James Forsythe
United States
Strafford
New Hampshire
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I am writing this review after a single play of the game with 3 players. I would normally prefer to play a game more times than this before writing a review, but since there is currenly only one review, I thought I'd give it a shot.
Formidable Foes is a game for 2-6 that involves killing monsters in order to get the most treasure in order to win favor with a fairie princess. The person with the most treasure at the end of the game wins. There are monsters that have a strength numbered from 1-50 in sequence, and a few treasures that come out at the end. Most monsters are worth 1-2 gold, while the ones at the end can be worth as much as 6. This means you need to be careful to set yourself up to kill the monsters that come out at the end (or take the treasures).
The board is a large dungeon of rooms connected by short passages. At intersections chips are placed out facedown that get flipped up when a player gets near. One of the four ways out of the passage will be blocked. There are also four teleporter chips that get put out on fours spaces with two different matching colors. Players will be able to move throught the teleporters enabling them to move quickly across the board.
Players start off with a wisdom that is based on their player order (1 for the first, 2, for the second, etc). The first four mosters (strength 1-4) get put on the starting spaces. On the players turn they may do one of the following:
1) Move 6 spaces and attack
2) Move 12 spaces
3) Take power chips.
Combat is very simple. If the strength of the monster is the same or slightly weaker than the hero, the hero rolls two dice (one for the monster, and one for him/her). Subtract the two dice, and pay that many power chips to defeat the moster. The dice for the monsters are numbered from 2-4, while the heroes are from 1-3, so the hero will pay up to 3 power chips (but perhaps none). Note that the number of chips paid has nothing to do with the strength of the creature. When the monster is defeated, the hero gains wisdom equal to a set number (based on the number of players) plus the level of the monster. This combination leads to the players wanting to attack the strongest monsters that it can to progress the wisdom as quickly as possible. The hero also gets awarded the monster token in treasure, and gets to draw a spell. New monsters are added to unexplored rooms based on some line of sight rules.
If the monster is stronger, the hero can't defeat it, but can attack it in order to gain one wisdom for the valiant attempt, then move away.
If the monster is so weak that the hero wouldn't gain any wisdom, then it dies of fright. The hero draws a spell, but gets one less treasure (which usually means he gets nothing).
One of the big elements of the game is the management of power chips. These are required to defeat monsters, and near the end of the game, monsters will require an additional amount of power chips to defeat. When a hero defeats a monster, the first power chip paid goes onto a track. Also when new areas are explored and monsters added, power chips come off the board onto the track. The track is set up with dark and light portions, and when a hero takes power chips, they take the chips off the dark portion. This leads to heroes taking anywhere from 2/3 to about 1/2 the chips depending on how full the track is.
At this point is worth discussing strategies to get a feel for how the game plays out. The fastest way to progress in the game would be to always attack the strongest monster possible (strength equal to your wisdom). On the other hand, if you ever get to the point where all the monsters are stronger than you, than you are in a ton of trouble (there are ways to earn wisdom without killing monsters, but they are slower). Meanwhile, you must take power chips to replace the ones you used up, and to get ready to attack the final monsters which have the most treasure. This conflicting requirement (pause to take chips, but don't get two far behind in wisdom wo you can't kill any monsters) is the main tension of the game. Actually fighting the monsters is not tense, since you will automatically kill them as long as you have enough power chips. The amount of wisdom you earn for killing a monster is it's level plus a number slightly larger than the number of players (e.g. 4 for three players, 9 for 6 players). This means that if nobody took power chips and always attacked the strongest monster possible, there would be a few extra weaker monsters available so that later someone could take powerchips and still have monsters to fight. Also timing when to take the power chips can take some outguessing since the track fills up, but when someone takes chips, there are less for everyone else. As you delve further into the dungeon, the monsters get more spread out, and it can become challenging to get monsters that are as close as possible to your wisdom level to keep you progressing faster. These dynamics lead to a game that becomes very tactical, but in a way that is very different than you would expect, since the tactics is in timing of taking chips and which monsters to go after, rather than the combat itself.
The spells that you accumulate can be played and discarded to allow you to move faster, swap positions with another player, become invisible, change the strength of a monster, etc. This allows you to surprise your opponents when they think they may have you backed into a corner. This adds a nice addition of uncertainty and strategy in terms of timing the use of the spells for best effectiveness.
About halfway through the game, the "dumbest player" token is given to the person furthest behind in terms of wisdom. The token will change hands to whomever is furthest behind at any given time. The dumbest player has two abilities that help them catch up, or hinder other opponents. The first is that the player can move the weakest monster around the board and pick up other players. This can be useful to bring a monster to you, or to carry your opponents off and force them to attack a monster that won't give them much of a reward. This latter effect can be very detrimental and can really help hammer the lead player (or whomever you happen to be upset with). The other ability is that you can follow around other players and gain wisdom from them. This is probably most useful if all the monsters are now stronger than you.
The last 5 tokens revealed are either treasures or monsters 49 and 50. The treasures will actually give you additional wisdom in addition to gold. The treasures of monsters 49 and 50 are 6 compared to 1-2 for early monsters, so it is really imporant to position yourself to take them out, or to get the treasures. These monsters take additional power to kill, so you need to make sure to go into the end game with an adequate supply of power tokens.
Overall, I enjoyed the game. My expectation were low because of the low ratings and poor reviews the game has gotten, and so I was pleasantly surprised. I think because the strategy in this game is focused on when to take power tokens, rather than on the combat itself, it's easy for people to think the game is simpler than it really is. The game is really about resource management (power tokens), and planning your moves to attack the strongest monsters possible.
One comment I read in another post was that the game was not enough of a Euro to please Euro fans, and not enough of a fantasy game to please fantasy game fans. This may very well be so, but for people like me who like Euro's AND Fantasy games, this kind of hybrid may be enjoyable. It's definitely on the light side, but there is a decent amount of tactics. The beginning of the game felt very prescribed since monsters were all close together, so your options were pretty obvious, but once the board spreads out and people start taking power chips, then it got more interesting. The fact that the games plays such a wide range of players (2-6) is a nice bonus. Although I didn't play it with a large number of players, I would expect it to work well since turns are quick, and the scaling of wisdom points per attack should lead to people progressing more rapidly to keep pace with the larger number of players killing monsters quicker.
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Doug Adams
Australia
Oakleigh
Victoria
Boink
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I agree with your conclusions. It's a resource/race game set in a dungeon. I think it's very good, but destined for the "under appreciated" pigeon hole.
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