Jun 9, 2011

Revolution!

Revolution! is a board game in which you're secretly bidding against your opponents to control territory and gain the support of the masses. Revolution! is produced by Steve Jackson games, is for 3-4 players and a game lasts about an hour.

The board consists of the seven areas of town and a support track running around the edge of the board. The goal is to have the most support at the end of the game. Each area of town holds a number of influence cubes, at the end the player with the most cubes in an area has control of it and gains the associated support.

Each player gets their own Bid Board and screen. You place your bids on the Bid Board while it's protected by the screen, when everyone is ready the screens are lifted to reveal the bids. The Bid Board has twelve spaces that represent influential people who will assist you on that round, if you win that bid! There are three types of tokens used to bid - Force, Blackmail and Gold.

A round of play goes through four stages:

1) Espionage - Since the town is full of spies, everyone knows what resources everyone else has. At the beginning of the round the players must show the tokens they are starting with.

2) Bidding - Secretly place tokens on your Bid Board behind the screen. You can place a maximum of six bids and you must use all your tokens. One Force token will beat any amount of Blackmail or Gold. One Blackmail token will beat any amount of Gold. Some people cannot be forced or blackmailed.

3) Resolution - All players lift their screens to reveal their bids. Bids are resolved in the same order every time - starting at the top left of the Bid Board (the General) and working down to the bottom right (the Mercenary). If you're the only player to bid on that person then you win and receive whatever benefit is listed. If two or more players bid on the same person then the player with the highest bid wins. If the bids are tied or no one bids on a person then that benefit doesn't occur this round. After the bids are resolved return tokens used in that bid to the bank.
Winning a bid provides a benefit. If the person grants support then move your scoring token around the track on the edge of the board. If the person grants tokens (Force, Blackmail or Gold) then get those tokens from the bank and place them aside until the next round. If the person grants influence then place one of your influence cubes in the specified location on the board.

4) Patronage - After all bids have been resolved check the number of tokens each player has. If they have less than five then take gold tokens from the bank to bring them back up to five tokens. You can only get Force and Blackmail tokens from winning bids. After this phase a new round begins.

The game ends when all the influence spaces on the board are full. Players then score support from the areas they control and from the tokens in their hands. To control an area you don't need to have the majority of the influence spaces, just the most. The winner is the player with the most support.

We were introduced to this game at VCon while waiting to play something else. There's a fair amount of strategy and trying to second-guess your opponents, you want to try to predict where and how much your opponents will be bidding. The game play is simple, but the strategy really adds a level of complexity.

Originally posted at Pretty Gamer

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