When Stonemaier announced they were creating a board game based on the Red Rising Science Fiction novel series, I almost instantly wrote it off. Stonemaier is an often celebrated game company for their diverse and unique catalog of board games, so why would they tarnish that streak with an existing IP?
Jamey Stegmaier, one half of Red Rising’s design team and all around board game powerhouse, said that Red Rising by Pierce Brown was his dream IP. He’d spent years chasing the license to Red Rising, and more still trying to bring his favorite series to your dining room table. Given that I have spent countless hours of my life enjoying board games designed by this very man, I owed it to him to give his labor of love a shot. I’m glad I did.
The game is pretty simple to learn. Use a starting hand of cards you’ll exchange for other cards on the board until you have a hand you like. As you do this you’ll theoretically advance on one of three victory trackers. Once those trackers meet certain milestones, the game ends and players calculate their points. If you’re feeling underwhelmed by this, remember that the devil is in the details.
Like I said: it’s a simple concept, but where the game shines is figuring out how to perform various combos to maximize your turn and hand’s potential. Each card represents a character, named or otherwise, and has various special abilities. These abilities could be card draw, board manipulation, reactions to an opponent’s action, or many other things. Each card also has art unique to itself and many of the these cards share some kind of connection to another. It’s almost as if somewhere there’s a cohesive narrative utilizing these characters? I kid, I kid.
It’s worth noting that I don’t normally read science fiction novels. Red Rising wasn’t even on my literary radar until this game materialized in front of me. However, having played this game and being able to see the love that Jamey Stegmaier and Alexander Schmidt poured into this, I was certainly intrigued. While looking through various cards during my playthroughs I can almost feel each character’s personality shining through. So I caved in and bought the first novel.
Red Rising does have somewhat of a learning curve to find out what cards are useful and why they’re useful. The game’s box boasts the ability to play with 6 people between 45 and 60 minutes, but I’d wager your first games might take a fair bit more time to adjust to the world offered to you. I imagine each playthrough helps speed things along once familiarity sets.
The inner packaging isn’t a fine as other Stonemaier releases(Between Two Castles, for example) but it’s not like the game has a huge clean up issue. It’s mostly just cards and various token with storage bags provided for, although certain tokens get placed in a big plastic wolf’s head, so that’s pretty rad.
All in all, the game is pretty solid. It’s a clever card manipulation game dripping with personality. My playgroup really dug finding the cool combinations, not to mention the awesome characters on every card. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes card manipulation or even just Science Fiction in general.
-Ryan Miller