Red Rising - A must have for your board game collection!

Four out of five times when we've wanted to play a board game recently we have all voted to play Red Rising which is one of the newest additions to our board game collection, We can't get enough of it. It is a thrill to play & it is a rather beautiful looking game. Red Rising is sold by Stonemaier Games, the standard version of it goes for $45 and they have a collectors edition that comes with extra products like stands for your cards. This is a mainly card based board game that is based off of a book series of the same name, it can be played with 1-6 players. I hadn't heard of the book series prior to selecting the game to review, but based off of the characters in the card game, I now want to check out the book series as well. They have a separate rule book & game pieces for playing a solo game, none of us have tried out a solo game so I can't make any comments about how that game play works only the multiplayer. This game gets pretty competitive and you really have to plan out your strategy at every turn otherwise someone could swipe the card you need out from right under you. You'll work against each other trying to build the best hand/deck you can to get the highest score at the end of the game, careful though as some of the cards can take away points at the end if their goals aren't completed properly.

All together there are 112 character cards & each one is completely different! You'll only need to shuffle the cards once each game & depending on how long the games last you will only get through a small portion of the stack. There are so many cards that even though we've played this several times already there are a ton of characters that haven't been played yet or even seen. I love the graphics on the cards, there are so many unique & interesting characters to look at that it will be hard to select a favorite. The cards are made from a pretty durable material & since you only have to shuffle once per game you won't have to worry too much about the wear and tear that happens with cards that get shuffled too often. 

This game isn't just cards, there will also be some dice rolling along with collecting & placing pieces which help you earn additional points at the end of the game. In the beginning you'll start off with five cards in your hand, & depending on how you play you may have just five in your hand at the end or several more. Each time you take a turn, you will take one of your cards and "deploy" it out onto the board by placing it at the top of stack. Deploying it allows you to use the special ability on the card, for example one of them might be "Gain 2 Helium" which is like money & earns you points. After you've deployed a card, you will pick up one card from another stack that you did not deploy to or you can take the top card of the deck. Depending on where you pick this card up from, you will also get a bonus such as one helium (money), move up once on the track (points), etc. There are some cards that will allow you the ability to pick up additional cards which can come in handy with scoring points at the end, however there is also a penalty of -10 points for each additional card you have past seven cards in your hand at the end of the game. During some of our games I tried to collect quite a few cards over the seven, because even though I would get negative points from having so many cards in my hand the amount of points I received from good scoring cards was enough to out weight the negatives. 

The game ends once three end game conditions are meet. The three end game conditions are if seven is reached on the track, seven influence tokens are at the institute & one player has seven helium in hand. It can be a combination of three players each meeting one of the conditions, or if one person manages to complete two of the conditions that is game end as well. Then point counting can begin and you can see who the champion is. Points from the cards themselves vary, you will get a set amount of points on the top of each card - you get those points no matter what. Then each card has additional points you can earn by meeting the goal, for example some cards need to be paired with another to get the bonus or say a orange card needs to be with a second orange card along with a gold then you would get those bonus points. It comes with a score sheet, however I find it a little easier for us & the kids to use a sheet of paper to write down the different point values and keep track of everything that way. 

The website & game box states that each game takes anywhere from 45-60 minutes, I would say that is about right. Honestly though, we have so much fun playing this game and get so concentrated on what we are doing with our hand that we have never stopped to actually look at the time while we were playing. The game is pretty straight forward and even though there are quite a few things to remember & do while playing it is simple to learn and easy to understand. Both of my kids enjoy playing this & haven't had any issues with the game play, in fact my ten year old won the very first time we played this. I look forward to the many games to come & can't wait to explore some more of the characters we haven't seen. If you are looking for a new game to check out, I recommend looking into this game or checking out the rest of the Stonemaier Games catalogue. 

Does this look like a game you would enjoy playing? What is your favorite aspect of this game?

Disclaimer- The products mentioned above were provided by Stonemaier Games for the review free of charge no other compensation was provided. However, no product compensation will influence the outcome of any review. My honest opinions are used in all reviews, they are solely my own & they may vary from others. My reviews are posted for readers in order to provide an informed decision before purchase.