Blood Feud in New York reminds me a little of some of those wargames. Each side controls a gang of mobsters trying to carve out their own piece of the big apple, with family members, thugs, hitmen, and mob bosses. The different gangs jockey for position to control the most territory and eliminate their enemies. They sponsor illicit criminal enterprises and corrupt the police. They cruise around the city in limousines, or up the East River in a speedboat. If a wargame married The Sopranos, Blood Feud in New York would be the love child.
Contents of the Box
There are tons of little pieces inside this box. The most obvious pieces are the standup people - and there are many of these little people. Thugs, hitmen, henchmen, family members and mob bosses make up the plastic figurines, which are roughly the size of a standard 25mm miniature, only poorly sculpted. They mostly look awkward and a little silly - not all that menacing, except for the thug with his enormous shiv.
The game also includes a wide variety of vehicles. These are all black plastic, and include limos, helicopters and speedboats. The figures are not particularly attractive, but they do at least tell the players what they are supposed to be.
On top of the plastic people and vehicles, there are three kinds of building figurines. These represent illicit activities, corrupt precincts, and penthouse palaces. Like the other figures, these are not particularly impressive, but they are immediately identifiable and tell the players at a glance what they represent.
Thousands of small cardboard tokens are included on two huge punch-out sheets. These circular icons represent control, and are used to tell everyone playing who owns which neighborhood. These tokens are rather poor quality, and have a tendency to tear when being punched out.
The rule book is a large, letter-sized book. It needs to be this large to accommodate the fairly complicated rules. The book is illustrated with what is easily the best art in the game - evocative black and white drawings of mobsters at war. The writing is decent, and does a good job of explaining the game. However, players may require multiple readings to understand the game completely, and the quick start rules are nearly useless, since they continually reference the rule book to explain how to play.
Several reference cards accompany Blood Feud in New York. These cards remind players how much it costs to hire each asset, from cheap thugs to expensive penthouses, and describes the benefits of each. The back of the card essentially contains a multiplication table, since it can be overwhelming to calculate earnings at the end of every round.
The paper money included with the game is all white. Though some time was spent designing the money, it would have been nice to have the different denominations in different colors. It gets slightly confusing to hand out the money when it all looks so similar. When the bank owes an amount that requires every denomination, players can easily slip a 50 into their pile of 20-dollar bills.
Finally, the board for Blood Feud in New York is large and quite attractive. It lays out the boroughs of New York City and a sliver of New Jersey, along with parks, airports, and waterways. This was my favorite part of the game, since it did a splendid job of illustrating the city and making it attractive. A huge amount of time went into this board, and the creators of this game should be proud of it.
The Game
Blood Feud in New York is not a game for kids. It is complicated and intense, and requires attention to detail not found in most children. Not to mention the fact that the entire game is like a board game version of Grand Theft Auto.
To start, players are assigned a handful of cash, a few minions, and a crime family. They place their criminals in their assigned neighborhood and begin to expand.
On a player's turn, he has several options. He can move his mobsters to seize new turf, instigate gang battles, and purchase assets. Once the turn is over, the player may purchase new assets, such as vehicles, buildings and hired help.
Any time a crook moves through an uncontested area, he places a control marker on the neighborhood. Most 'employees' may only move one neighborhood at a time, but they can pile into a limousine and make much better time, dropping off hoodlums along the way to exert their control over the neighborhoods through which they drive. Speedboats can take mobsters up the river, dropping them at strategic areas for strikes into enemy territory.
When mobsters from two opposing families wind up in the same area, battles ensue. Each player sets up their gunmen in rows facing each other. Hit men get to make a sneak attack, possibly removing enemy thugs without a fight. Then the two sides take turns rolling one die per fighter to determine whether they wound each other's contestants. If a fighter is wounded, he may still make a counterattack before he dies. The two sides go back and forth until one side is decimated, after which time play returns to the game board.
Control is the real breaking point for this game. Controlling a neighborhood gives a player income, and since money is used to buy everything, control is critical. A player who controls a neighborhood can corrupt its police, instigate illicit activity, or build a penthouse suite. These additions can improve anything from income to defense, and might even cost the other players a little money.
Winning the game relies on one of two conditions - kill off every other crime lord, or make six grand every turn. Neither is easy, and neither is quick. As a player takes out opposing mob bosses, he can absorb their gangs and become more powerful. Owning vast amounts of turf can bring a player closer to the monetary goal, but six thousand dollars is a huge amount of money - average income is closer to six hundred at the beginning of the game.
Actual play is relatively strategic, with considerable maneuvering and forethought. Placing your mobsters far from the front lines will keep them safe, but will limit their expansion and utility. On the other hand, placing your mob boss near the edge of your turf will let you hire gangsters right on top of your enemies, but a well-planned enemy assault can end the game for you. Clever uses of vehicles can turn the table on opponents, but be careful that they don't do the same to you. A fair amount of attention to detail is required, since each move could earn you money or cost you.
Observations
Blood Feud in New York is essentially a simulation of a bloody gang war. It requires strategy, forethought and a little luck. A good player can expect to beat a weaker player most of the time, since battles are relatively easy to predict, with a slight margin to allow for luck destroying the best laid plans. Those who enjoy a prolonged strategic simulation will most likely enjoy Blood Feud in New York.
Unfortunately, while the game includes great amounts of strategy, it fails in the area of good old-fashioned fun. I got tired of calculating income and fifteen-minute brawls in the street. I quickly began to wish that someone would just kill my mob boss so I could go watch TV. My plans were continually frustrated by the bizarre layout of New York City, as my hitmen would all end up crouched in a corner of Long Island, wishing they had a limo to get them to some place where they could kill people. Of course, the hitmen thing was my own fault, but it served to irritate me further as I grew bored with the math.
I was also frustrated by the pieces themselves. The neighborhoods on this board are not large enough to accommodate more than four or five of the figures, and if you add in a limo and a corrupt precinct, you may have to mark down which soldiers are where and take them off the board. I began to miss the days of 'simpler is better,' when troops were marked with cardboard squares smaller than my thumbnail, and those little chits contained all the info I needed to know about how far they moved and how well they fought.
I could have forgiven a great deal of my complaints with the game if the components had been more attractive. Sadly, the figures are awkward and blocky, the vehicles are dull and unadorned, and the buildings are nondescript. If Eagle Games did not want to create quality components, I would have been delighted with small wood blocks, or even cardboard squares.
Summary
Somewhere inside Blood Feud in New York is an engaging, interesting game with lots of potential. Unfortunately, all that potential is hidden behind poor physical design decisions and complicated processes. In the end, the game just is not much fun.
Style: 3 - While the components are not particularly pretty, there are a lot of them, and the map is really cool.
Substance: 3 - This is a playable game, but it is unnecessarily complex, and poor physical design makes the endgame difficult to play.
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