Game: Aggravation

Image

EndersGame — 2008-11-27T03:46:12+00:00

Deluxe Aggravation board

Image

CinMel — 2008-10-01T17:08:43+00:00

game board & components

Image

CinMel — 2008-10-01T17:07:50+00:00

Box front

Image

Howitzer_120mm — 2008-03-02T15:45:07+00:00

Full "3-D" view of the game box

Image

fractaloon — 2008-02-24T00:33:23+00:00

Front of the 1999 edition.

Image

droberts441 — 2008-01-28T02:59:31+00:00

1977 Boxfront

Thread: Great for a Family with Young Gamers.

maksum — 2007-10-16T03:35:52+00:00

I'll admit that a lot of the reason I like this game stems from the fond memories I have playing it with my family when I was a kid. When I saw it in a thrift shop for one dollar (with all pieces in the box) I grabbed it in hopes that my kids would enjoy it as well... It was a hit.

My kids are (at the time of writing this) 7, 5, and 3. Add in my wife and we have 5 players in on the action, with every one of us enjoying ourselves. The youngest needs some assistance in moving her marbles, but she loves rolling that die and knows that ones are good and sixes are even better.

In a nutshell, you have four marbles sitting in your base. You roll the die on your turn to determine if you can leave your base or not (with a one or a six.) After you have a marble on it's way, you simply move it around the track according to your die rolls. A few decisions will come up, the majority of which are quite obvious - but they are decisions nonetheless (which puts this game well ahead of Candyland and Chutes and Ladders.) Some of these decisions involve choosing which marble to move. A few good things you can make happen is to get multiple marbles out on the field and moving, moving onto the fast track, or landing on an opponent's marble to send them back to their base. It's not my intention to be thorough enough to give all the rules - but really, that's about 90% of it... pretty simple deal.

It's fun to get to a point where a specific roll will REALLY help you along (such as getting you on the fast track or getting your last marble in your "home"). The kids will shake that thing in their hands while chanting "Come on three! Come on three!".

There are some great skills to learn through this game that will help your kids as they grow into other games. These skills include rolling a dice in such a way that it stays on the table, counting, considering different choices and determining the best one, and being a good sport.

Certainly a lot of luck, but there ARE choices... actually quite a few of them - even if several are obvious. Like I said, this is one factor that definitely determines the value of a child's game for me. Another plus is you can generally pick this up at a local store (Walmart, Target, Toys R Us, etc.)

I don't EVER see myself pulling this out with just adults, but I don't cringe either when my kids want to play it. If you have young kids, I would say this is a great game to grab sometime.

Image

fractaloon — 2007-09-22T21:54:17+00:00

The tray for the marbles and dice.. 1972 Deluxe edition.

Image

fractaloon — 2007-09-22T21:53:40+00:00

Another variation of the box back. This version is in French & English. This is the 1972 Deluxe edition with glass marbles.

Image

flowerkin — 2007-05-21T02:24:32+00:00

a closer look

Image

Boomer — 2007-02-16T01:07:52+00:00

Mini version on a keychain and it really works.

Thread: Re: Card-driven variant

alsandor — 2006-10-30T20:43:44+00:00

bwingrave wrote:
The rules that came with the version we have -- and the ones on the Geek -- indicate that a player rolls one die on a turn, not two. I guess for that version, you could take the A - 6 cards from two standard decks to form your 48-card deck.

As I recall the rules (the game has long disappeared), you rolled two dice and decided how you wanted to apply the two rolls, all to one, or split them between two pieces. A computer version of a game by Sierra in their Hoyle's Board Games program is very similar. But your version would also work. The point is to have the ability to develop card play strategies and not just be randomly bound to a die roll on every turn.

Thread: Re: Card-driven variant

bwingrave — 2006-10-30T20:28:22+00:00

The rules that came with the version we have -- and the ones on the Geek -- indicate that a player rolls one die on a turn, not two. I guess for that version, you could take the A - 6 cards from two standard decks to form your 48-card deck.

Thread: Re: Card-driven variant

LordBobbio — 2006-10-30T00:11:04+00:00

Nice solution to roll-and-move mindlessness. This variant could save many games.

Thread: Card-driven variant

alsandor — 2006-01-08T01:40:58+00:00

My father had developed a variant for this game.

Take one regular deck of 48 cards, Ace low to Queen, remove Kings, jokers, etc. Deal out 24 cards: 6 to four players, 8 to three players and I guess 12 to two players although we played three at least. Play cards for face value, Ace being 1 through to Queen being 12. Players draw a card upon playing. A player may elect to pass by discarding and doing nothing.

Cards are discarded upon play and the discard pile is reshuffled and redealt after last card is drawn.

This variant allows player to do some planning of moves ahead of time.

Also saves on that noisy dice rolling.

Thread: User Review

Lufbery — 2004-12-29T17:39:32+00:00

On Christmas day (2004) my wife's family came over for dinner. In between the meal and dessert, we brought out Aggravation. This was my second time playing the game, but my wife's family has played it for years.

We used a recent edition, pictured here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/29946

Aggravation is a race game where each player has four marbles that need to travel around the board from the players' start spaces to their home spaces. One needs to roll a 1 or a 6 (on a six-sided die) to move a marble from the base into the track. One can jump over an opponent's marble, but not one's own. Each player rolls the die and moves the number that comes up. If a six is rolled, the player can roll again.

Almost everything in the game is done by exact count. There are a ring of shortcuts in the center that may be used only if a marble hits one of the shortcuts by exact count. The same is true for the super short cut in the very center of the board. Once there, a marble may only move off of it with a roll of one. This makes marbles in the super short cut a very easy target for "getting aggravated." A marble is aggravated (or its player is) when an opponent's marble lands on it by exact count -- then it gets sent back to start all over again.

One of the strengths of the game is that it plays very quickly. I spent my first 10 or so rolls stuck, unable to move because I hadn't rolled a six or a one. However, after about a dozen game turns I already had one of my marbles in a home space. There is some room for strategy, but most of the movement is based on the luck of the die. I took the strategy of focusing on getting each marble home instead of trying to keep all my marbles moving. It almost worked because, despite my slow start, I was essentially tied with with my mother-in-law toward the end of the game. We each had three out of four marbles home. She won shortly thereafter.

The shotcuts add a nice wrinkle. They tend to even things out, and make it so that, for the most part, nobody really has to travel the whole way around the board the long way.

All in all, Aggravation provided a pleasent 40 or so minutes of entertainment for five people. This is a very light game that can be enjoyable at family gatherings.