What you get: Your EUR 35.00 (in Essen at least) buys you Goblins Inc. It is designed by Filip Neduk and published by Czech Games Edition (CGE). The box contains quite a few items: 60 construction cards to create your robot, defense tokens, the scoreboard and 4 promotion cards, 7 blueprint cards (the pattern on which your robot will be built), 3 team cards (whom you are up and against at any given round), 84 agenda cards divided in 4 sets for each player, 24 tactics cards, 2 tactician controllers, 2 pilot controllers (which need some assembly), 10 special dice and 12 goblins, 3 in each colour.
A few additional promo cards (one blueprint and two new agenda carsd per player) were also given out in Essen free of charge.
Blurbs from the publisher: 'You are a goblin employee in a factory called “GOBLINS INC.” that is dedicated to building giant robots for war and enjoyment. You will enter a competition to become the new “Big Boss”, since the old one finally chose to hang up his trusted whip and retire. You will form teams and try to design, build and test the best giant robot possible in wild earth-shattering combat. The problem is, although you will have to work in teams, there can be only one winner.
During the game, the players will team up and will take turns designing and building a robot together. They will then cooperate in piloting and shooting at the other team with their robot in a grand battle of epic proportions. But what your teammates do not know is that you have secret goals with which to impress the “Big Boss”. Can you keep your teammate happy and still destroy the enemy robot?
Anything is possible because there is no “G” in teamwork.'
Gameplay: Goblins Inc. accommodates 2 to 4 players (with slightly different rules for 2 or 3). Each of them controls a small team of 3 goblins which try to get the most victory points possible in the two or three rounds possible (to be determined in advance). The objective is to cooperate well enough in teams of two into, constructing a giant robot that will fight the giant robot of the other team. However, each goblin player has secret agendas that might be counterproductive in the construction of even his own robot and might sabotage it himself.
Goblins Inc. reminded me of many different games even though it shares minimal elements with them: Res Publica, for its limited communication with the other players; Roborally and Cosmic Encounter for the chaos and random (yet not totally uncontrollable) element; semi-cooperative games like Dragon's Gold for having to cooperate, even marginally; backstabbing games like Junta, for having to behave in a dastardly way. Funnily enough, it didn't remind me of Galaxy Trucker, one of CGE's main attractions and selling points, probably due to the fact that as much as I have heard of it, I have never played it. It appears however that the two games share some similarities even though the style is different.
The rules are straightforward, taking up 10 pages with dozens of pictures and examples. First, the four players team up in pairs as the cards dictate. They draw the blueprint for their robot (one per team) and each draws seven secret agenda cards which are to remain hidden from everybody and especially their partner. The teams then build their robots. The player sitting opposite the player from his other team is considered his interlocutor of sorts. Each team has a planner and a builder at any given point. First, the two planners (one per team) randomly draw five construction tiles. They secretly inspect them, and give two to one another. In other words, the planner of Team A gives two tiles to the planner of Team B that he either thinks they are trash, or that he will later get a bonus for destroying due to his secret agenda. Players are not allowed to talk during this time, neither to their team members nor their opponents. Once the exchange is complete, the other two players (one per team) begin planning in the exact same way, while the former planners become builders. The builders build the robot by placing the five tiles they have on the twenty-tile capacity grid in front of them. This process continues twice, until the robot is completed. For each team each player contributes in the planning and building of ten tiles.
The way the tiles are guarantees that the giant robot will have nominal cohesion at best. Non-secured parts will drop off the robot before the fight even starts. When the it starts though, it's a whole new game.
First, out of the seven hidden agendas each player has to finally choose four according to which he will be rewarded at the end of the battle. The agendas remain hidden until then. They are either defensive, destructive or betting. On defensive one tries to see some parts of his robot saved. Examples include gaining points for the armor tiles, the engine tiles or even the decoration tiles still standing after combat. On destructive agendas one tries to see particular parts of the opponent's robot destroyed, like killing the pilots, getting the cockpit exposed, or simply shooting against the weapons. On betting one chooses whether he wants to bet for or against his own robot's victory – and that speaks a lot about his behaviour during the forthcoming combat.
Once the agendas are chosen, four goblin pilots enter the cockpit, the robot is defensively patched up according to some easy going rules and the battle starts. Like in construction, fighting is a collaborative effort. One player is the pilot and the other the tactician of his team's giant robot. The pilot decides how the robot moves and where it will hit. The tactician decides the tactics used. These include hits with double strength, rerolling blank shots, adding defenses etc. First, three tactics cards become available for both tacticians; they will have to fight for them. Then the pilots secretly chose their movement and attack on their control board secretly; again, not even their partners know them. The tacticians secretly denote which tactics card they want. And then all hell breaks loose.
If a pilot leaves some unused engines (moving the robot demands power), his tactician will have better chances of obtaining the card he wanted. It's possible that a team has no tactics for a combat round, since in case both tacticians want the same card, the one with the most unused engines gets it. And why would the pilot move like that in the first place? Huh?
The tacticians then roll the dice for hitting and damage. The dice are special in that every roll from one to five hits the opponent's robot, just at a different spot. Six does not exist in the dice, it's just a blank side. This can happen up to four times, in case a robot has not been already destroyed.
Once a robot has been destroyed, or at the end of the fourth salvo from each side if both robots are still standing and after calculating who won by counting the damage caused, the battle is over and victory points are counted. Points are scored for a team's goblins surviving the battle (in case of a clear cut victory) and for the secret agendas.
This process is repeated twice more, so that every player has partnered up with everybody else and has fought against everybody else. The person with the most victory points at the end of the game is the winner.
The strong points: This is a genuinely funny game that lasts a moderate amount of time (less than an hour). It's not a spoof of something else which requires esoteric knowledge, nor does it rely on jokes that lose their appeal. Its gameplay is chaotic and funny on its own, just like Roborally's is. When I perused the box I admit I wasn't thrilled with the theme. However it works very successfully.
The rules are very well written with examples and imagery. Nothing can be misunderstood. The rulebook is engaging in that allegedly it is instructions from a senior goblin towards the player. It doesn't get silly when reread, neither does it subtract from understanding the rules. As a consequence, the game is very easy to explain irrespective of gaming background. The quality of the material is excellent. The colours are easy to discern, the imagery and meaning is easy to fathom. I am not a fan of games where cards have an image that needs a paragraph of text to be explained in the rulebook. However in Goblins Inc. the images are really self-explanatory. I can't blame the designer for not wanting to put text in a humorous game such as this.
Artistically speaking, it's another success story. What particularly impressed me was the back of the construction yard. It's totally irrelevant to the game and could have been blank for all CGE cared. On the contrary, it has wonderful artwork that really brings it home that a gigantic robot is being built there.
The game will appeal to those looking for a gaming experience with some randomness caused not by the dice or randomisers, but because of the way the rules are set. It is not funny in the sense a party game is, but it is funny enough to be enjoyable. This does not mean however that it is without tactical depth or merit. It is definitively replayable, and especially for the times one wants a lighter experience.
The weak points: I spotted a single typo in the rulebook. In a twist of fate, it had me searching for a while before I realised it was a mistake. The box mentions seven blueprint cards; the rulebook eight. You get seven with the box. That's it.
Some games are accused for being unnecessarily gimmicky and I am wondering whether Goblins Inc. falls within this category. The pilot's controller needs some assembly with plastic fasteners not dissimilar to the ones provided in Tzolk'in. In Tzolk'in however the wheels are integral to the game and I can't think of a system that would have emulated the same mechanic more easily and with less fuss. I am not so certain this is the case in Goblins Inc. since the pilot could have denoted his moves with a system as easy as the tactician. In any case, it's not a big deal at all. It's just that I want my games to last, and gimmicks tend to break down.
I find the interior layout of the box very surprising given its contents. It's as if CGE actively tried to make the box not fit these items. It's of course very easy to remove the internal dividers and all, it just made me wonder.
Incidentally, the cards are sized 55mm x 88,5 mm. The fact that a billion standards exist for something as straightforward as gaming cards will never cease to amaze me. No deck protector I know off will be a good fit, even though the 56x87 (US usual size) is probably the best choice.
Conclusion: Goblins Inc. succeeds in what it sets out to do. Easy to draw a non-gaming crowd with, a good gift for young adults, it can find its place even in the table of devoted gamers. At least when they feel like some good old-fashioned cooperative backstabbing with laughs.
For more info on Goblins Inc. and Czech Games Edition, visit their website at http://czechgames.com/en/.
