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Review of Goblins: Epic Death
GOOOOBLINS!
Goblins Epic Death is a fast paced “card ‘n’ luck” game. Simplicity Goblins = fun for everyone!'
What you get: Your EUR 19.90 or USD 24.90 will buy you Goblins: Epic Death (I. Love. The. Title.), a card game for two to six players containing the rulebook, 54 goblin tokens and 120 cards. The cards are divided in 12 leader cards, 50 goblin cards and 58 land cards. The leader cards provide special abilities and effectively represent the player (i.e. they cannot be eliminated from the game). The goblin cards come in three varieties (actions, machines and heroes) and follow different rules. The land cards are where the battles take place (in the woods, river, the wall or the town) and are put face down. The challenges that the player will face when a land card is revealed are stated on the hidden side of the card. The rules can be found in both English and Italian in Stratelibri's website.
Gameplay: The players must destroy the town and conquer as many land cards as possible. Each land card has a victory point value. At the end of the game which occurs when all the town land cards have been conquered, the player with the highest total of victory points wins (or the most conquered land cards in case of a tie, or the most goblin tokens in case of yet another tie, or who shouts 'gooooobliiiiins!' first in case of a full-blown tie. No, I am not making this up).
While setting up the game, and after the cards are shuffled, each player is dealt one leader, three goblin cards and five goblin tokens. The rest of the goblin cards form a deck, while the rest of the tokens are placed in the common pool. The land cards are shuffled according to type. They then create the battlefield by being set on the table face down according to one of the three existing configurations the rulebook suggests for a short, medium or long game. The game includes some fairly logical guidelines for the players to create their own terrain.
The game starts by the player mostly resembling a goblin (ouch). In his turn, a player does the following in sequence: reinforces, moves, fights and discards.
By reinforcing, he draws either cards or tokens from the deck and pool respectively, and plays heroes and machines in his army. Heroes however have a particular cost, while machines need a crew to man them.
By moving, the player moves his leader card (meaning: his army) across the battlefield. An army can move only to an adjacent space from where he was. If that space contains an unrevealed card, the card is revealed and combat starts. If the card has been revealed already, combat starts. If no card occupies the space any longer, nothing happens. Finally, if another army camps at the same position a fray amongst the goblins take place.
By fighting, the players resolve any combat situation. On land cards, the player first resolves the card effects including symbols and text. Then the player's attack value compares to the land's defense. The attack value of an army is his heroes value plus the number of its goblins. Machines reduce the defense value of the land, while action cards can modify bot attack and defense. To win an attack against a land, an army needs to meet the requirements needed and have its attack higher than the land's defense. Irrespective of victory or loss, the army suffers casualties: the land card's modified defense value dictate the number of goblin tokens a player must take from his army and toss them in the air in the same way one would toss a coin (no kidding). If they land on the 'alive' side, they live. If they come down 'dead', they perish in battle and return to the pool. There are additional rules around these lines on how heroes or the crew manning the machines survive battle in case no goblin army was present. If an army wins in combat, it occupies the space, receives a number of reinforcements and the player takes the card in front of him placing it face down (leaving effectively a hole on the land pattern). If an army loses, it retreats to its previous space. The land card however remains revealed and is not substituted.
By discarding, the player can keep up to three of his goblin cards. Any excess cards are discarded in a pile next to the goblin deck. In case machine cards lose their crew they must be re-equipped or also discarded.
Two additional rules merit a mention here. First, no game called epic death justifies its name without having rules covering exactly that. In the aptly named rule of the same name, if the army’s attack value is less than half of the defense value of the land card (after it is reduced by machines), and the player has at least one goblin token in play, he can try to achieve an Epic Death. The player tosses all of his goblin tokens (including any assigned to Machines). If all of the goblins tossed come up dead (yes, dead), he has achieved an Epic Death. This is an instant victory (!), allowing the player to collects reinforcements and the land card as normal. If he fails, those who died stay dead while those who survived are being tossed for a second time, before the army retreats to its previous position.
Second, goblins are quarrelsome. When two goblin armies meet, a fray occurs. Armies compare their attack values. The stronger army takes the top land card from the loser’s conquest pile, and the loser must move his army to an adjacent space of his choice. If there is a tie, both players take the top land card from their opponents’ conquest piles, and the attacking army moves back to the space it moved from. For the casualties that each Army suffers, both players must toss a number of Goblins equal to the weaker army’s attack value. Machines cannot be used in frays, however their crews are counted towards the army’s attack value. No cards that affect a land card can be used during a fray. An army that ends up on a land card after a goblin fray cannot move during its next turn, and it must fight a combat against that land card.
The strong points: Goblins: Epic Death. How can you resist a game with such a title?
The gameplay is partially silly (in a good way), and the art reflects just that. Pathetic goblin faces, weak-kneed heralds, enemies like the trolley (standard trolls wouldn't be as fun), battering rams (goblins attached to live rams), goofy descriptors on the cards, it's all there.
The basic premises of the rules are well thought of. The game could have had dice to simulate life or death, yet tossing goblins in the air is inherently funnier. The randomness, even though devastating at times, works well overall.
The weak points: For all the effort that went into designing distinct cards both in name, description as well as design, their effects appear rather repetitive, with penalties (or bonuses, in some cases) being repeated to the point that they become the exception and not the rule. That felt... lazy.
It is not my main concern about G:ED however. The main issue this game suffers from is what appears to be a sloppy attitude in putting the rules down, at least in the English version. These are some of the situations that arose during play.
- Some machines or leaders appear to interact with the river land cards. This we know by a symbol resembling waves on the aforementioned machine and leader cards. Yet, this symbol appears neither in the rules nor on the actual river land cards themselves. True, with some minimal search it is obvious what the cards interact with, but why would one ever include unexplained symbols in his game?
- When an army loses a fight against a land, the army has to retreat to its previous position. When however the army is on the starting point, where does it retreat to? This isn't a minor issue; if it can't retreat anywhere, it will have to fight that challenge again and again until the challenge is defeated (according to the rules of obliging someone to fight the land card it is found upon before moving). Yet, there are land cards that are simply invincible with starting resources only, effectively forcing a player to do nothing but waste his time while replenishing his army or card supply... and even the latter might not be feasible depending on how the effect cards are resolved (see next point). That would mean a player doing nothing for the whole duration of the game, and it happened during the review's playtest. Randomness is one thing. Pointlessness is another.
- The rules as stated in the rulebook feel clear, yet the way they interact with the cards is not ideal. Battling the land cards is a major part of the game. The rules state: When an Army is on a Land card in Phase C, the player must face the challenge on that card. First, he/she must resolve all the card effects, including the symbol on the left side of the card and any effects described in the card text. After any card effects are resolved, combat begins. The player compares his/her Army’s Attack value to the Land card’s Defense value. The rule gives the impression that the description in the card is something additional to the actual fight, yet that's not obvious in all cases. In addition, it is not clear whether the symbols are resolved before the text or vice versa, and that in itself makes a lot of difference. Let's take the text of a land card, the Crocodile for example. When you face this card, toss all your goblins. How does this get interpreted? a) do what the emblem says, toss all your goblins (the effect of the card), and then have your army fight the card (because the fight always happens), b) toss all your goblins (the effect of the card), do what the emblem says, and then have your army fight the card (because the fight always happens), c) do what the emblem says, and then have your army fight the card as modified by the effect (because the poorly-written card effect introduces a change to the fight rule, and not an additional pre-fight toss).
The difference between options a), b) and c) is enormous. Even worse, the question is not applicable only to this one card; it is applicable to many of them. Good luck trying to find out how the cards interact with other cards that bring forth exceptions, like the Diver hero for example. The text: You do not toss any Goblins when affected by a [water] land card. Or the Raft: You do not toss Goblins when affected by a [water] land card. [...]' Even if we knew what of a), b) or c) is valid from the previous paragraph, we still wouldn't know whether the Diver's ability negates the land card toss effect only (while the toss after the fight will always occur), or any toss whatsoever that happens while on this land card (including the toss after a fight).
Not having clear and unambiguous rules means that the excitement dwindles down while trying to house rule a game that is supposed to be funny, random, and with an advertised duration of 50 minutes, shortish. On average our games dragged on, keeping a player out of the game for a substantive chunk of it without any possibility of him catching up. This just beats the point. Losing all your army in one go can be fun, if that loss doesn't prolong the game by another 15 minutes of mindless reinforcing while going back and forth on empty spaces avoiding all battles... ...which again shouldn't be the point in a game with Epic Death in its title.
The game is out since 2011, yet I found no FAQ or amended rulebook addressing the issue. I do not speak Italian thus I do not know whether these issues exist in the English version only. There are remedies however. The card description and phrases can't change for the existing owners of the game, but a rulebook is easy to revise and should sort out the deficiencies, frame the random element in the game, ascertain with absolute clarity how the cards interact and re-balance things so that every player can participate.
Conclusion: I really, really want to like this game and that was the sentiment shared overall around the table. Even with the existing shortcomings, I am convinced that the game can be solidified. The way its rules are currently presented though do not help. I unfortunately felt as if I was playtesting not for a review but for a release. With epic titles for epic silly fun come epic expectations. I am looking forward for the folks at Stratelibri to do what is needed and for the game to become what it aims: a funny, random, short, slapstick filler that will be visited again and again.
To find out more about Goblins: Epic Death, you can visit http://www.stratelibri.it and http://www.giochiuniti.it.
