Revolution and The Palace Expansion

So in this post I'm going to talk about Revolution from Steve Jackson Games and it's 1st expansion The Palace.

We are going to start with the base game but I will explain later why I am combining both into a single review and not doing the expansion separately later.

In Revolution you are trying to gain support for your cause by bribing, blackmailing and threatening people in the city and the winner is the one who has gained the most support by the end of the game.

Each player will get a player shield that will match the colour of their cubes.  They start with one force token, one blackmail token and 3 gold tokens.  They then bid simultaneously behind there screens to "win" members of the city who can give you extra tokens to bid with next round, influence over areas of the city or support for your cause.

Support will move your score token around the score track on the outside of the board and at the end the person with the most wins the game.  Influence means you get to put one of your cubes in the white squares in that area of the city, the game ends when all the white spaces are filled and the person with the most cubes of their colour in each area of the city gets the bonus support for that area.  Some areas are worth more than others, the Tavern is only worth +20 support while the Fortress is worth +50.  These means some are more valuable than others so gives players something to fight over.

The bidding is simple 1 force token will beat any number of blackmail or gold, 1 blackmail will beat any number of gold and gold only wins if nothing else is there.  Whoever has the most on each person in the city wins that person and gets the actions, support, influence or tokens they give.

You use all of your tokens each round and if you don't win at least 5 tokens for next round you gain gold until you have 5 tokens.

One thing I do like is that some people can't be forced, some can't be blackmailed and some can only be bribed.  This means that if you lose a few bids that round you won't be out of the running next round since you can bid on the gold only people to earn other tokens for next time.

So what do I like about this game?  To start it quick to teach and plays in 30-45mins normally so is easy to get to the table.  Time doesn't increase to much with more players since most of the actions are taken at the same time.  Most of the rules are printed on either the bidding boards or the inside of the player shields so you always have them there for reference.   It's a fun bidding game and it offers a number of different strategies, you can try and build support during the game (from people like the Printer) or by winning influence around the city, you could try and take a lot of small value areas or go for the high value targets, or maybe try and win lots of tokens one round so you can win most of your bids the next round.

One thing I like about this game is also one of its negative points and the reason I am doing the expansion review with the base game.  If you lose a bid you lose all of your tokens (there is a variant rule where you don't but we never use that) and if you draw with someone you both lose.  With only 12 people to bid for there can be a lot of overlap in bids so you will lose a lot of your bids which can get quite frustrating.  I like the win or lose and nothing in between thing but it does make the game harder with more players and I wouldn't recommend using the base game alone with the full 4 players because that will only make the overlap in bids worse.

This brings me to the expansion, The Palace.

It is a 5-6 player expansion and increases the number of spaces you can bid from 12 to 16 so there is less overlap and the game can handle a higher player count better, although I would still shy away from 6 players if possible.

It also introduces a new area you can gain influence over, The Palace, which is placed in the space in the center of the board.

The Palace gives you the guardhouse.  This is a single spot on the board that whoever controls is safe from the spy (who can remove a players cube from the board and replace it with one of your own colour) and the apothecary (who can swap any two cubes already on the board).  Late in the game it can be a powerful defence and bidding for the Viceroy who gives you control of the guardhouse and influence in the Palace (which at 55 support is the most valuable area of the board) can get quite intense.

I will always recommend playing with an expansion and wouldn't play without them myself.  There are two out at the moment.  I only have the Palace so that is what I have reviewed.  The second, Anarchy, does much the same by increasing the spaces to bid and adding a small module to the center space on the main board.  You can't use both expansions together so it is up to you which you use.  I have heard good things about Anarchy and it has buildings which lose you support if you have the most influence there which does sound very interesting and I might look at getting that if the current expansion starts to grow a little old.  I really like that you get he expansions in a bag so you can just take them out and put them straight in the base game box without throwing out loads of packaging.

Overall this is a fun bidding game and plays really well.  It has enough to keep gamers interested but is simple enough you can teach it to non-gamers who will still enjoy themselves.  It has gone over well with everyone I have played with.