Boardnado revisits: Fortune and Glory

 

 

Hell yes.

 

Fortune and Glory is a heavily themed 'cliffhanger' game made by Flying Frog Productions. Truly, this game is all about theme. It's meant to evoke the feeling of being a 1930 'Indiana Jones'-like adventurer trying to find both mystical and rare treasures of long forgotten civilisations. All the while fighting off stereotypical bad guys like Cultists, the Mob and of course .... Nazi's. Along the way you might outwit your fellow adventurers by snatching their prize from under their noses (So once again, Jones, what was briefly yours is now mine!) or you can team up and fight vile organisations together as you stop them from gathering the artifacts they need to take over the world!

 

If at this point my stellar description doesn't make you want to put on a fedora and read on I don't know if Fortune and Glory is for you.

 

 

 

A warning to you: the rulebook for this game is 32 pages long. Now wait, don't panic! I know that at this point some might consider giving up on this game but hear me out okay? The main reason why the rulebook is so long is because you can play this game in about 5 different ways: Solo, Competitive, Competitive – Teams, Cooperative or 'Everything mashed together'. It's also very modular: you can add and remove mechanics and 'stuff to do' to the board as you wish. This is why they've also included a quick start guide which is only about 4 pages long with the barebones competitive gamemode as it should be played for beginners or people who really just want to jump headfirst into this.

 

Now obviously I can't give you a complete rundown of everything in extensive detail as that would make this review way too long (and it already is quite lengthy), but I'll try and include as much as possible.

 

Setting up the gameboard takes a long time. I've got everything neatly wrapped together in plastic and it takes me about 15-20 minutes to set up a game (it is huge!). I also need a very large table to put it on, so keep that in mind. When it's all done however the setup looks quite impressive. Upon seeing it newcomers either carefully, curiously approach it (kind if like a cat would do) or they hiss and run away. Rest assured though that all these bits and bobs and large amount of decks are there to help you play, not to obfuscate things.

 

You win the game by collecting a predetermined amount of 'Fortune'. These are the gold coins and you can only get them by hunting down and afterwards selling artifacts.

 

What's really fun is how you determine which four occult artifacts are on the table. You basically add a random adventure and artifact card together. On the artifact card it might say 'The Pulsating Spear' and on the adventure card could be 'Of Power', which makes the complete artifact: The Pulsating Spear of Power! It will say on the card how much 'fortune' the item is worth and on the other card how many dangers you need to overcome to get it (We'll get back to that). So the value, name and 'dangers to overcome' is different every time! You determine where on the map they are by drawing a location card and putting coloured markers there. So now you know where to go to win!

 

Gameplay is actually remarkably simple. The reason why I've heard that some plays crashed and burned horribly is because there's just so much of it. For example you can add temples, jungle bases, vile organisations and the Nazi zeppelin to the game, each with their own mechanic, but of course that means learning that mechanic. They make the game more fun and give you a whole lot more stuff to do, but I wouldn't include them when you're still learning.

 

A basic game however goes through 4 different phases: Initiative, Movement, Adventure and Resolution or End.

 

During the Intiative Phase each player rolls a die to see who goes first, that's it.

 

The Movement Phase also requires the roll of a die. This time to see how far your hero can go each turn. Movement goes slower over water and different things happen if you end your turn in a city, on an artifact location or just in some random spot on the map. Your journey could be filled with adventure or be entirely uneventful.

 

The Adventure Phase is where the game comes alive. This is where you actually play out the role of plucky hero! If you happen to be in a city you get to draw a city card. Anything can happen: you could end up in a car chase or be robbed in the market or maybe you find help in the form of a useful item or ally. After you've resolved your city adventure you can sell any artifacts you have for Fortune or buy items and allies with Glory. At the start of the game you won't have any glory yet, but you will accrue lots of it during the game (I'll tell you how in a bit). You can also travel from city to city instantly using Fortune, but that's risky because you actually need that fortune to win. In the expansions the amount of things you can do in cities increases from even more random events to visiting the dock area.

 

If you're in the same location as an artifact however you start to hunt after it. You do this by Proudly exclaiming the name of your hero and the artifact you're looking for (e.g. Dr Zhukov and The Pulsating Spear of Power!) and drawing Danger cards. Now every hero (let's take for example my favourite: Dr Zhukov, Master of Science!) has different attributes in 4 categories: Combat, Agility, Cunning, and Lore. They also have a number of wounds they can take (think: 'hitpoints') and defense. Which is useful for combat, but I won't cover combat in this review.

 

Dr. Zhukov is a very cunning hero, but he's not very good at fighting. When we draw dangers cards we end up with different scenario's in which you need to solve tests. For example I can draw the 'Maze' card and enter a maze. I have two ways to get through this: I either figure my own way out using cunning or I decypher the ancient map using lore. Now Dr Zhukov skipped all his Lore classes and thus only has a 2, which means he can only throw 2 dice on that adventure. But like I said he's very cunning with a whopping 5 dice he can use so obviously we go for that.

 

According to the card he needs to throw 2x a 4-result or more on his dice. He rolls all of them, but only gets 1 four! Oh no! Luckily as long as he has one succesful throw he can bank the result and throw again with all 5 dice. Sadly the Dice-Gods are against us and he he doesn't roll a four or above and thus the card flips over to reveal a cliffhanger! Dr Zhukov is now 'Lost in the Maze'. What will happen to the master of science? Will he get out of this sticky situation? Or will he fail and be forced to return  to his home city of Russia and lose some items? You will see all this ON THE NEXT TURN.

 

And this is such a great mechanic and why this game is called the 'cliffhanger game'. When you flip to a cliffhanger you get one more shot to pass the danger and continue, but you'll only know on the next turn.

 

Now let's say Zhukov had made it, he will still need to run through several more Dangers to get to the spear. He doesn't have to do all of them at once though. Each danger also provides an immediate benefit in the form of Glory (this is how you get blue coins). If halfway through you decide to camp down or you make it to the end you get all that yummy glory. But! Should you fail halfway through you will lose any glory on that run. So you always need to make a decision: "Do I push on for the prize? Or do I camp down and collect my glory". The fact that other players might be racing you for the same artifact doesn't help and can make for some really intense games.

 

The last phase is the End Phase. This is where you refresh any collected artifacts so there are always four, you revive knocked out heroes and move things like the Nazi Zeppelin.

 

Now the Zeppelin is my favourite addition to the game, it travels around the map on its own and occasionaly drops of Nazi soldiers while collecting Fortune. If you're in the same space as the zeppelin you can choose to raid it and steal the fortune from the Nazi's. You throw dice to see if you can sneak past enemies, but if you fail your rolls you're going to have to fight them. I once encountered a tank on a zeppelin .... that was weird, but very Indiana Jones-y somehow.

 

 

 

One of the biggest issues I have with this game is that the danger deck is quite small. I mean it's still over 60 or 90 cards, but a lot of them are similar with different cliffhangers. It's the same problem as with Dead of Winter's crossroad cards .... can you ever have enough? Only this time you will encounter so many dangers that you burn through the deck way too quickly. Now fortunately the Board Gaming community has 'fixed' this by creating more danger cards themselves. I've downloaded quite a few and printed/sleeved them. They don't look 'as good' as the others, but they're still pretty awesome. I still think Flying Frog should release more of their own official 'danger decks' (They have already released two of them, but they are notoriously hard to acquire).

 

Second objection is that some of the dangers don't make sense when strung together. Like Diving for treasure in the Sahara only to be car chased to a nightclub filled with ancient booby traps? I generally solve this by saying that the dangers are 'highlights' of an adventure that takes place throughout the whole country where the artifact is located. Which solves story-problems most of the time if you use your imagination .... but there are situations where that just doesn't make sense either (like when you're raiding temples). It can be hilarious however! Trying to make your story sound true and heroic for me is part of the fun.

 

Another thing you need to know: This game is expensive. We sell it for 99.99, which is widely considered to be the 'standard' price. Now I think the game is worth it considering how much you get (I mean you get over 100 plastic pieces and miniatures, a dozen decks, the gameboard is amazing and they even include a soundtrack!) Especially considering other games I see that go for the same price and give you a lot less value, but I definitely understand if you don't want to spend that much on a board game. It gets even better if you want both expansions for it (both of which easily constitute another review), which will add another 79.98 to the price. I personally have the two-mini expansions (the hard to get ones) too and .... Well the 'complete package' really breaks the bank.

 

I've never regretted it though and I've got some really fond memories playing this game. There is just SO MUCH to do! I've raced for artifacts against my friends, explored ancient temples with a buddy, I've had a revolution in my hometown of Moscow (when I played Zhukov) and got banned by the KGB, I've been shanghaied on a ship and I've invaded German submarines! This one time I was playing a competitive team game and the other team only had 2 turns in which they even had a chance to defeat my team. I've watched them make incredible dice rolls to get to the carribean and wrest a golden chalice from the Nazi's. When they finally thought they'd done the impossible and beat us .... it turned out it was a fake and my team won anyway. We all laughed for a full 10 minutes after that. It was one of the best games I ever played.

 

 

 

Fortune and Glory is a great game. It's not very elegant, a little silly and although it isn't difficult there is a LOT to learn about it. It's also massive and not something you can easily whip out for a quick game BUT if you can find a group of about 4 people to play and you set aside enough time you will have an amazing atmospheric experience filled with adventure! You'll be telling your friends all about how 'that one time' you rolled that last 6 you needed and escaped with the Goblet of Loki from the clutches of the vile Herr Teufel as the Nazi base blew up in his face.

 

Because screw Herr Teufel, he's a [REDACTED].