Before it even arrived in our mailbox, Crash Games's Rise! had built up a sort of infamy of its own, much like "The Bulge of Origins 2012," or "The Legend of some Dutch Guy." There was the story about "Mini-Rise" that came from an oblivious Arizonian observer; there was also the ill-fated first game against my wife, in which I failed to erect a singular level of a tower while Rori mercilessly wiped the hexagonal floor with me. So, when the game actually hit the table, there was a palpable amount of anxiousness.
For those not familiar with the game, Rise! is the successful Kickstarter campaign from Patrick and Michael of Crash Games (AZ). It is an abstract strategy game of tile and worker placement/movement/removal. As an abstract strategy game, it is both in my wheelhouse (as abstracts are some of my favorite games) and subject to harsher criticism than normal since, as one friend put it, "[I] obsess over abstracts." That being the case, let's cut to the chase and see if Rise! deserves a place on my shelf alongside some of my other favorite abstracts.
To begin the game, Players set up the board as follows (Four connected hex tiles with a "bridge" of 4 tiles between them.). Red goes first and may take one action. From then on, players alternate turns, taking 2 of an available 7 actions on each subsequent turn.
These actions are:
- Place a land tile adjacent to any other tile on the board
- Place one of your workers (circular pieces) next to any other worker you control
- Move one of your workers a maximum of one space onto an unoccupied tile.
- Jump a worker in order to remove it from the board
- Sacrifice 2 of your workers to eliminate 1 of an opponent's workers
- Sacrifice 2 of your workers to place a worker on any open tile
- Remove a tier from one of your buildings (used very sparingly)
If a player manages to completely surround an unoccupied tile, they place a building tier on the unoccupied space. Continue to surround this piece, and the building will continue to grow. Each building consists of 3 tiers; and, once 3 buildings are constructed, a player achieves victory. As a completely viable, but much rarer option, a player also achieves victory if he/she can eliminate all an opponent's workers from the board.
From a design standpoint, the availability of 7 different options and two available actions is almost a complete antithesis to most abstract strategy games, which consist of taking a solitary action, then passing the turn to your opponent. The options in Rise! are certainly not difficult to remember by any means (as they boil down to Place/Move/Remove) but it's a little overwhelming at first. As a big positive because of this number of options, game play is deep. You will need to adeptly balance offense and defense while thinking multiple moves ahead to consistently win at this game.
Because of this, or perhaps because my wife's preternatural talent for this game... Rise! also gets the unique distinction of being one of very few abstract games at which I completely and utterly suck (the others being Go and Ubongo). If you've read this far, please don't take that previous comment to be an indicator of Rise!'s quality. If anything, it's another reason to have this game in your collection: you're not going to master it in a few days, a few hours, and truthfully... probably not even a couple months. That's a good thing in my opinion. Yes, I'm abhorrent at this game, but there's still a stubborn part of me that wants to put the game back on the table, play again, and start picking up subtle strategies. At some point, this game is going to click for me, and it will be a glorious moment.
And after that fleetingly glorious moment has passed, I can break out the Ballistics expansion. This small but mighty add-on to the base game introduces 3 new pieces
From a design standpoint, the availability of 7 different options and two available actions is almost a complete antithesis to most abstract strategy games, which consist of taking a solitary action, then passing the turn to your opponent. The options in Rise! are certainly not difficult to remember by any means (as they boil down to Place/Move/Remove) but it's a little overwhelming at first. As a big positive because of this number of options, game play is deep. You will need to adeptly balance offense and defense while thinking multiple moves ahead to consistently win at this game.
Because of this, or perhaps because my wife's preternatural talent for this game... Rise! also gets the unique distinction of being one of very few abstract games at which I completely and utterly suck (the others being Go and Ubongo). If you've read this far, please don't take that previous comment to be an indicator of Rise!'s quality. If anything, it's another reason to have this game in your collection: you're not going to master it in a few days, a few hours, and truthfully... probably not even a couple months. That's a good thing in my opinion. Yes, I'm abhorrent at this game, but there's still a stubborn part of me that wants to put the game back on the table, play again, and start picking up subtle strategies. At some point, this game is going to click for me, and it will be a glorious moment.
And after that fleetingly glorious moment has passed, I can break out the Ballistics expansion. This small but mighty add-on to the base game introduces 3 new pieces
- The Anchor - a neutral and immovable piece that quickly becomes a thorn if placed strategically near an opponent's foundation.
- The Flash - a piece which, upon placing, wipes out all workers on the tiles surrounding it. Nice for clearing out clogged areas quickly.
- The Vortex - a swirling pool of dooooom <ominous music>!!! Upon activating the Vortex, a d4 is places on an empty tile with the number set to 4. At the start of the player's turn that placed it, subtract 1 from the face value of the die. When it reaches 0, it obliterates the tile it's on and literally everything else on the 6 surrounding hexes (even the hexes themselves). The only way to disarm the vortex is to sacrifice 5 workers. On the bright side, the detonation of the Vortex cannot cause the board to be split into two separate islands, something to keep in mind when placing your tiles.
There are some very minor, nit picky things I would change about Rise!. I'd like the bridge between player islands to be a tad shorter in order to force player interaction a little sooner in the game (note: Crash Games does have alternative starting layouts on their website, so definite brownie points for that). I also wish that placing a tier of a tower had to be taken as an action rather than given as an instantaneous bonus, but these are simply personal preferences that serve as a testament to my affinity for player interaction and lean toward defensive type games/strategies rather than offensive. House rules can certainly be made to tweak the game to your liking.
As a whole, and house rulings aside, I think Rise! is a well designed abstract strategy game and one I look forward to playing more and more over time. If you backed this on Kickstarter, it should be arriving soon. If you didn't and you're a fan of the genre, head on over to CrashGamesAZ.com or GameSalute and pick up a copy for yourself.
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