Game: Arch Rival

Image

Meat — 2008-11-09T03:39:15+00:00

Box Front - 1992 Bilingual Canadian Edition

Image

Toynan — 2007-11-25T12:05:07+00:00

Image

Toynan — 2007-11-25T12:03:38+00:00

Image

Toynan — 2007-11-25T12:02:23+00:00

Thread: Arch Rival: a different stacking game

electricvomit — 2007-09-24T00:31:38+00:00

Why I bought it:
Fifty cents. I think you'd have a harder time telling me why I didn't buy it.

Gameplay:
You set up the arch, which is a challenge in its own right. From there you roll a D-6 for number, and a D-8 for color. You have to put in X neon pieces in Y colors. There is an "Arch Rival" space on the D-8 that allows your opponents to select where to put the pieces. The looser is the person who crashes the arch down.

What I liked:
I liked the actual arch. Assembling the game was fun enough as far as I'm concerned. Additionally, the neon pieces were cool. During play we actually got all the pieces we had onto the arch. That gave the game a cooperative feel for a minute, which is different in a stacking game. Overall, I would rank this game above Jenga, but well below Bausack.

Also, I liked the educational feel the game had. The game gives a very visual, hands-on demonstration of the strength and structure of the arch, which as we know has been a significant engineering structure since the time of the Romans (history nerds, feel free to mention earlier observed arches).

What I disliked:
Well, it's not going to win any awards any time soon, and I can't see a cult following springing up for it. There's really not too much to this game. Although it was fun yesterday, I wouldn't cry if I didn't play it today.

Later impressions:
It was a fun game for a half-hour. Nothing more, nothing less. Hey, it was 50 cents. If you have the space, why not? I've definitely wasted my money on less.

Consider picking this game up if:
You come across it at a thrift store and the price is right.

Image

electricvomit — 2007-09-23T22:39:41+00:00

All the pieces were eventually sucessfully added

Image

Toynan — 2007-08-05T12:02:17+00:00

Image

Toynan — 2007-08-05T12:00:10+00:00

Image

Toynan — 2007-08-05T11:58:28+00:00

Image

Toynan — 2007-08-05T11:57:44+00:00

Image

Toynan — 2007-08-05T11:57:09+00:00

Thread: Arch Rival Review

beauka — 2005-07-24T02:57:49+00:00

For me, Archrival was one of those thrift shop finds that seemed worth the two bucks to own it. In hindsight, it’s a close call whether it really is worth that or not.

The game consists of an arch that you create out of 13 color-coded bins on top of a relatively seesaw-like base, a die with numbers and a die with colors, and a random assortment of plastic pieces in various shapes and colors. Begin play by carefully creating the arch and removing the support so that it is a free-standing structure. Players each choose a color and take all of the pieces of that color.

On a turn, a player will roll both dice, which will tell them how many of their pieces they must put into which color of bin on the arch. Each color on the die has two bins in the arch, except for blue which is the keystone of the structure on top. There is little player interaction, except that the color die can also force you to place your pieces in a bin of the color of your opponents’ choice, even though you can still choose which of the two bins of that color to place them in.

If you can place all of your pieces into bins and the game is still going (which it will be), then you roll the dice as normal except now you will have to remove that many pieces from the bin instead. It’s all quite boring and pointless, and your time would be much better spent just talking about playing a good game rather than playing this bad one.

I guess theoretically the game could be decent if all the players were totally rip-roaring drunk. But I do mean ALL the players, and I do mean TOTALLY drunk. Unfortunately, this situation rarely occurs in any given gaming group (at least those I’m familiar with), and if you are drunk with a bunch of friends, that last thing you probably want to do is pull out a lame board game from the 80’s. You probably couldn’t assemble the arch structure if you were drunk anyway.

The other group I thought this game might be decent with is smaller kids. After looking at the pieces and the goal of the game, it seems a perfect fit for children. However, even my two year old son managed to place each and every one of the playing pieces into the buckets with little more than a budge of the structure. We’ve played at least 20 times in the past year and I think it may have toppled on accident twice from blatantly accidental slips. Every other time I’ve inconspicuously nudged the structure after boredom sinks in for each of us until it slowly fell apart. It makes for a decent toy – with plenty of compartments, lots of fun pieces, and the structural integrity of a skyscraper in San Diego.

The tagline for this game reads “Archrival – the game of nerves, suspense, and fun.” It is truly a game of none of these. Overall, this 1980’s predecessor of more popular topple games like Hamsterolle, Villa Pilletti, and others could be fairly moderate fun if it were a bit more nerve-racking, suspenseful, or fun.