Revolution! is a game for 3 - 4 players where the players use Force, Blackmail and Gold tokens to capture areas of the board. The goal is to gain the most political support in the town before the "Revolution!" breaks out.
Game Play
The game board consists of 7 locations around the town to exert your influence - the plantation, tavern, cathedral, town hall, fortress, market and harbor. To "exert influence", you spend Force, Blackmail, or Gold tokens in a dutch auction format (hidden bids) against other players.
When you win an auction for a location, you gain an influence token in that location and may pick up additional Force, Blackmail or Gold tokens for the bidding in the next round. During these auctions, you also pick up "Support" points. When all of the locations are full of their quota of influence tokens, the game ends and each player scores additional Support points for those locations in which they have more influence than the other players. Highest score wins.
Game play is also fairly fast. This is one of those games where you can believe it when it reads "under 2 hours", unlike many popular strategy board games. If I recall correctly, our playtest game finished in just about an hour.
Strategy
The strategy of the game involves predicting where and how much the other players will be spending their Force, Blackmail and Gold tokens to gain influence. Each token type can only be used in certain locations. For instance, there are some locations where you are not allowed to use Force and others where you are not allowed Blackmail - Gold is accepted everywhere. Also, Force trumps Blackmail which trumps Gold, so you will need to plan the level of spending required in order to capture the influence in that location over other players.
After trying to predict the other players, and spending your limited resources where you think you need them, all players reveal their bids and the winner of the round is whomever has spent the most for each of the various locations. Even though there are 7 board locations, there are actually 12 places (to bid) where you can spend your tokens. Some do not gain you influence tokens, but may grant other bonuses, such as additional Force or Blackmail in the next round, or the ability to move influence around or off the game board.
While the game mechanics are actually quite easy to get the hang of, the strategies can be very deep as your game play will change depending on how well you know the other players and as the board changes over time.
Components
The influence tokens (cubes) are colored wood reminiscent of the really old Risk board games. Nice. I prefer wood tokens over plastic, but that may be my personal quirk. The Force, Blackmail and Gold tokens are think cardboard stock and are very durable. Aside from the game board, there are also the small bidding boards and bidding screens for each player The board is nicely illustrated and the game component production quality is excellent.
Other Notes
I think what may set Revolution! apart is that it has a broader appeal it has than most "gamer's games". For instance, Settlers of Catan is great fun, but doesn't have as much appeal for players who aren't deep strategists (i.e. - casual game players). For those who are not in the "board game geek" class, a game like Settlers doesn't appeal as much.
However, Revolution! is deeper than what most would consider a casual/family game such as Pictionary, Taboo or Cranium. Revolution! sits in the perfect middle ground which satisfies both the strategy gamer and the family/casual/party game crowd at the same time. It's rules light enough that even players turned off by strategy games will enjoy it, and crunchy enough to satisfy the more hardcore game player.
If you have a "non-gamer" spouse or friends who aren't into the crunchier strategy games, this is a perfect step up from those "family/party" games we're all getting sick of.
At $40, it isn't cheap, but isn't overly expensive either. It'd be nice to see it in the $30 - $35 price point, but I understand that Steve Jackson does not have the distribution and scale cost savings that a Hasbro (Parker Brothers) has.
Pros: Less than 2 hour game play, rules light (4 pages), easy mechanics, good production values, wide range appeal.
Cons: Very few, if any... Could be a few dollars cheaper.
All in all, this game gets a strong buy recommendation from me.
http://sjgames.com/revolution/
