Blackmail the printer. Threaten the innkeeper. Bribe the priest.
Welcome to Revolution!
Let me just get out my checklist there; blackmail [x], violence [x] and [bribery [x] – why look it’s everything I’ve ever wanted to do ever in a boardgame. By now you’ll have realised (if you follow my boardgame reviews that is) that I have a penchant for being a bit of a jerk – I prefer games where the goal is to backstab and manipulate my way to victory because if you’re not actively destroying your opponents then tell me what’s the the point in playing boardgames and don’t give me any of the bonding time malarkey – we play to win or we don’t play at all!
So Revolution has everything I ever needed/wanted – well it’s not that simple (it never is)!
Title: Revolution
Designer: Philip duBarry
Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Players: 3 – 4
Play Time: <60 minutes
Setup Time: <5 minutes
Difficulty Rating: 4
Revolution despite the wide magazine style rulebook is actually a pretty simple game to pick up. Each player picks a coloured cardstock board and matching peg, all players also receive a bid board and some bid tokens to begin the game. The goal is to amass the most amount of victory points and to do that players will have to bully, bribe and beat their way around the board, gaining influence in various locations through any means and by traversing the outer rim of the board which tracks earned victory points.
There are no individual turns in Revolution, the game takes place through several shared turns:
1] Cardstock boards up and players must play their total tokens on their bid board
2] Once all players have bid the boards are revealed
3] Starting with top right character players trace the bids to see who has won influence in each area
4] Once everything is calculated players put up bid boards take their hand of tokens and begin secret bidding
The game is finished once all occupiable spaces on the board have been filled by coloured markers, then final scores are added up and the player with the most victory points claims the win.
With the bidding process secret you’ll have to constantly keep stock of what the other players had in their hands before the round began, do they hold more gold, blackmail or threaten tokens and their current influence in the various locations mapped out on the board. 
The strategy element of Revolution feels a very thought out and while an element of luck is involved in the game, it does require a lot more methodical thinking; you’re calculating your opponents possible moves and weighing that against your own hand and where it is that you need to exercise your influence. The influence tokens each carry a certain weight:
Force > Blackmail > Gold
Certain characters are also immune to certain forms of influence – the Rogue can only be bought with gold, the Innkeeper can’t be blackmailed and you can’t threaten the Apothecary. Players can also face tie scenarios – if both try to threaten the Merchant then neither wins as the character cannot succumb to threats from two sides. If however a player combined tokens a threat and a bride, then they’d trump the other players single threat bid.
The game starts pretty frantically in something like a trolley dash as players scramble to make early claims in territories like the Market, Harbour and Plantation, control of these areas at the end of game awards extra victory points and so they are valuable to everyone. The frantic pace slows as the game goes on, the bidding turn becomes a lot more about calculating your next move and the move of your opponents than it does about grabbing everything you can get your grubby revolutionary hands on and that’s where Revolution shines best.
You need to keep pace with your other players though, if you have a slow start then you’ll need to catch up in the middle of the game because towards the end it becomes clearer which player has been thinking and it’s almost impossible to close that gap…unless you start to make use of the ‘Spy’ and ‘Apothecary’ characters who grant your the ability to shift influence cubes from different locations either between players or with your own influence – well if you’re going to win then I say spoil the fun for the person who was about to!
Revolution is an exceptionally clever game and the average session clocks in at around an hour means you’re going to get board after that first win or downhearted after your first setback.
Strategy, manipulation, backstabbing – what more could you ask for! 9/10
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Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
