I know I’m a older than a lot of my readers, so many of you might not remember arcades. These were magical places where a roll of quarters would keep you occupied for hours, wandering from machine to machine playing Gauntlet or Street Fighter or that weird Japanese game where you reveal pictures of girls in their underwear. While I definitely spent more than I should have on that strange Japanese striptease, one of my absolute favorites was Rampage, where you play a giant monster demolishing a city and eating people as fast as you can. You would climb up the sides of buildings to eat screaming blondes, punch helicopters out of the sky, and demolish entire apartment buildings just because they were there. As a child, this was almost as entertaining as exploding GI Joe figure with firecrackers.
For no reason I can fathom, it took the board game industry 30 years to recreate the joy and wonder of blasting the crap out of a city block with a monster tall enough to eat sunbathers out of the rooftop pool. But they did finally get around to it, and Rampage is the best giant-monster board game you’re going to have a chance to play. Or, if not the best, definitely the most fun. Because you don’t roll a die for monster combat, manage your cards to maximize your destructive ability, or place workers for any of the hundreds of reasons game designers invent to make us place workers. Instead, when you demolish a building, you actually, physically demolish the building.
The board is the city. Setting up this city – which will take you maybe ten minutes – involves stacking meeples and cardboard rectangles to build skyscrapers and apartment buildings. To approach one of these vehicles, you flick a disc with a picture of your monster’s feet. To trash the building and get to the creamy nougat meeples, you pick up your monster’s body and drop him on the building. Want to use your monster’s devastating breath weapon? Just put your chin on top of his head and blow. In other words, when you wreck stuff in Rampage, you are literally wrecking stuff.
If all you did in Rampage was destroy the board, this would still be intensely entertaining. The pure visceral thrill of watching a building collapse because you shot a news truck off the top of your head, and that truck hit the corner of the building and sent all the supports tumbling, which then fell onto an enemy monster and knocked him to the ground – this has been joyous, hilarious fun since the first man discovered how cool it is to break something. Rampage appeals to my inner vandal at a primal level, triggering all the happiness in the most feral part of my brain. But the designers of Rampage are Ludovic Maublanc and Antoine Bauza, two of the finest game designers alive today, and they took that goofy, juvenile love of destruction and spun it into a game that appeals to more than just a desire to smash sand castles at the beach.
For instance, the best points you can score come from eating people, but you only score for full sets. If you eat thirty green meeples, that’s worth no points at all, but if you eat one green, one yellow, one red, one blue, one black and one gray, that’s ten points. You can be the eatingest monster in Tokyo, but if you don’t play smart and eat the right victims, you’ll lose to the guy who used his head. And if you just wreck stuff willy-nilly, you’ll send those meeple flying off the board, where they escape and end up hurting you by calling in airstrikes.
These few basic rules are fine, but the most intelligent and engaging part of Rampage is the deck of cards. You’re not all identical monsters. Each monster has a special ability, specific destructive tendencies, and a once-a-game superpower. These cards mean that you might abandon a building full of lovely, edible people to jog across the city and punch an opponent in the back of the head. Your strategy will vary slightly from the strategy of the other monsters, which means that no two players are doing the exact same thing. Sure, you’re all smashing the hell out of fragile buildings to eat the little bastards inside, but you might be after the red meeples while your opponent is just trying to beat the teeth out of your face. Knocking over an enemy with a flying kick to the pelvis isn’t just entertaining; it’s a smart play.
From what I was hearing at BGG Con, Rampage should be out in the next few days. It was one hell of a hot ticket at that show, even though we weren’t selling it, and that’s because people can spot fun when they see it. You can love Rampage even if you don’t remember the 80s (and from recent angry tirades, I am guessing a lot of you don’t). Breaking stuff is fun; breaking stuff with a plan is even better.
Summary
2-4 players
Pros:
Dexterity game where you literally destroy things
Smart rules and clever scoring make this more than just blowing up frogs with M-80s
Looks delightful
Monster abilities provide replay value and variable strategies
Cons:
I simply cannot think of one
Rampage kicks so much ass, it wore out a pair of boots. And they had steel toes. You can pre-order it here:
MONSTER MASH