One of my latest hobbies has been browsing through the board game listings on the Kickstarter website and finding new games to back. If you are not familiar with it, Kickstarter is a crowd-funding website. If you have a good idea, instead of going to 1, big finance backer to pay for it, you are using the power of the internet to get hundreds of smaller backers.
I have backed a number of board games, but this is the first one I’ve actually gotten delivered to me. (It’s usually anywhere from 6-8 months from the time you pledge until you actually get a produced game). So in the mail recently, I received my copy of For The Win.
Game Overview:
So what is For The Win? Glad you asked. For The Win is a tile laying game where you try and line up the 5 different tiles in your position so that they are all touching. You start with 10 total tiles, two of each type. Throughout the game, you take your turns either playing new tiles or activating in play ones.
How to Play:
Gameplay is fairly simple. Each of your 5 different tiles (10 in total) have a unique ability. Each ability can be used once, and then the tile is flipped over. You need to spend an action to flip the tile back over to it’s active side.
That being said, on your turn, you can take 1 or 2 actions. You will be taking 5 total actions each round, and then the starting player marker is passed. Whether you use 1 or 2 actions on your turn is up to you and your specific strategy.
Actions you can take include:
- Play a tile (deactivated and not touching any of your other tiles)
- Flipping a deactivated tile back over to it’s active side
- Pushing a tile to a new spot in the “grid”
- Sliding a group of tiles
- Using one of your tiles unique powers.
Some of the powers your tiles have include:
- Move your ninja to another space on the grid
- Use your alien to move any tile next to it
- Use your monkey to flip all adjacent tiles
- Your Pirate can blast any adjacent tile to a new spot
- Your zombie can “infect” an adjacent tile, replacing it with your other zombie tile.
That about sums up the things you can do. It’s a match of deciding which action will be best on your turn. Everything is in the goal of trying to line up 5 of each of your tiles so they are all touching (and active). The game plays in about 15-20 minutes and the rules are fairly light and easy to understand.
My Session:
Me and my lovely wife, Heather, sat down to give the game a try and ended up playing 3 games in the course of about 45 minutes. I explained the rules and we got started. The first game was one of those “figure it out as you are playing”, so it was a tad awkward as usual. However, after our first game, we had a good feel for it and played 2 more, where we got more in depth with our strategy. Once we realized what each piece did and what actions we could take on our turn, the game flowed fairly smoothly.
I’m happy to report that I won the first two games, while narrowly losing the last one. We both enjoyed the quick game and it was nice to play something without complex rules (seeing as it was late at night).
Final Thoughts:
So what did I think of For The Win? As a filler game, it was pretty good. The theme was a bit silly, but that’s ok for as light a game as it was. Elements of the game reminded me of Sheer Panic, a fun sheep moving game. But overall we both enjoyed it. It was light enough and small enough that it might be a good travel game. You don’t have to be a hard core gamer to enjoy this game and it’s family friendly for sure.
I’m happy with my first Kickstarter acquisition and am looking forward to getting more of them in the future. But if you are looking for something different to either start off a game night or fill a little bit of time late at night, check out For The Win.
If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself, you will have to wait a bit. It hasn’t been released to the general public yet, but I’m guessing when it does, it will be about $15-$20.
Final Score: 2.5 Stars – A fun, little filler game that’s accessible to all comers.
Hits:
• Easy, quick game play
• Accessible to your non-gamer friends
• Very portable
Misses:
• Clearly a filler game
• Expansion tiles don’t quite match the base game.
• The theme was a bit silly
