

For your reading pleasure (or displeasure, depending on how you view my writing) I present to you significant Brikwars battle report #7. It’s another deathmatch, and our last. After this game we switched to objective based gameplay which I talk about at the end of this report. Below we have our filthy contenders –

Bianca: Astronauts

Graeme: Aliens

Alkira: Mimes

Bjorn: Archaeologists

Peter (me): Women and Children

Below you can see the new weapon stat sheet and new elongated stat cards which allow for some more info on the front. Great! Today’s Battlefield is proudly brought to you by Mr and Mrs Collateral’s Dream house, located on the bottom right. There are six capture points that all bring extra money to the team that gets there first and some hard points to mount anti-goat gattling guns.

It’s almost a theme now, Alkira chooses the Mimes specifically to troll everyone using her teams’ ability to create walls wherever they please.

Bianca props her hero up on a telescoping stand used to simulate the complex nature of jetpack flight.Next to Bianca is the return of McDonalds! Boy I love that place. Full of pastey teenagers trying to make their way in the world.

Graeme starts in the corner and is clearly excited to have another opportunity to display his superior tactical prowess. His chosen team, the aliens, have the ability to probe other units violently on the battlefield providing his team with buffs. Secretly this is what Graeme is looking forward to the most.

Ahh the Women and Children. Who could kill such a team? Well as you’re about to find out, everyone.

Bjorn has professionally set up his complex electronic device to time lapse the game. We were all surprised he even knew how to camera!

Here we go, first round of moves, nothing of any significance happens.

Look at these idiots, what am I doing with my life.

Alkira begins by fortifying her Mimes with invisible walls. She’s getting a bit jumpy fairly early.

My children run straight into Mr and Mrs Collatorial’s house and claim it for my own dastardly deeds which so far has been eating their food and putting my feet on the sofa.

Graeme’s Alien’s discussing who’s going to probe who first.

Bianca’s first order of business is to elevate her astronaut hero as far into sky as her little jetpack will manage.

FIRST BLOOD. An Alien has managed to frag an Archaeologist in the head. Graeme’s not worried, he’s pretty sure he can still probe dead things. At least you can IRL.

Bianca’s unarmed Astronauts rip some fence’s out of the ground. Can’t bash children with our hands now can we? Well you probably can.

Bianca’s one goal this game is to get a burger from McDonald’s.

Here’s a Brikwars tip for everyone out there: Every game should have at least one McDonald’s.

Betty: Space Commando then snipes the door off of my beautiful house!

The children hit back with a round of gunfire used to disrupt the life of enemy units. No one has ever thought of that before.

Bianca doesn’t waste time avenging the fiery death of her hero, she storms the McDonald’s front counter and wipes out the staff with a fence post. That’ll show someone else for killing her hero!

The Women (two heroes) emerge from the house to find themselves face to face with a crocodile with a cannon strapped to it’s back.

Shortly thereafter they find themselves exploded.

Bjorn is seen below buying his team special ability which is a giant indestructible boulder.

Graeme hasn’t done anything great with his life thus far. He hasn’t accomplished anything of significance, he’s not really that smart and worst of all, Graeme is French. So it’s unsurprising what happens next: his team is almost completely wiped out by the bumbling idiot that is Bjorn. All it took was two explosive charges.

Now let the begging begin! Graeme now only has one unit left and is grovelling for his life as Alkira’s mime sets his sights on taking out the last Alien.

He is spared and the mime moves on to more noble pursuits.

Meanwhile I buy one of my children a fancy upgrade, jump jets!

…and also steal dead Betty’s jetpack. Things are lookin’ up! Ha! GET IT.

Graeme starts to reconsider his strategy as seen below (he’s cheating).

Bjorn’s cowardly Archeologists hide like weak scared dogs in the nearby $2 shop. What a pathetic move.

Oh look at that, a forest has suddenly appeared around Graeme’s last unit.

Looks like the fire from Bjorn’s dynamite has spread…over the road. Because we all know how flammable roads are. Bianca has also purchased an alien tripod.

A kid dies for some reason.

The Astronaut tripod stomps forward threatening everyone’s safety.

You know the games getting super serious when people start to play defensively, which is why Bjorn’s units are hiding. Bjorn, you disgust me. I also don’t like how you’ve played this turn.

The Mime’s buy a flak cannon to take out everyone’s fancy killing machines.

This kid: “Oh so peaceful up here…”

“…peaceful enough for a steady shot that is.”

There’s countries that condemn child soldiers right? Is Australia one of them? I dunno. You may not know this, but we’re all Australian. You know what sucks about this country? Stuff is damn expensive. Our NETFLIX has like 12 videos.

Oh some dead bodies fall in the local swimmin’ pool.

Bjorn’s team buys an artillery cannon to spice things up. It also allows him to remain stationary, BORING.

Death ensues, someones spaceship got shot down…

So this game ended prematurely, we got bored basically. Let’s talk about board game design theory. “Oh sure thing Peter that sounds sooooo interesting.”

I’m writing this game up a few months after it happened, so hindsight and things. This is the last time we played a standard deathmatch. Over the last few years, we’ve tried to alleviate the game’s drag at the 3 hour mark using a combination of sugar and alcohol (very adult of us isn’t it?). We don’t need to do this anymore as we’ve switched to objective based gameplay. This addresses a number of problems:

Makes the game different every time. Forces the player to focus on tactics and moving around the board (instead of finding a hole and staying in it, like Bjorn did this game). Allows everyone playing a chance to win the game right up until their last unit dies.

Everyone gets bored playing a game they know their going to lose right? Well we noticed the best board games we play (Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan etc) give all players a chance of winning right up until the end.

So that’s the game. No tactical write up this time, no analysis. Just photos and words BUT this game was significant as it forced us to rethink the way we play and ultimately has made Brikwars so much more fun.

For more info about objective based gameplay see this news post on the Brikwars website.