This year, I dove headfirst into Pierce Brown’s science fiction world of Red Rising, which has quickly become one of my favorite book series out there. It wasn’t until I had finished most of the books that I discovered a board game based on these stories actually existed, but once I did, I instantly snatched it up faster than Sophocles would a jelly bean. While the board game version of Red Rising won’t make you feel like you are running with Sevro and the Howlers or taking part in an Iron Rain, it manages to do a good job of making you feel as though you are pulling off sneaky plays to increase your influence and take care of problems from the shadows.
Stonemaier Games: Red Rising
4
What’s in the box:
- 1 Rulebook (multiplayer)
- 1 Rulebook (solo)
- 112 character cards
- 30 Automa cards
- 6 asymmetric house tiles
- 1 game b oard
- 1 wolf-head tray and lid
- 60 Helium-3 red gem tokens
- 60 influence cubes
- 1 Sovereign token
- 1 crescent moon first-player token
- 1 custom Red Rising die
- 6 fleet tokens
- 1 scorepad (50 double-sided sheets)
- 6 reference cards
Red Rising TBG is published by Stonemaier Games and designed by Alexander Schmidt and Jamie Stegmaier. You may recognize that name from his other notable games, including Scythe, Viticulture, and his latest, Vantage, which was one of the most popular games at Gen Con this year. The Red Rising adaptation they created puts anywhere from 1-6 players in the roles of heads of various houses from the novels as they vie for power and influence in three distinct areas—the Institute, the Fleet Armada, and Helium-3 production. The houses, Apollo, Ceres, Diana, Jupiter, Mars, and Minerva, all have their special abilities that trigger whenever they manage to claim the Sovereign Token (more on this in a moment), which adds in a small sprinkling of asymmetry to the package.
Gameplay in Red Rising is rather straightforward. On your turn you play a card from your hand to one of the four rows on the game board, triggering that card’s deploy effect, then you pick up a card that from one of the three other rows adding it to your hand and triggering that rows effect, or if none of the cards look particularly appealing, you can draw blindly from the top of the deck and roll a dice, taking the action of whichever row is shown on the dice. These actions will let you advance your fleet track market, gain a Helium-3 token, add influence in the Institute, earn the Sovereign Token, and trigger your house’s bonus. The turn then passes to the next player, continuing until either: Between all players there are 7+ Helium tokens/influence at the Institute/Fleet Track or a single player has met two of those criteria, at which point scoring takes place.
While there is a good amount of strategy and planning in Red Rising, the lack of much interaction between players is a bit of a bummer. Outside of maybe snagging or banishing a card another you think may want, during my plays, I was always more concerned with my hand and where I was at in my trackers and not on my opponents. In the books, conflict is a big focus, and the board game offers a nearly complete lack of that, minus the few cards that impact another player’s hand or adjust their influence. Backroom dealings and backstabbing play a part in the novels, too, sure, but while I was playing, I just wished I could do more for the other players. Slamming down Sevro or the Howlers should feel exciting. Instead, in the Howlers card’s case, it serves to protect you from another player from trying to steal or banishing one of your cards, an act that only four other cards in the entire 112-card deck can do. This basically turns Darrow and Sevro’s elite band of soldiers into something you just want to keep in your hand, doing nothing, because it can score some decent points at the end of the game.
On the topic of scoring, I found it to be a bit of a mess. Each card in your hand has a point value that it will score at the end of the as along with a bonus effect that can net you additional points based on other cards in your hand, you will gain different points depending on how much influence you have in the three factions, bonus points if you have the Sovereign token, and then you subtract points for every card in your hand over seven you have. If the point values were just in single digits, this would be annoying to all tally up, but point values are double digits, with some being odd values like 28 or 43 just makes it more of a hassle than I want it to be.
If I’m being honest, a majority of my enjoyment from Red Rising came more from seeing artwork for my favorite characters from the books, painting a clearer picture in my mind of the world that Brown has crafted. I loved seeing the cards showcasing the larger-than-life Telemanuses (Sophocles too), being able to put a better face to the likes of Eo, Sefi, Uncle Narol, and Ragnar. There are still odd choices, though, with the characters that have been included, such as only showing Darrow as a Red Laborer card, and the fact that there is a generic “Mess Hall Cook” and “Dataport Specialist” but not a Reaper version of Darrow or any of the other notable Howlers like Screwface? Weird.
Where Red Rising excels is in its hand management and how it makes its players interact and think about the board state. Maneuvering cards around to the various rows, devising strategies that will leave their hand in the best shape possible to net those coveted bonus points while ensuring they also spread their influence to maximize potential there all feels good. The fact that the general flow of the gameplay is relatively simple as well means you can focus on crafting those strategies as well, and what results is a solid solitaire-style game. It’s a game that I wouldn’t necessarily want to play with my friends who are prone to analysis-paralysis or have to take the most optimal turns possible, so they take forever, but the mechanics are solid enough that I would be fine playing this game if someone were to bust it out at a game night.
As a Red Rising fan, however, I never really got that “Red Rising feeling” while playing it, feeling more like it was a different game with Pierce Brown’s work sort of finessed on top of it. When I imagine a board game based on these books, I picture calling down Iron Rain to wreck my enemies, making tough decisions with big ramifications, deftly moving my Howlers behind enemy lines, and putting my allies in harm’s way, or even sacrificing them, for my cause. Instead, this game offers a hand-building experience that incentivizes synergy. It’s a fun enough game, but it unfortunately doesn’t use Pierce Brown’s property to the best of its ability and instead makes it come off more as just a set dressing.
