Boblin’s Rebellion

How hard is it to train a horde of goblins, take over rooms, and eventually retake the dungeons from the goblin king? Well, it’s actually pretty hard when those same goblins keep breaking things.

Boblin’s Rebellion is an engine builder for 1-4 players, age 8+. It is designed by Alexandros Kapidakis and is published by Phase Shift Games.

Setup

Place the three Dungeon decks (Mineshaft, Ice Caves, Inferno) in the middle of the table, and lay out three cards face-up to the right of each deck. Then create a supply of the small Goblin cubes. The rules recommend that you do not use the Trolls or the Hero’s Help deck when first learning the game.

Each player takes a player board (Troll side down for your first game) and takes one Goblin cube to serve as a score tracker, placing it on the ‘0’ space at the bottom of the player board.

Determine who the first player is, and they take one Goblin cube and place it on the Stickler section of the board. The second player takes two, and so on.

Gameplay

Players take two actions on each turn. Players can use two different actions or take the same action twice on their turn.

• Recruit three Sticklers or two Screamers to their player board.
• Scout from a Dungeon deck: Take the top three facedown cards from one Dungeon deck, choose one to pay its cost and play it, and return the other two cards to the bottom of the deck.
• Conquer a face-up Dungeon card. Pay the cost shown in the top left corner of any available room and add it to your collection.
• Exploit a Dungeon card you own for its ability.

When players Conquer a Dungeon card, they pay its cost, then place the Dungeon card next to their player board and place a Goblin cube on the first spot at the bottom of the card. Each time the player Exploits that Dungeon (or its passive ability is triggered), the player moves the cube on the track. Once the cube reaches the end of the track, the Dungeon card is destroyed, and the player gains the pictured bonus. If you’re playing without the Hero’s Help module, just set the cards to the side.

But what does Exploiting these Dungeon cards do? They can convert your untrained Sticklers and Screamers into trained Goblins, like Stalkers, Stabbers, Sparklers, and Slingers. You can use those trained Goblins for even bigger conversions or earn Fame points.

Play continues until one player reaches 27 Fame points.

The Room Where It Happens

Each deck of Dungeons does different things. The brown Mineshaft cards help you gain trained Goblins. The blue Ice Caves tend to give passive abilities that grant bonuses either on your turn or your opponents’ turns. And the red Inferno cards are primarily where you gain your Fame and fight the evil Goblin king.

Heroes? Trolls?

Ready to ramp up the complexity?

The Hero’s Help deck adds a Befriend action. Claim a face-up Hero card by paying its cost in destroyed Dungeon cards.

Heroes make the game easier. You’re already destroying Dungeon cards when using them. Now, you can spend those destroyed Dungeon cards to gain Heroes who grant you permanent bonuses.

And the Terrible Trolls module makes the game tougher. As you advance up your Fame track, there will be spots marked with the Troll’s face. When you hit that mark, you need to add a Troll cube to one of the marked spots on your player board.

That can limit the number of a type (or two) of Goblin you can have on your player board. It can make Dungeon cards more expensive. Or it can prevent you from gaining the bonus when you destroy a Dungeon card. You can remove these Trolls from your board by spending a trained Goblin, and you get a Fame boost when you do that. But that means one fewer Goblin powering your engine.

Solo Mode

Boblin’s Rebellion also has a solo mode that plays almost exactly like the regular game mode.

You remove three cards from each Dungeon deck, the right-most Dungeon card from each row is removed after every turn, and all passive bonuses count for what you do. The game ends when you hit 27 Fame or when any deck runs out.

Impressions

First things first: The Goblin cubes are absolutely fantastic. The art is great, and they’re wood. I love the look of these components. The same goes for the larger Troll cubes.

But Boblin’s Rebellion is more than just cute goblins (which you’ll find on the back of the Dungeon cards, resplendent in all of their cute cube-ness). It’s a good engine builder with a unique twist: Your engine is constantly falling apart.

And that’s actually pretty thematic. Could you imagine an engine designed by goblins? It would probably do things, but it’s going to be rickety, making a lot of noise, and held together by duct tape.

And that’s how the engine you are building in Boblin’s Rebellion looks. You’re working hard to gain Fame points while patching your engine together. Sometimes that’s just replacing one Dungeon card with another. But sometimes, you’re completely changing course.

It’s that strategic depth hidden under brightly-colored Dungeon cards and green Goblin cubes that makes this game good.

There aren’t any take-that elements to Boblin’s Rebellion. But there are many cards that have passive bonuses based on other player’s actions. This can keep everyone engaged, even when it’s not their turn.

It can be a bit much for younger kids. The Goblin cubes are cute, but it’s incredibly easy to bump them and screw up your player board. And even with just the base game, there are a lot of things to remember and resources to balance. That may not be easily managed or enjoyed by many in the under-10 age groups.

Each module adds something more to consider, which is why the rules recommend not using them the first time. However, the adaptability of the different modes can allow you to adjust the complexity to the level that works for you.

And despite the great art, you spend a lot of time not looking at it. The fronts of the cards are very sparse, making space for all the needed iconography.  The backs of the cards are much more interesting, but there is only one consistent back for each of the original room types. The only card type with more variety is the heroes, with a fun level of creativity that I’d love to see more.

Final Thoughts

Boblin’s Rebellion is a surprisingly deep game for the small box and cute art. It takes up a surprising amount of table space for being in such a small box, especially when you start building out your Dungeon with multiple rooms. But it plays pretty quickly and is a fun way to stretch your brain.

Buy it directly from Phase Shift Games, or through Amazon, or ask for it at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Boblin’s Rebellion from Phase Shift Games for this review.

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