At the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas I happened across Darter, a new board game that I found grabbed my attention. The basic concept of the game is that four bullets (called darters) are flying around a chess board (an 8x8 grid). You play various wooden tiles that affect the flight of the darters and are trying to destroy your opponent’s base by having a darter impact their home. The edges of the map wrap and unhindered by tiles the darters keep going in a straight line. It’s a simple concept at its face, but as I discovered after playing a few games, the strategy that emerges can be quite complex.

This game is really about its tiles. There are three kinds of tiles – impact, proximity and bombs. Impact tiles only affect the darters when the darters actually hit the tiles. They reflect the darter, move the darter farther along, and so forth. Proximity tiles affect the darter when it gets close to the tile, functioning as magnets or repulsors or changing the flight path of a darter. Bombs explode when a darter hits them destroying nearby pieces. There are a dozen distinct tiles and if it seems that this is complex to keep track of, you are dead right. Fortunately there are two handy reference sheets included with the game. These are essential to early game play. Without these sheets, it would be impossible for novice players to remember the effects of the dozen different tiles.

Physically the game is impressive and sturdy. It is packaged in a black cardboard tube durable enough to air travel unscathed. It contains forty eight wooden tiles (four of each type) each printed with a unique, distinctive and easily comprehensible icon. The tiles are well made and durable enough to survive repeated game play. The two bases and four darters are also made of wood, giving this game of flying bullets, mirrors, and magnets an almost rustic feel. The game board is a rolled up chess mat that would be useful for a large number of games beside Darter.

Learning the game is surprisingly simple. I was able to pick it up on my lunch break at GTS and played four games in less than an hour. The rule booklet is full of examples and is clearly and directly written. Darter claims on the box to be a fast paced game and I would say this is a fair claim. Games can be over in a flash or last for at most half an hour. It is definitely a two player game. There are only two bases and adding more seems to me it would quickly crowd the board. There is a variant in the rule book that claims to accommodate team play, but it seems to me that this game really shines at the two player level.

There is a random element to the game. You draw tiles from a shuffled stack into your hand. A lucky draw of the hand can overcome even the best strategy. For strategy purists, this can be quite frustrating. Fortunately, there are variants that eliminate this random element. In particular I am intrigued by the Ultimate variant where instead of drawing tiles, each player has half the tile deck and may choose from all of the available pieces. I have not played this variant yet, but it does sound very interesting.

In short, this is a fun and unique board game. I own a large collection of board games and none of them are like Darter. If you wanted to describe this game in brief, I suppose you could call it ‘bullet chess’. Quick to learn, complex enough that the games are always different, I have introduced several of my friends to Darter and they have all become hooked.

Here is the only catch – you can’t get it in stores. You have to go to their web site, dartergame.com to order a hand made wooden edition of this game. You can also see what the tiles look like at that site and see how they are used in the game. With shipping the game costs $47.95. That is to this reviewer’s way of thinking the game’s only weakness. I hope that a less expensive version of the game will someday be available. That said, you could do a lot worse than to pick up Darter.