The Grizzled: At Your Orders (Cool Mini or Not)

It is April 4, 1916, and the war is still waging. Each day brings new difficulties and new hardships. However, you and your band of friends are still persevering. There seems to be something occurring that is different than the past two years. The higher ups keep sending you on missions, some more challenging than others. This is The Grizzled: At Your Orders. The Grizzled: At Your Orders is the much anticipated expansion to The Grizzled. It is designed for 3-5 players (with 1 and 2-player variants), ages 14+. It retails for $14.99 and takes approximately 30 minutes to play. Normally, I would tell you how to set up the game and the game play, but you can read about that in my previous review. Instead, I am just going to tell you about what's changed and what I think of the changes.

What's New in the Expansion
The first thing I noticed in the box was cardboard cutouts of every character. I like this, because it adds more theme and makes you feel like an actual soldier and not just a card. It also serves to remind your fellow soldiers when you are in a mission and when you are out.

The biggest changes are the Missions cards. There are 40 Missions cards in the box. (13 easy, 13, medium, 13 hard, and 1 Final Assault/Last Stand) Before the game, you decide your difficulty level and seed the Missions deck. The active player then draws two Missions cards, picks one, and puts the other back on the top of the deck. These cards tell you how many Trials cards each player gets, a bonus or a penalty for this mission, and how to get rid of the Mission card. I really like these Missions, because it gives you ways to tone down or amp up the difficulty. The Final Assault/Last Stand card really drips with theme, as its an optional final turn to end it all. You either win, lose, or win but die in the process.

Other nice, little changes in the game are as follows:
1. Speeches don't go away once used.
2. Support tokens always give you your Good Luck Charm back and can remove Hard Knocks.
3. The first player may perform a Strategic Withdrawal which lets him take one card from his hand and put it on top of the Trials pile.

Apart from a few things in the rule book that could have been clearer, I am finding very little to complain about with this expansion. It adds new mechanics and a little more immersive theme. There's also just enough tweaks to the rules to make a very good game even better. Lastly, you can fit both of them into one box, so you don't have to carry around both boxes. I can't imagine teaching or playing The Grizzled without this expansion.

This expansion was provided to me for free by Cool Mini or Not in exchange for an honest review.

Play Me (Cool Mini or Not)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are two of Lewis Carroll's best known works. Walt Disney thought so highly of the books that he made an animated film out of it in 1951. Disney was not the first to adapt this book though, as it has been made into numerous films, comics, live performances, music, etc. One of the latest products to draw inspiration from Carroll is a game called Play Me from Cool Mini or Not. Play Me is a real-time, dice-rolling game for 2-6 players, ages 14+. It retails for $24.99 and takes approximately 10 minutes to play.

Setup
1. Give each player a double-sided character card, and have them place the card Wonder side up. (Note: The Wonder side is the positive side and is the more vibrantly colored side. The Madness side is the negative side and is a more washed out color.)
2. Give each player six dice in their character color.
3. Place the round token in the middle of the table with the White Rabbit side facing up. (Note: The reverse side shows the Jabberwocky.)

Game Play - The goal of the game is to make a straight (1 through 6) of all your dice. This is a real time game, so there are no turns. Everyone rolls their dice at the same time and may take one of the following actions per roll if possible:
1. Advance - Take one (and only one) die from your roll and place it in your row of dice. You must start with the number one and go in increasing order. You also cannot skip numbers and fill them in later.
2. Block - You may take one of your dice and block another player's row if it shows the next number in order. Example: If your opponent is up to three and you roll a four, you can place your die in their row to block them. (Note: You cannot block someone already blocked.)
3. Unblock - To clear a Block, you must roll the same number that you have being blocked. Both you and your opponent take their die back to re-roll.

The round ends when someone gets a straight. That person then flips their character card from Wonder side to Madness side. The first person to win two rounds wins. If everyone has flipped their cards to the Madness side (meaning everyone only wn one round), the White Rabbit is flipped over to the Jabberwocky and takes the square Jabberwocky card. The players flip their cards back to Wonder side and must now decide if they are going to battle the Jabberwocky as a team or solo. When the Jabberwocky wins a round, he picks a player to flip their card to Madness, and he wins when all other players have gone mad. The players win if they win a number of rounds equal to the number of players or an individual wins if they win two rounds.

Review
Real time games are hit or miss with people. Some people like them because they can make quick, accurate decisions and a real time gives them an advantage. Other people like to take their time and carefully follow a strategy. Luckily, you can play this game either way. Instead of everyone rapidly rolling, you could just have everyone roll at the same time, make a decision simultaneously, and then everyone re-roll. Doing it this way helps level the playing field along ages as well. Overall, I like the theme of this game and the simplicity of learning and playing the game. The game also provides a bit of asymmetry as everyone has different advantages and disadvantages to their character. This creates a different game play experience, especially if you rotate the characters around and test them all.

The game is portable, which I like, and the components are of good quality. The price is a little high, though, and it feels like it should only sell for $15, not $25.  Unfortunately, what I liked the least was the artwork. It was a little too dark for my taste. I get that they wanted to make this game appeal to a bit of an older audience and not make it feel like a child's toy, but I think they missed the boat. They could have made good artwork that would appeal to kids and adults without it being creepy, like this art is. I could seen teens and young adults liking this artwork though, so if you have teens in the household, give the game a whirl. They'll learn about literature, while playing a game!

This game was provided to me for free by Cool Mini or Not in exchange for an honest review.

The Grizzled (Cool Mini Or Not)

Allow yourself to travel back in time for a moment. It is August 1914. Austria-Hungary was at war with Serbia. Germany had declared war on Russia and had already entered Luxembourg, most likely to make invading France and/or Belgium easier. France and Belgium had mobilized, but like Britain they were not involved in World War I yet. This is the setting for the cooperative card game called The Grizzled. In this game, you and up to four other players will play as a group of friends, facing the grim reality of war, and trying to not only survive, but all come back alive. Let's get to the setup.

Setup
1. Each player chooses a Grizzled card (character) and places it with the Good Luck Charm side (indicated by a four-leaf clover) face up.
2. Each player gets three Support tiles - one left tile, one right tile, and one random tile (the random one could be left, right, double left, or double right.)
3. Place the Peace card (looks like a dove) and Monument card (looks like a statue) to the center of the table.
4. Shuffle all the Trials cards together. Deal 25 face down on the Peace card. This will form your Trials pile. The remaining 34 will go face down on the Monument card. This is your Morale Reserve.
5. Place the appropriate number of Speech tokens between the Peace card and Monument card (Five tokens in a 2-3 player game, four in a 4 player game, and three in a 5 player game).
6. The Mission Leader token (first player token) is given to the hairiest player, and the game begins.

Game Play - The objective of the game is to complete a series of Missions, trying to empty the Trials pile. The game is won if the Peace card is visible and all players have no cards left in their hands.
1. Preparation - Determine the number of Trial cards each player will be dealt from the Trials pile, with a minimum of one per person. (Note: On the first turn, each player must be dealt three.)
2. The Mission - The players (starting with the Mission Leader) may take one of the four actions:
a. Play a Trials card from their hand to the center of the table known as No Man's Land. Mixed within the Trial cards are Hard Knocks cards which will go next to the player's Grizzled card.
b. Use their Good Luck Charm by flipping their Grizzled card over and removing one card that has a matching Threat symbol (Night, Rain, Snow, Mask, Shell, and Whistle).
c. Make a Speech - use a Speech token by naming one of the six Threats. Each player may discard one card with that matching symbol from their hand.
d. Withdraw from the mission and play a Support tile. Your Support tile is played in secret face down and determines which of your fellow players gains support.
The Mission will end in Success when all players have withdrawn. The Mission will end in failure if there are three matching Threat symbols. With a failure, the cards in No Man's Land are shuffled back into the Trials pile.
3. Support - At the end of the Mission, players reveal their Support tiles and give them to the appropriate player. If someone received a majority (no ties) in Support tiles, they can get rid of two Hard Knocks card or recover their Good Luck Charm (if the mission was a success) or get rid of one Hard Knocks card (if the mission was a failure).
4. Morale Drop - Count the number of cards in all the players' hands and transfer that number of cards (minimum of three) from the Morale Reserve to the Trials pile.
5. The Mission Leader then gains a Speech token and passes the Mission Leader token to their left.

Review
The first thing I noticed about this game was the artwork. It is drawn in a cartoon format, but not a silly type of cartoon, more like political cartoons. This spurred me to do a little investigating, and I learned that the artist for this game was Bernard Verlhac, also known as Tignous. Mr. Verlhac was a cartoonist for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. He was killed in the attack that took place in Paris in January 2015. As if this game wasn't depressing enough, this added another layer to it. However, just like war is ugly, sometimes, life is as well. The theme of this game is a very somber one, but it is this real theme that permeates the entire game. The biggest example being that some of the characters in the game were real people.

The mechanics of the game are deceptively simple. Play a card and try not to make a set of three on the table. This simple mechanic is complicated by the fact that cards have multiple symbols on them. Add in the Hard Knocks cards, which also add symbols or just create additional hurdles, you must overcome, and you'll find that you lose this game more than you win it. This frustrated me to no end the first couple of times I played it, because I lost every time. I eventually stopped playing just to win the game and to enjoy the experience. Once I started doing that, I finally won a game. That's not to say I've solved the game. You can make all the right moves in this game, but sometimes the cards just don't fall like they should, and you still lose. (Another true to life theme)

About the only thing I didn't like about this game was the 2-player mode. It required the use of a dummy player, and it just came off a bit clunky. Luckily, there is an expansion called The Grizzled: At Your Orders. This expansions help improve 2-player experience and also adds solo play and mission cards of varying difficulty. Ramping up the difficulty is always good for people who find themselves winning too frequently.

When I received this box in the mail, I was surprised by the size of the game. The box is approximately 5.25" x 5.25" x 2", which is quite small for board game boxes. Don't let the size of the box fool you though! It is the perfect size and contains components that are beautifully simple and simply beautiful. The game also carries some weight to it (both in strategy and emotional toll). Even though you are just laying cards down, it still transports you back in time and makes you weigh each decision you make. Will your friendship be enough to get you through the war? Or will the war claim more victims, be it physical, emotional, or psychological? If you are looking to be introduced to the world of cooperative gaming or looking for a new challenge, I strongly encourage you to spend the $20-25 and pick up a copy of The Grizzled. You won't regret it.

This game was provided to me for free by Cool Mini Or Not in exchange for an honest review. If you found this review helpful, please click here and hit Yes!