Battle of GOG - Elevate Family Game Night with Exciting Light Strategy, Area Control, and Resource Management War Game for 2-4 Players!

Pros: - Easy to Learn the basics and start playing - Cool background story - Artwork is very beautiful - Randomized Board gives lots of replayability - 3 different ways to win - Unique box and game setup - Game is overall fun and competitive - Can play 2 players - Very cool ability cards that give great bonuses - while there is chance in this game, it does not feel very chance based and a lot of strategy is requiredCons (more like nitpicks): - Instruction manual could be a little more detailed about certain possibilities - Treasure/Ability Cards could just include the explanation of what cards do on the card (it might take away from the artwork, but I believe there’s a way to make it work) currently you have to flip back to the rule book to see the explanation, until you memorize what they do (which I’ll admit does not take too long - few games) - Should be more cards to move around the ability cards, once a player has it, it is theirs for the game - except for one treasure card which gives a player to snatch that persons card. Should be more treasure cards with this, or one card that resets all abilities.Neutral: - Gog and Angel stay put for a lot of the game, unless doubles are common.

Battle of GOG is a light strategy game where 2-4 players are using their 'soldiers' (represented by small six-sided dice) to collect resources and found cities (represented by larger six-sided dice). The cities collect all resources in the eight surrounding squares, and when you upgrade the city to level 2 or beyond then you collect all resources within a two-square radius (so any in the 24 surrounding squares). You're collecting resources to level up your soldiers and your cities, and to buy cards that give you extra abilities. To win, you need either to conquer all the other players' cities, occupy all four corner squares or collect all five Scroll tokens. You might chance upon a Scroll by drawing a treasure card but you mainly win them for conquering a city or occupying the square with a Scroll icon.This is a game where the box isn't just for storage. Empty out all the contents and invert the box and it becomes the playing surface for the modular board. Players start the game by drawing and laying out the tiles, and this isn't merely an exercise in randomising the board layout - there are tactical decisions to be taken in optimising tile placement - ideally so that you have fertile potential city locations within reach of your soldiers' starting positions. Don't underestimate the design benefit of having the box as the playing surface. With the contents removed, the box lid offers just enough overhang to keep all the tiles neatly in place. It's refreshing to have a game with a modular tile board where the tiles aren't sliding about!There are key decisions to be made over how best to spend your resources: food, wood and gold. Extra soldiers cost 2 food to recruit but different resources to upgrade, depending on what level you are moving from and to. You'll need two of each type of resource to level up a city or to buy an ability card. The rules don't make it clear whether or not you have any choice of ability card or whether it's just a random draw from a face-down deck. We ended up 'house ruling' that we'd set out a display of three ability cards so if a player bought one, they could choose any of those in the refillable display or they could make a blind draw.Battle of GOG is a 'take that' game where you'll have to come into conflict with other players to prevent them from seizing the win condition. Soldiers attack by moving into the same square as an opponent's soldier. You just compare the levels of the soldier dice: the lower value dice is removed and the winning soldier is reduced by the difference. If the two soldier dice have the same value, players roll dice to resolve the combat. A city can be conquered by adjacently positioning three soldiers at levels at least equal to that of the city.Initially, players just have a movement allowance of 7 to spend for all their soldiers, so there's a slow initial build up as you'll be jockeying for position. Once you have three cities built, however, you roll two six-sided dice to determine your total movement. There are bonuses to be had for rolling doubles: 1/1 or 6/6 allow you also to move the Gog mini that starts off in one of the centre squares. You'll want to try to position Gog so that he is adjacent to one of your cities because you then get to collect the maximum number of resources you can hold (initially five of each but that's upgradeable to seven) and your city is protected from attack. Rolling 2/2 or 5/5 lets you move the other mini - the 'Angel of Retribution'. You'll want to move that so it is adjacent to an opponent's city because it prevents that city from harvesting any resources. If you roll 3/3 or 4/4, you get to draw an ability card, which is a big plus.Battle of GOG is easy to play yet it offers something of a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) experience that usually plays in about an hour. It mostly offers a good mix of strategy and luck, but watch out for the treasure cards! These are always a push-your-luck gamble as there's a 50% chance that the positive cards will benefit your opponent rather than you! Some of them can also prove grossly overpowered, particularly when drawn early in the game. In our first play, on her first turn, one of our players drew a volcano (negative effect) card that eliminated three soldiers. She rolled an even number on the die so the effect applied to all the other players. This immediately eliminated them all and delivered an instant win! Happily this wasn't an experience that was replicated on any subsequent plays, altho' we had another game where a player drew early in the game the treasure card that gives +3 raises to three soldiers. That player moved a level 5 soldier to the Scroll icon and camped there, collecting a Scroll every turn. Other players didn't yet have soldiers capable of dislodging him... We're not saying that the treasure cards are 'broken' but just warning that they are a highly unpredictable random element. If you prefer a more strategic game, you may want to leave them out altogether.

who is this game for? it cant be for casuals, its to complex and abstract for casuals. It cant be for fans of euros, its too confrontational and too luck based. It cant be for wargame aficionados, its not deep enough with meaningful branching choices. So again who is this for? The rule book isn't great, its adequate but doesn't quite explain all the cards all that well. The cards are a big issue, when you get one of the treasure cards it has a 50/50 chance of helping your opponent, not you, so its never worth going for those.after the first few turns you are just flooded with resources so you usually cap out on one or two kinds, it is not like you can corner the proverbial market on a resource and delve into a wood strategy, or a food strategy. Skip this one at any price.

Loved this game! This one caught my attention. The theme and graphics are amazing, especially the Ability cards.. We played the game twice already and enjoyed every moment. The quality of the game is really something. The box is pretty big, bigger than most of the other board games. We like that the box is used as a game board. We’ve never seen such game set up, and must say it works really great. The first game took us around 2 hours, but the more we played it, the more exciting and fun it became. The rulebook is pretty simple and made it easy for us to understand the game. Kids will absolutely love the treasure chest cards. It’s a great game for spending quality time with family and friends. It has a good balance between luck and strategy, so even younger players have a chance to win. We definitely give it a two thumbs up.

We love board games, and we're searching for something new and fresh to add to our repertoire. It's not always easy to find something that our 8, 11, and teen would all enjoy .. as well as the parents. We decided to give this one a try and we loved it! Easy to learn, fun to play, cool set-up. Will be perfect for summer game nights with friends too!