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There are a few things on every bear's post-hibernation agenda: stretch, shed that winter coat, and concoct epic schemes to create the best neighbearhood in. Add bonus points for wordplay and BarBEARian Battlegrounds begins to score. Them being nothing more than a thick coat of paint over a bluffing dice game.
If you’ve ever played a mobile phone strategy game, then BarBEARians: Battlegrounds should seem instantly familiar. It brings cute, lovable visuals and simple gameplay to your tabletop, with a real focus on multiplayer mayhem.
A two to four player game in principle, BarBEARians really comes to life with a full set of players and a willingness to stab each other in the back. Overview and turn structureThe first thing that I noticed about BarBEARians is that it’s a lot of game delivered in a small box — which is in direct contrast to the increasing number of small games going for ever larger boxes in order to grab attention. Kudos must be given to publisher Greenbrier Games for taking this route, since shelf space for many players comes at a significant premium. Once punched, the content of BarBEARians literally spills freely onto the table and it’s wondrous to behold.The game itself is fairly simple once you understand it, but it’s unlike most other board games in structure, so it does take a little bit of learning. The basic objective of BarBEARians is to obtain seven glory tokens, which can either be claimed from other players (by attacking them) or through completing feats or the Glorious Offering trade action. In anything less than a four player game, there will be less than seven glory tokens among all players (each starts with two) so at least one person will need to bring one into the game via an external method.
Once claimed, glory is always at risk of being taken by someone else until players spend effort and resources to lock it in, so it pays to be wary of counterattacks.At the beginning of each turn, players will simultaneously roll their five dice in public view. They will then take those dice behind one of the individually illustrated secrecy blinds and place them on their player board. The placement locations include an attack space for each of the other colours, a couple of barracks spaces, then three worker placement slots.
The barracks allows players to position one or two dice in defence, whilst the worker slots allow dice to be used to generate wood, faith and ore, which are the key resources in game.With this done (and bearing in mind that dice of higher value are better at whatever task they are assigned to) the players will then lift their screens and resolve the battle phase one by one, beginning with the first player. Battle resolution is straightforward. The attacking player checks the value of their dice in the attack slot against the value of any dice in the defending players barracks or in the attack space that links back to the same colour as the attacking player. If there’s no counterattacking dice, the contest is a straight shootout between attacking and defending dice.If the attacker wins, she claims a glory token from the defender. If the defending player was planning on attacking the other player, then whichever of the attacking dice is higher will be reduced by the value of the other players die — this can nullify the attack completely, or it may mean that some residual damage reaches the dice sat in the barracks (which may or may not still beat it.) Attacks are resolved around the table one by one until everyone has completed the attacks that they had assigned.
After that, dice that were placed on worker slots will be converted to the appropriate number of resources (which is usually one or two of any given type at most.)Upgrades can be purchased from a shared market, which includes cards like Captains Training (which allows low scoring dice to be paired with higher scoring ones during attacking and defending) or on specialists who allow additional resources to be gathered by workers. The game progresses with glory tokens toing and froing between the players until a few upgrades have been purchased, at which point the players will start to lock in their points and runaway leaders tend to begin emerging. BarBEARians features a lot of tactical decision making and not a ton of long term strategy, but the need to upgrade, plan for defense and so on does make it more than a simple dice chucker.ComponentsBarBEARians features only cardboard components, except for the dice, but that doesn’t mean that it is anything less than visually impressive when laid out on the table. The player boards, dice and wide array of tokens and cards bring tons and tons of colour, whilst the screens bring a really exciting three dimensional aspect that really enhances the overall look of BarBEARians when it is set up.The artwork is undoubtedly the real differentiator for BarBEARians when it comes to looks and there’s most certainly a light, bright theme that runs throughout each of the cards, boards, tokens and other components. It’s hard to describe exactly where BarBEARians takes its inspiration, but the art style is very much of a similar nature to video games from The Behemoth — including Castle Crashers as perhaps the most notable example. Characters are large and chunky, with heavy outlines and simple yet lively expressions.Quality is second to none across the entire game.
The cards, although small, are nicely made and simple to understand, whilst the cardboard components are thick. The printing is of a very high standard, which is necessary with so much colour on show and I’d say that pieces like boards and tokens are at least as thick (if not a little thicker) than the average high production, big box game. All said, there’s nothing to complain about in terms of component quality with BarBEARians.Game experienceBarBEARians is a little bit hard to figure out during the first few games. It has a really strange economy that feels a bit unrewarding to begin with, but as you spend more time with it and realise how important it is to lock in glory tokens, that view will change. I think this is partly because during the early game, it is actually quite difficult to generate resources in a way that feels like it enables rapid enough progress. You can easily spend two or three early turns investing in resources (and likely losing glory to other players as a result) only to be left with little to show for it. The first players to invest in upgrades, however, will likely soon pull back any early losses.The main thrust of BarBEARians is really in doing battle with one another.
As a result, it’s not a game that can be taken too seriously, since there’s a fair bit of luck of the dice going on, not to mention a need to surprise the other players by attacking at unexpected times. If you’re taking fights too seriously and not laughing about them, then you’re probably not playing it right. This is why I think that BarBEARians really excels at four players but falls a tiny bit flat at two (even though it is still playable.) As you can imagine, three players falls right between the other counts for fun factor, but I could also imagine it being a bit punitive if one player felt that they were being targeted unfairly.Given the small box and relatively flexible components (that allow for playing on a wide range of surfaces) it is possible for BarBEARians to be considered a reasonably portable game, which I always welcome.
With the holiday season coming up fast, BarBEARians is the kind of game that you could play with a couple of adults and a niece or nephew, for example. The combative nature of the game is unavoidable, but it is really quite tongue in cheek and not at all confrontational or particularly stressful.ConclusionBarBEARian Battlegrounds is a super addition to a games library that needs to entertain a wide range of players across all skill levels and age ranges. It’s not especially complex once learned and it rewards quick thinking and immediate decision making more than it does long term planning, yet at the same time there are rewards for those who demonstrate a more patient approach. It’s an undeniably attractive game no matter which way you look at it, but I guess the light theme isn’t going to win over fans of heavier strategic or euro games, despite elements of worker placement.Overall, I can see myself playing BarBearians again in the future (especially as my family grows into it) but it is perhaps what some gaming fans would call filler. I like to use games of around this weight (especially given how much better it is at four players) to begin or end a night of heavier games and I think it’s fair to say that my main gaming groups agreed with that as a use case. I also tested it heavily on a ten year old nephew and he is arguably the biggest fan of BarBEARians that I could ever ask for.
Take that as an expert point of view, should you be buying for a similarly aged young person.A copy of BarBEARians: Battlegrounds was provided for review purposes. You can find out more about it on the website of publisher.
Much cuddlier in personAfter speaking with VP and COO of Greenbrier Julie Ahern, I learned that Greenbrier has an incredibly diverse stable of games for a company its size. Their philosophy, I was told, was simply to make games that are fun to play. And while some of their games like Zpocalypes (their first and no doubt inspiration for their logo) and Folklore: The Affliction are certainly as dark as one might expect, they also can see the lighter side of things. Examples include the card puzzle game Burger Up, the dice battle game Ninja Dice, and their newest game released in collaboration with Leaf Pile Games: Barbearians: Battleground, a game who’s rather cutesy appearance belies a surprisingly deep level of strategy. A Bear There Was! Go ahead and groan.
That pun is just the tip of the icebeargBarbearians: Battlegrounds came into being during the development of Champions of Hara, a sci-fi adventure game released this year. While putting together that game, the developers started messing around with wordplay involving the denizens of the world.
One thing led to another, and they ended up turning the aliens into bears and developing a whole new game around the little fuzzy creatures.The game is a “simultaneous secret-action, dice-puzzle, worker placement game”, where up to four players square off to make their clan of bears the most powerful in the forest and cement their place in the legends. Each player gets a a village board and a clan screen that correspond to their chosen bears: the nordic seafaring Ice Bear Clan, the Ewok-like Forest Bear Clan, the dark and industrial Fire Bear Clan, and the nomadic Desert Bear Clan. Your clan screen also acts as a “cheat sheet” for gameplay so you don’t have to keep scrambling for the rulebookThe boards represent the places in your village where your clan’s bears do their work, whether it be warrior bears off to raid the neighbears or honey bears tending the village hives.
These bears are represented by dice of which each player gets three to start, but that number can be increased to five throughout the course of the game. Players also receive Glory Tokens, the ultimate resource in the game: first to seven wins.
Finally, players get a Trial Card, a card that essentially acts as a “quest” for them to complete that earns them one or more Glory tokens. Some of these are easy, like generating 5 resources in a round, while others are harder, like fending off an 11 strong force of bears attacking. As the game goes on, successful completion of these trials are vital to leading your clan to victory. Barbearic BattlesThe game proceeds through a rigid series of four rounds: Plan, Brawl, Gather, and Build. Half open and half secret, the Plan phase is probably one of the unique parts of the game and where a great deal of the strategy comes into play.
Players actually roll all of their dice together, meaning that each clan will know what their neighbear’s bearpower will be going into the next round. An unlucky clan who rolls many ones might be a ripe target for a raid, while one with higher numbers would prove to be a formidable foe.These numbers also can give you an idea of what resources a clan might gather, as low numbers let a clan gather honey and high numbers let them refine ore at the Forge. Any number can be used to gather Faith, though a six placed here can either double your faith or make your glory untouchable by raiders. The players then place their dice where they want, hidden from the others by your clan screen.
Then, either all together or in order, the players pull their screens back and reveal their plots. You can actually see your village develop over time as you add specialists to the boardThe Brawl phase is where you send your bloodthirsty packs of adorable bear warriors to raid and pillage the enemy clans (or pray to the Bear God that the bears you put on defense will keep your honey safe).
This is pretty straightforward, with the larger army (represented by the numbers on the dice allocated for attack) defeating smaller ones. But victory in the field is not enough to get to a clan’s riches. Your diminished forces must then contend with your rival’s defenses, should they have them. If you still have the bigger army, or they are defenseless, than the world is your honeypot and your bears can walk away from the enemy village with two resources or a glory token (should they have any that are unlocked).Then comes the Gather phase, when players simply count up what their industrious bears have done while their friends were off doing murder-theft.
These resources are then spent on the final phase: the Build phase. Here, you can spend your resources on Specialists, which give +1 to resources or defense depending on their type, Reinforcements, which permanently adds another die to your pool, and the Grand Offering, where you give your gathered wealth up to the Bear God to gain a new glory token.
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Finally, you may buy Upgrade cards, special buffs you can attain to help your bears during the game, most of which are centered around truly glorious puns. My favorite was “The 2nd Amendment,” which increases your ability to empower your bears and which has arts of bears wielding an assortment of weapons. Yup, its the right to arm bears.Not all of the things in the Marketplace are for the Build phase exclusively, however. Two of them occur during the Plan phase: Hire A Mercenary, which add special purple dice to your pool and increase your bearpower for that turn, and Change Fate, which allows a die to be rerolled.
The Empower ability is bought and used during the Brawl stage, and it allows you to give +1 power to your raiders or your defenders, depending on where it’s needed. You thought the puns were over with? Ursome Game or Teddy-ous Chore?I really enjoy this game. Strategy games are some of my favorite to play with friends, but it’s hard to cordon off the 38 hours needed to do a full game of Risk or Eschaton. Barebearians: Battlegrounds lets you scratch that strategic itch in under an hour.
It’s something that is much less common than you’d think: a strategy party game. The easy to understand rules and adorable art means it also is a great gateway drug for people new to the genre. The mixture of hidden choices and open roles means that there’s also a deduction element thrown in as you try to guess your opponents moves even as you plan your own. They also allow for multiple playstyles, meaning you also have to get a feel for if your neighbor is trying to become a raiding juggernaut, a hero of the Trials, or something even more powerful.If there is a downside to this game, its that it tends to snowball pretty quickly. While all players are equal in the beginning, a few successful rounds can put rival clans at a disadvantage that is very difficult to overcome.
A lot of this comes down to the Trial cards, which add an element of RNG to how rapidly you accumulate glory. As an example, one player in my test game got lucky with a few easy trial cards that let them get close to victory very early. In fact, the other players didn’t even get a chance to finish their own trials. Even as players get more and more powerful, that extra buffer of Glory means the lucky player has much less work to do to win.The other problem, albeit one I’m sure Greenbrier can easily remedy, is the rather small scope of the game. Maxing out at four players seems overly limiting considering the fun and accessible it is.
Bumping the player max up to six or more would definitely open the game up to really become something that could be great for parties.Despite a few minor issues that really don’t spoil and of the fun this game provides, this was a big surprise for me coming out of GenCon. It is very much a hidden-gem and a must have for anyone who loves strategy, deduction, and of course, bears.It gets 4 stars (or honeypots if you like) out of 5BarBearians: Battlegrounds releases this fall and will retail for $24.95.
For more information on this game and others, you can visit. And, as always, keep an eye on the Fandomentals for updates and reviews on the latest games and more from Greenbrier Games!( Big thanks to GreenBrier Games and Julie Ahern for the review material and the images used in this review).
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