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| By Fantasy Flight Games |
I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire...
When the Fallout Board Game was first announced, I was very excited. I have been a fan of the franchise from the original Interplay games, and I have put in at least 200 hours into the Bethesda games. As a fan, the board game version had a lot of hype to live up to in my mind, and I remember thinking two things specifically:1.) It's being made by Fantasy Flight! Oh good! They always put a lot of time and money into their products and have great production quality!
2.) It's being made by Fantasy Flight... Damn... That mean's it's going to be overly complicated and only for the most hardcore of tabletop gamers...
So, the game has come and I was able to get my hands on it, and have played quite a few games. So, were my initial thoughts and fears accurate?
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| The Cardboard Wasteland |
Cardboard... Cardboard Never Changes
The game plays from 1-4 players which is already a positive. As the father of a 2 year old, sometimes it's just easier to play games on my own than to schedule a day where all my friends are available or in town, so I appreciate that there are rules for that.
The board is made up of different location tiles that should sound familiar to most fans of the series, such as Super Duper Mart or Diamond City, that start face down, only showing whether or not the tile is a relatively safe or dangerous. They're arranged in a pattern according to the scenario they are playing, which are all tied to a specific location from the Bethesda games, like the Capitol Wasteland or the Pitt. Once players choose their characters, they set about to be the first to get the right amount of points (the game calls in Influence, but we all know they're POINTS) before the game ends. And really, they're just Thumbs Ups.
Yes. You are competing for a Thumbs Up. You are killing mutants, risking radiation poisoning, and deciding the fates of people in the Wasteland for a Thumbs Up. The Thumbs Up cards are the REWARDS for finishing quests, like helping people in need, or killing a particularly dangerous monster. Could you imagine going to work for 40 hours a week, getting your paycheck and it's just a picture of this guy:
And the game is stingy with them! It's like in the world of Fallout the Board Game, the Thumbs Up has become some kind of rare gesture, and should be truly valued. More than bullets, more than water, more than medicine or housing materials, the thing we should all be stockpiling in case of apocalypse are Thumbs Ups, and yes, the game can end with NO ONE having enough Thumbs Ups, and then ALL THE PLAYERS LOSE.
Each enemy has a number of highlighted body parts (kind of like the V.A.T.S. displays from the games) that you need to roll on the dice in order to kill it. In the example of the Radroach above, its arms and legs. So, any dice that you roll showing arms or legs deal it damage. Different weapons let you reroll the dice, but ONLY if you are S.P.E.C.I.A.L. enough!
As you kill bad guys and level up, you get to draw from a selection of random S.P.E.C.I.A.L. tokens, and if you get one that you don't already have already, you get to keep it. And if your weapon has that S.P.E.C.I.A.L. symbol on it, you get to reroll your dice in order to get those V.A.T.S. symbols.
They hold paint well, and from what few I have painted seem to be detailed enough that paint accentuates, and doesn't obscure, which is how it should be.
The board is made up of different location tiles that should sound familiar to most fans of the series, such as Super Duper Mart or Diamond City, that start face down, only showing whether or not the tile is a relatively safe or dangerous. They're arranged in a pattern according to the scenario they are playing, which are all tied to a specific location from the Bethesda games, like the Capitol Wasteland or the Pitt. Once players choose their characters, they set about to be the first to get the right amount of points (the game calls in Influence, but we all know they're POINTS) before the game ends. And really, they're just Thumbs Ups.
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| Thumbs Up Cards |
Yes. You are competing for a Thumbs Up. You are killing mutants, risking radiation poisoning, and deciding the fates of people in the Wasteland for a Thumbs Up. The Thumbs Up cards are the REWARDS for finishing quests, like helping people in need, or killing a particularly dangerous monster. Could you imagine going to work for 40 hours a week, getting your paycheck and it's just a picture of this guy:
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| A valuable commodity |
And the game is stingy with them! It's like in the world of Fallout the Board Game, the Thumbs Up has become some kind of rare gesture, and should be truly valued. More than bullets, more than water, more than medicine or housing materials, the thing we should all be stockpiling in case of apocalypse are Thumbs Ups, and yes, the game can end with NO ONE having enough Thumbs Ups, and then ALL THE PLAYERS LOSE.
V.A.T.S.
Players take turns moving their character around the board, flipping over face down locations, and fighting bad guys. |
| Death to the Radroach |
Each enemy has a number of highlighted body parts (kind of like the V.A.T.S. displays from the games) that you need to roll on the dice in order to kill it. In the example of the Radroach above, its arms and legs. So, any dice that you roll showing arms or legs deal it damage. Different weapons let you reroll the dice, but ONLY if you are S.P.E.C.I.A.L. enough!
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| No one's ever that S.P.E.C.I.A.L. |
As you kill bad guys and level up, you get to draw from a selection of random S.P.E.C.I.A.L. tokens, and if you get one that you don't already have already, you get to keep it. And if your weapon has that S.P.E.C.I.A.L. symbol on it, you get to reroll your dice in order to get those V.A.T.S. symbols.
So, all of combat boils down to... Rolling DICE.
But what about stealth kills? ROLL THE DICE! Targeting weak points? ROLL THE DICE! Sending your Companion to distract them? ROLL THE DICE! Negotiating instead of attacking? ROLL THE DICE!
In fact, EVERY MECHANIC from the Fallout video games, from diplomacy, to stealth, to picking locks and hacking computers is the EXACT SAME MECHANIC in the Fallout board game. ROLLING DICE. That would be like if in the video game you had to shoot your gun in order to do anything, but what happened was completely random, and you had no control!
Oh, look, there's a vendor. SHOOT HIM IN THE FACE!
I'm gonna sneak through this Super Duper Mart. SHOOTS GUN WILDLY IN THE AIR!
Of course I'll help you rebuild this settlement. SHOOTS EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING IN SIGHT!
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| Just an ordinary man making dinner for his family |
I can hear you saying it now, pushing up your glasses to ask, "But Mike Meeple, isn't ALL combat in tabletop games rolling dice?" Oh, sweet summer child...
Most tabletop games involving dice combat give you options along with your dice rolling. Things like, different weapons or stats giving you different dice to roll, or abilities that give you bonuses to your dice rolls. In Fallout the Board Game, there are no weapons that add +1 Damage, or affect an enemy's Defence or anything like that. It's just ROLL THE DICE, AND HOPE FOR THE BEST. The mechanic is tired before you even start playing.
The Lone Wanderers
So, the production quality is fantastic on this game. The tiles, the cards, the dice, and the tokens all look and feel like they are very high quality. Everything looks and feels authentic, and the idea of using Bottlecap tokens as the in-game currency is a nice touch.
The miniatures are fine. They're all well detailed and all fairly different, but they have some pretty static poses, which limits how cool they are, and their proportions seem off. Obviously a Super Mutant is going to be bigger than a Wastelander, but how big is a Vault Dweller's hands?!? Those things are ENORMOUS!
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| The Not-So-Sole Survivors |
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Buy It!, Try It!, or Fly It!
Well, I try to rate the games I review with a simple rating system:
Buy It! = Go buy this, right now! It is fantastic and worth your hard earned money!
Try It! = Play it with a friend or at your local game store. You might like it or you might not.
Fly It! = %&#! this game!
Unfortunately, Fallout is a Fly It! for me. Look, I REALLY wanted to like this game. Like A LOT! But there's just not much of a game here. The core mechanic is rolling dice, and there are so many games out there that do it better. This one is just going to be a hard pass for me. I love the components, and there are some aspects to the game that I really enjoy, like the Encounter cards and the miniatures, but at the end of the day, I can't justify spending anyone's money on a game where you literally have no control over anything and are just wandering the wasteland until the game is over... But hey, I guess that's pretty much post-apocalyptic life in a nutshell isn't it?
Maybe Fallout the Board Game isn't a BOARD GAME at all?!?
Maybe it's a conditioning tool for our society's inevitable collapse?!?
A way for us to become used to the tedium of doing the same activity over and over again, and hoping for- NAY, EXPECTING different results!
After all, it was Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing and expecting different results! And what is more insane than life after the apocalypse?!?
Or...
Or...
Or maybe it's just a crappy game.
The Verdict....?
FLY IT!
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