What Is It?
Revenge of the B-Move (RotBM) is a fast, light card playing came for 3-6 players. It plays in about 15-30 mins. Players take on the role of directors trying to come up with ideas for great B-Movies which they can then sell to movie studios. The player who manages to earn a set amount of money first will win.

What Do I Get?
For your money you get:
63 Cards - The cards share a common back and have different colours on their front side to indicate their function. The colours are nice and bright and the text is clear and legible. The artwork is simple but appropriate for the theme.
1 Rules Sheet - A small, double-sided sheet of paper contains all the rules you will need to play.
1 Box

You will need to provide your own d6 and something to record scores.

How Do I Play It?
The game play will play over a series of rounds. At the beginning of each round, each player is dealt 5 cards. Cards come in 5 flavours: introductions (e.g. "Revenge of The"); monsters/makeup (e.g. "Bunny/Fluffy"); special fx (e.g. "Radioactive"); finales (e.g. "From Mars"); and connections (e.g. "Vs."). Some cards fall into two classes and can be used as either according to the players needs. Each player will take it in turn to play a card either into his own film, or a film owned by one of his opponents (not all cards are beneficial). The round will end once all players have played or discarded all of their 5 cards.

There are a few rules on what can and can't be played into a film: you can add any number of monster cards (with extra ones acting as makeup cards instead), any number of special fx cards, a single introduction (unless you have a connection), a single connection (unless you have an introduction) and a single finale (although "The Musical" can be added to any film, even one which already has a finale). In general, if you find something makes the film name sound weird it probably isn't allowed. You may have up to two film ideas on the go at the same time. Also, players may rearrange the cards in any one of their own movies during their turn.

After playing or discarding a card a player can then choose to "wrap" a completed film in front of him. A film is complete if it contains at least one monster or at least two monsters if it also contains a connection. Again, this is usually obvious from how the film name sounds. Wrapping involves turning the last card in the film 90 degrees to show it is wrapped. No more cards can be added to a wrapped film by any player and the film can now be sold at the end of the round (see below). A film is also automatically wrapped when it reaches 7 cards. The round ends when the players have no more cards left to play.

Each card has a cult value which will either be positive (e.g. "Radioactive" is +1) or negative (e.g. "Tiny" is -1). The cult value of a film is the total of the cult value of the cards which make up its title. Some cards have what are called "edits" which will either increase their value or change them from negative value to positive value when they are played in combination with a certain other card. For example, the card "Beautiful" has a value of -1. However, if the film title also contains "Women" or "Cheerleaders" then the "Beautiful" card changes from -1 to +1.

At the end of each round, the players can choose to try and sell any wrapped films they have. To do this they simply count up the cult value of the film and then roll a d6. If they roll over the cult value then no one is willing to produce that film at the moment and they can choose either to bin it (discarding all the cards) or carry it into the next round (where it will still occupy one of their two slots for making films). However, if they manage to roll equal to or less than the cult value, then some studio decides to pick-up the movie and pays the player some amount of money for the film. Films with 5 or fewer cards are worth $1,000,000 per point of cult value, films with 6 cards are worth $2,000,000 per point and films with 7 cards are worth $3,000,000 per point. Players track the amount of money they have and the first to reach a set amount ($20m, $15m or $10m for 3, 4 or 5+ players, respectively) wins.

So What's It Like?
This game lives or dies by its theme. There is no deep strategy at play here - you play good cards into your own movies and bad ones into your opponents, your hand will not change over the turn and you will get to play all of your cards. There is a small amount of strategy around whether or not to wrap your film, but it is generally a clear cut choice. Anyone looking for a serious "game" here will be a little disappointed. On the flipside, the lack of serious decision making ensures the game plays fast which is just what you need for filler like this. The rules are simple and it takes minutes to explain. The fact that many of the rules can be intuited from whether or not the resulting movie title would sound correct also helps players pick it up quickly.

The real fun lies in the crazy film names which are produced over the course of the game. "Beautiful Women Meet The Radioactive Biker Bunnys From Toyland" being an example of one from our first game which was enough to get me to pony up for my own copy. Other highlights include the ever exciting, "Day of The Woman From Down The Road", and the comic book-esque, "Radioactive Man Meets The Nazi Priests". This will rely the on your players to get into the spirit of things ("I like the sound of your Chainsaw-Weilding Spiders, but think it would be awesome if they were Tiny") but if you do, there will be plenty of laughter and enjoyment to go around.

There are a few minor niggles around the production quality of RotBM (although I guess that might be fitting given the theme ): the cardstock is not the most sturdy (sleeving is probably mandatory); of the three boxes I purchased, one came apart within a day of purchase; and the colour tone of the colouring on the backs of the cards can vary quite dramatically. I appreciate that this is a small, first run and the game is reasonably cheap (around 9 GBP) but I would have paid more for better production quality. It should be noted, however, that I purchased my copies from the first run of the game and that the designer is aware of and resolving these issues. Future copies are likely to be better quality all round.

As a final niggle, it might have been nice to have some artwork on the cards to help people get into the spirit. The cards are very nice and colourful, with a fitting typeface and clear fonts but it could have been great to have either pictures or use different typefaces (for example "Radioactive" could be written in a glowing green font) to add more character to the cards. As it is, it's all left up to the players imaginations, although it doesn't detract from the gameplay in anyway.

Conclusion
RotBM is a super-fun, super-light filler game which, with the right players, will provide plenty of entertainment and laughter. The duration is just right for this sort of game. The intitial production quality does leave something to be desired, but this doesn't have any real impact on how the game plays or feels and should improve with further printings of the game.

Thanks very much for the review Gareth, really glad you enjoyed playing the game. Love the title of the review as well. Excellent stuff.

I hope you don't mind if I take the time to address some of the issues you raise and explain why I went with the solutions I did for 'Revenge of the B-Movie!'.

1) Overall quality: The quality is not perfect, I would be the first to admit that. The guys I am doing it through, Guild of Blades, have only just begun doing POD cards so hopefully some of the colour issues on the back of the cards will be cleared up over time. At the moment they are using a knife cutter, a click and cut I think it is called, to punch out the cards but they are going to be getting a die cutter soon. Hopefully this should improve the feel of the cards.

I went for GOB over some of the bigger boys purely because of the finances invovled. I have had the game sitting on a back burner for a couple of years and been continuously frustrated by printers offering 'cheap' solutions. A lot of the time it looked like it was going to cost me in the region of £1500 pounds to get printed which is capital I just don't have. GOB offered a solution that was economical and pretty good quality for the price.

2) Box coming apart: Really sorry that happened. When I get the stock through the cards and boxes come seperately and I have to glue the box together. Evidently I have not found the perfect solution yet. I am currently using a strong version of pritt-stick which seemed to work fine. Does anyone have any better suggestions?

3) Card art: Your point about character to the cards is good, and is something I may consider changing for future runs. At the moment I am happy with the way the cards look but it certainly won't be to everyone's taste. As an old CCG player I can certainly appreciate that a nice bit of card art can lend a lot to how a card is seen by the players. Do you think different fonts might not make the cards look a bit disjointed? I am really interested in feedback as I am just finding my feet doing this.

The decision to not use art was again down to economics. As I get some revenue in I hope to be able to do games with a bit more art, I would love to have a fully artworked version of B-movie at some point.

Thanks once again for the review, glad you had fun with it and I am truly sorry your box came apart so soon after purchase. I will endeavour to find a solution to that as soon as I can.

For those interested in picking the game up, I am currently sold out. However the second part of my first run should arrive this week and then the shop will go live on 'The Giant Brain' website.

All the best

Iain McAllister

Iain, thanks for making such and entertaining game, giving me a demo and taking the time to respond to this review.

I've taking the time to incorporate your comments into my review so that someone reading it realises you are aware of the production issues on the first run and are putting in effort to ensure future versions are of better quality. I think this makes things sound more fair.

In any event, none of the problems I describe are an issue in play, and all are easily rectified. Card sleeves are probably a good idea for any filler card game anyway - due to the short play time, they typically see a lot of wear and tear through shuffling. Once you have them sleeved they probably wont fit in the original box. Also, you can get backed sleeves to cover the back of the cards.

Also, I was more than happy to not only buy this game for myself, but also to grab two additional copies to give to other people and I certainly don't regret my purchases.

RotBM is a great game and I really hope it does well. If there is a deluxe version at some point, I'd definitely be tempted to grab a copy.

Ah you were the kind gentleman who started off my sunday by purchasing 3 copies at the same time. Thanks very much.

It is early days at the moment, but I will be developing the line over the coming years and some kind of deluxe version at some point is a possibility.

Cheers

Iain

Great review, was going to post one myself but there isn't really any need with this one :)

Liked the game so much when I played it that I had to get it and introduce my non gaming buddies to it. It's great for both gamers and non gamers, definitely one of those games you can keep in your back pocket and whip out when you're feeling bored. They beauty of this game is it's so simple to learn the rules, although the rules say that you can only have one ending, etc. You don't really need to read that, because if the film title doesn't make sense then you know you've broken the rules somewhere.

Games are always filled with laughter, it never gets old to ruin someone's potentially awesome title of Nazis from beyond the stars by putting disco dancing in front of it.

There is a little bit of strategy in there other than when to wrap a film. Quite often, if I have a couple of +2 cards, I won't play them if I can, I'll either attack someone else's film or put a lower value down, because if you put a +2 down, it's likely people will attack that film. But on the flip side, do you really want to keep that +2 finale in reserve? If you do, someone might put a negative finale on your film, and then you can't use it any more. I agree it's not the most strategic of games, but there is some in there. However, the main fun of this game is in the hilarity.

The cards and box might not be made of the highest quality materials, but they're good enough. I also like the artwork as it is, elegantly simple artwork to go with an elegantly simple game.

One little niggle I have though is the reliance on the dice. Not a problem in itself, but the game doesn't come with one. That's not really the problem as I have plenty of d6es, the main problem is there's no easy way to carry a d6 with the game. It would be nice if there were some dead space so you can fit a dice in the box, or extra 'dice' cards in the box. By this I mean a card with a grid with random numbers on which you prod at, or perhaps cards with 1 to 6, you shuffle them around and then pick one, then place it back and reshuffle next time.

Quick question about the edits. When I have for example, pillow wielding cheerleaders, does that make both cards positive or just the pillow wielding?

One houserule I have made is that you can't make a monster 5'6", 50 foot and tiny

Very good review, Gareth. You did a nice job of explaining what you liked/didn't like about the game and how it plays without dulling me with rules.

Thumbs up!

Thanks for the kind words Jack.

The deciscion not to include dice in the box was made for a couple of reasons. Firstly the larger box would have cost more as would have the dice. Secondly I kind of assumed most people would have access to a dice. At a later date I might look to making the game more 'complete' out of the box but I think it is fine for now.

Now, the edits question. The edit on a given card refers only to that card when changing sign. So the pillow wielding card becomes positive but not the cheerleaders one.

Cheers

Iain