SJG Revolution 2nd Printing Card Game

The base game of Revolution takes about 45 minutes to play and allows up to 4 players. The premise is that each person is trying to position themselves to take over power in a city undergoing a revolution. To do this, they need to acquire the most Support Points before game end. You get Support from bribing, blackmailing, and forcing your way into the hearts and homes of various city officials. Successfully doing do can get you Support, Influence (which are cubes of your color you place in varied locations around the city), or additional gold, blackmail, or force tokens you can use for the next round of bidding. Every round each player will secretly (behind player screens) place all of their tokens on city officials shown on individual player mats. Once everyone is done, you drop your screens and see who has bid/outbid each other on all the various city folk. Rewards are received accordingly, and nobody wins in ties. This is repeated until all of the influence spaces on the game boars are full of influence cubes—which then award Support points to the player who has the most cubes in that location (again, nobody wins in ties here).Every game is different and fast-paced. The people I have played this with so far seem to enjoy it as well. There is plenty of luck and plenty of strategy involved here, so it's a nice mix of both. It's also very possible to win or do well in the game despite falling behind early, which I appreciate. Highly recommended. The expansion brings the game up to 5-6 players which I also enjoy.

This is the ultimate game of paper rock scissors. Obviously it's slightly more complicated than that, but this is one of my favorite games. You can play with kids and adults and the replay value is high. As soon as you finish the game, you want to play again to try different strategy

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I have had this game for about 2 years now and have to say it is one of our families favorites provided a couple of things are in play: 1) a house rule on tie bids and 2) an expansion needed (see below). Therefore, for the base game I am going to give it 4 stars, but can easily be a 5 star rating.The game mechanic, theme, and artwork is great in that everyone is blind bidding at the same time in order to Bribe, Blackmail, or Force an entity for control/influence. The entities are fictional non-players such as the General, the Priest, the innkeeper, the Captain, etc... and if you win the blind bid (by character) then you receive whatever that fictional non-player character gives such as some support (points), more tokens to bid with (Gold, Force, Blackmail), or influence on the board where you put a cube of your color on the board in the place the fictional non-player controls (such as the General allows you to place one of your cubes in the Fortress, the Captain in the Harbor, the Priest in the Cathedral). Each character gives you something and sometimes more than one thing - like the General allows you to get 1 support point, plus 1 force token, plus 1 influence token in the fortress. How cool is that! However, some characters cannot be bribed and/or have force used on them during the bidding process (like you cannot use force on the General or Captain, or you can't blackmail the Magistrate or the Innkeeper). The game ends when all of the influence spots in the various locations on the board are all gone. Then if you control by majority any of the locations then you get the points for that location (printed on the game board) added to all the support points you picked up during all the bidding phases.We always have a good laugh when playing the game because someone is always calls it "punching" (forcing) the printer, etc... Plus the game gets really intense during the bidding phases because you want to outsmart your opponents, but then they are trying to do the same to you so when the bid reveals happen some people are naturally all happy and cheering and some people are dejected. Which leads me to why I did not give this (the base game) 5 stars. There are times when a player can simply lose, lose, lose, and lose again in the bidding phase because they just cannot manage to win bids on characters that give you more than just a few gold and some points.... basically when you as a player are continually stuck with just the minimum of 5 gold to bid with while all your opponents are getting Force and Blackmail tokens which are more powerful. When in that situation you really feel like you are in a deep hole and it is hard to pull out of it as you see your opponents getting points on the board and placing their influence cubes all over the place turn after turn. It can be difficult to build up to where you have more than just the minimum 5 gold to start with during the blind bid phases. To help remedy this type of situation you can use a house rule which allows players to keep any bids that were lost in a "tie" while the rules say if you lose in a tie bid, both players lose those bids (they get thrown back in the box). I recommend using that house rule especially if you are just using the base game. Which now leads me to my final reason why I only gave 4 stars to the base game - You really need The Palace 5-6 player expansion. And not necessarily for the 5th and 6th player, but for the new character bid cards and location (The Palace, with Guard House). The Palace expansion adds a few more characters to bid on so it reduces the probability of people getting into ties and gives a better chance for a player to dig themselves out of an only 5 gold to bid with hole. Plus some of the new characters in The Palace expansion allow influence space cube swapping and replacing which adds a whole new dimension.So, my conclusion is that this is easily a 4-5 star game. I think it is a 4 star game if you are just using the base game. You should use the house rule that any tie bids are returned to the bidders. I think it is a 5 star game if you use that house rule about tie bids AND get and use The Palace expansion for the additional location and characters. This game is great and I highly recommend it!

My family enjoys this game as much as any other and we routinely play board games such as Ticket to Ride, Zoolaretto, and Carcasonne. It sets up in seconds, takes about 2 minutes to read and understand the rules. Game plays in about 40 minutes and really makes you think about strategy. I have purchased the extension set which has added to our enjoyment. Just an excellent game, with a terrific build-quality that the whole family will enjoy!

Easy to learn, quick to play, very competitive. Equally good for children teens and adults. Not educational in the slightest.

Fun game. Rules are simple enough for a newcomer to learn and understand, but allow for some complex strategy throughout the game. Highly recommend!

So fun. Even my 3 year old can play. Even though she doesn't get the entire strategy, she can place her pieces in the appropriate places in a timely manner, and she is entertained and we have an extra dimension of strategy to deal with making it even more fun for us adults. It has happened that while we were busy fighting each other, we forgot about her, and she ended up winning, although she didn't know why. Very unusual quality for such a grown up game.