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Board Game Terminus : Rampage On A Table

By Etienne Dubuc

If you were between the ages of eight and twelve towards the end of the 80's you probably played a video game called Rampage. In this game you personified a monster of your choice between a look alike of King Kong, Godzilla and a giant werewolf. Your goal was to raze all of the buildings of a town while eating humans and destroying miscellaneous vehicles in order to pass on to the next level. For all of you who feel nostalgic about this game, you will be happy to know that it can now be played in board game format

The idea of adapting that premise goes to Antoine Bauza, the creator of the spiel del jahres winners 7 Wonders and Hanabi, and Ludovic Maublanc, who designed games like Ca$h 'n Gun$ and Dice Town. The question is, how is the translation from digital to physical handled in the hands of such talented game designers?

Here the object of the game is to finish with the most points, as in most board games. You will be collecting points by razing buildings and eating humans represented by Meeples. You can also get points by knocking the teeth out your opponents by making them fall down.

Each monster gets a character card that will give extra points at the end of the game if you followed instructions, for example eating more red Meeples than any other color. You also get a power card that you can use every turn, for instance enabling you eat two more Meeples than you are normally allowed to. Finally, you have a secret super power card that you can use only once in the game. There are quite a few of each type of card, so the game as a high replayability value, which is always good in a board game.

 So you've got buildings made of Meeples and platform tiles, and each player actually plays with his own monster figure and they collect points, but how does this actually work out? At each player's turn, four actions are possible : to move your monster, blow over, demolish or throw a vehicle. The player may make two actions every turn, and it can be double the same action if that's what he or she wants. This is where Rampage differentiates itself from most board games as there are no dice or cards in order to play. To create the actions on the board, you have to do them physically.

To move, you have to flick your monster disc with your finger, which always makes the result kind of approximate. To blow, you place your head on the monster figure and blow  on the buildings and Meeples. To demolish, you take your monster figure and drop it on the building you want to raze. To throw a vehicle, you put it on your monster figure's head and flick it off. Once this is done you pick the platform tiles that are empty of Meeples and you eat your share of them.

That gameplay mechanic really lightens the mood and boosts the fun. Every player feels more responsible for what's actually doing by being physically implicated in the game. You are razing building and eating meeples; you are not faking it. The board can also get pretty messy, and even though that usually is a bad thing, here it just reinforces the feeling of creating the rampage. This is quite a feat as creating havoc on a small scale and making it seem huge is no small task.

 The competition aspect of the game is an important factor as well. Contrary to Hanabi, which is a cooperative game, and 7 Wonders, where you can do your thing without bothering too much with the other players, this offering of Bauza's may heat things up between you and your neighbor because you chose to take him down and you ate the meeples he was salivating over. This is done in such an amusing way that no grudges will be held once the game is over. Since the gameplay relies a lot on unpredictability, it also means that a first time player has almost as much chance of winning as an experienced player.

Rampage does have a few setbacks, and you might have already guessed the first one. The initial set up does take some time, although it's not as bad as it might seem. The game takes a lot of space, as players will probably be moving around the table to position themselves to blow or flick their disc. But those points are really just formalities once you've experience the game and all the hilarity that comes with it.

Etienne Dubuc is the host of a French radioshow called « Les geeks ont raison » and program directo fo CISM 89,3FM in Montreal. You can follow him @geeksontraison

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