, however, an elephant on the boat, and I think a much-needed caveat when it comes to playing this game: the player count. Technically, it plays two to seven people. Technically. But at two players it is kind of a drag, your actions are pretty prescribed. Three players is much the same. At four you get a big ol’ chunk of flavour. At five it is like you’re playing a different game, but at seven (I know I missed six, get over it), at seven this game is rollicking good fun!



Tortuga 1667 relies on, and flat out requires player and social interaction, so with more players, there is more of that, thus more fun. Further to this, the game becomes more volatile, swaying a vote becomes harder, and more involved. The odd player is Dutch, winning if the English and French draw, it is a brilliant twist on a hidden roles game that I’ve not seen before and Tortuga pulls it off with style. The variability and independence of the Dutch player can have massive consequences, and if played right can hold the tide of the battle in their hands.

And talking of style, I hope that my photos of this game do it justice. The game, the box, the board, art, components everything is flat-out gorgeous. And yet, manages to never feel over produced. It is tight, succinct and comes in at around £25. The neoprene playing ‘board’ juxtaposed by the simple, almost old-fashioned pawns is quite simply delightful.



Tortuga 1667 is one of my favourite games of 2017; it does everything a really good game needs to do. It gets you thinking, gets you interacting and playing. You never feel like you don’t have a choice of actions, and whatever you do you’ll be moving towards your ever approaching the goal. Ultimately the game comes down to being able to carefully balance subterfuge with careful, planned strikes against those players you think/hope are your enemy. Played at the higher player count this game will not fail to entertain and enthral, and oh my, doesn’t it look very pretty on your shelf.



This review was based on a full priced Kickstarter campaign at the Early Bird pledge level.  

Review: Overseers

Overseers is the English reprint of the Japanese game Chenghuang: Guardian of the City first published in 2015 by Big Fun Games.  This game marks the first game from ThunderGryph Games and was successfully funded on Kickstarter in July 2016 raising €62,710, 712% of its €8,800 target. The copy seen in the photos below is the Kickstarter edition so some components may vary from a retail purchase of the game.

In Overseers players take up the mantles of celestial beings whose purpose is to continually strike a balance in the world of men, to do this they will apply Traits to human-kind such as Courage, Hope, Greed and Anger, however; they will also be in constant conflict with one another, thus ensuring that no one Overseer can impose their will exclusively upon mankind.
Truth be told; the theme in this game is a very simple, yet very beautiful, veneer; so if theme is of paramount importance to you in your games, then this one will certainly not be plucking that string. Do not stop reading though, because mechanically this is a wonderful game of drafting, set collection, and bluffing with variable player powers and heaps and heaps of player interaction. And to top it all off, these things are pulled off quickly, deftly and with panache.


Overseers is played over three rounds, with the player collecting the most victory tokens being deemed the winner, a three-player game will take about thirty minutes but do not mistake its brevity for any lack of depth. Each player will be dealt a new Overseer at the beginning of every round, each with their own special ability, before being dealt a hand of six Trait cards. As a Set Collection/Drafting game, each player is looking to put together the best five cards they can, selecting one card from their hand before passing the remainder to their neighbour. The really main area of Overseers comes from the following Phase: Placement.
Here, players will place their five cards on the play space in front of them, three of the cards will be face-up, the other two face down. All players then discuss who they believe to have the best and highest scoring set of cards, before entering the Vote Phase and simultaneously placing their Token in front of that player.
The Judgement Phase only affects that one chosen player, where they will either Admit (and discard two cards of their choosing) or Deny that they have the best hand. In the Showdown Phase all players reveal their cards, and if the voted player Denied, and didn’t score the highest scoring cards, they get to take one of the discarded cards to bolster their final score! Which is ace. Alternatively, they lose two of their best cards if they did have the high score.

The Greed Phase allows the player with the most Greed cards (very low scoring) to steal a card from another player! Which introduces a brilliant and simple Take That system into the game.

The round ends and each player dives into the Overseers stamped cloth bag to dig out their victory tokens with the winner being declared after three rounds to the player with the most victory points. These coins are a bit of a struggle, with denominations of 1, 5, 10, and 20 it varying shades of grey through to a greyish-gold on one side and then a uniform grey/brown on the reverse makes this part of the game a little sluggish and saps some of the pace in this game, I have a mind to pimp mine out with some simple wooden tokens at some point and if you have any form of colour blindness you may struggle even more here.
Overseers may well be my favourite drafting game (insert gasp here), and this is for one very simple reason; because it is very easy to keep track of what you are giving to your neighbours. With only six types of cards to keep track of, you almost feel like a card counter in a Las Vegas casino; you know you passed your neighbour a (blue) Courage card each and every time, but come the Placement phase he isn’t showing any? Not a chance, he is sitting on a hidden 21 points there and so we enter the Vote phase and everyone around that table thinks they know what each other has hidden. This is integral to the enjoyment of Overseers, you make the best of the draft but go charging into the next phase with a slither of knowledge, with accusations ready, and so the player interaction ramps up.
I always enjoy this part of the game, the bluffing, the miss direction, and even the trying to attract all those counters (that I like to call the Denial Trap). In my games, this phase can get pretty heated, increasingly so with each successive round. However, the boisterous extremes I’ve seen this game taken to aren’t fundamental or necessary, shyer, quieter players will certainly be able to fully engage with this phase, just with a lot more decorum. Choosing your play group is important with this game, much like many games that use a bluffing/bidding mechanic, arguably these mechanics in Overseers are more accessible than Sheriff of Nottingham for example, as all players are simultaneously hiding something, and no one person is the “bad guy”.

The art and graphic design (from Studio Amatiz) are…noteworthy. It is brilliant, the Overseer cards and box art have the very popular and attractive spot UV varnish, the artwork itself is beautiful, intricate, and detailed, reminiscent, I think, of Soul Calibur. But; it is a little racy for my very English sensibilities. All the Overseers are women, all of them are Caucasian, all of them are scantily or revealing clad, some of them are verging on pornographic. None of this is relevant to the theme of the game, it has been a very conscious decision to have these cards look this way, simply to have them look that way.

The trait cards, conversely, are purely graphical, simple large, bold iconography with Chinese writing which is all you need for a set collection card game.
Some people will be absolutely fine with the artwork, they will appreciate the talent and skill required for it, and then just get on and play the game. I’m not one of those people though unfortunately, sometimes I play games with my nieces and nephews who are all roughly around thirteen, and I simply wouldn’t feel comfortable putting Meixiu
(a girl’s name meaning grace and beauty) down in front of a thirteen-year-old boy or girl, and even some grown men or women could be made to feel uncomfortable with the art too. For me, this limits who I can play this great game with, it limits when I can play it and these limitations result in people missing out on a great, fun little game.

This game was one of the first games I ever backed on Kickstarter, and I’m proud to be one of the 2,617 to help bring it to life because it is fabulous. Overseers has a lot of my favourite game mechanics and some of the best player interaction I’ve experienced in a competitive game. It is quick and light, and although may sound fragmented and clunky with all the phases, it is actually very slick and easy to pick up. I only wish that I could get Overseers to the table as often as it deserves.

You can pre-order your copy of the second print run here and there are still some of the first print around here.

If you like Sherriff of Nottingham you may also like Overseers.