Reichbusters Review

 I would like to offer you a review of Reichbusters - an ambiguous game that was heavily criticized after its release.

 It's worth noting that I have decent experience in the dungeon crawler genre, and that I played version 1.1 with the errata, solo. In short, I think Reichbusters is a very good and unique game that suffers from being extremely unfriendly to newbies.

PROS

 Uniqueness.

 Surprised? You probably thought that Reichbusters is another representative of an endless variety of crawlers tied to "choose an action - roll the dice." But Reichbusters is a completely different game. It is related to competent drawing of action cards, hand management and creation of chains of devastating combinations. Your characters are true death machines, and the Nazis can only deal serious damage to you by attacking in a mob.

 The game expects you to annihilate multiple enemies per turn and encourages a playstyle accordingly. Until the alarm goes off, your goal is to make sure that at the end of your character's turn there are no Nazis left in range. Something like X-COM on the highest difficulty: you have to wipe out all the enemies without giving them a chance to fire back. In my opinion, Reichbusters is much closer to Dungeon Alliance (only with dice) than it is to traditional crawlers.

 Fan

 As soon as you break through the obstacles, the game will play with all colors and become a very beautiful self. There are almost no residents with components (before the alarm sounds). Compared to some "Blade and sorcery" Reichbusters, one might say, even minimalistic. You focus on optimizing your moves, not calculating AI, modifiers, etc.

 After the alarm sounds, the game process slows down a bit: you will have to fill and move small amounts in large quantities. However, it becomes easier with experience. Bad guys always activate in the same sequence, always move in predictable ways, and always combine their attacks into one powerful attack.

 So far, the 6 games I've played have taken less than 2 hours (not counting layouts). The shortest took 70 minutes. All six were raid missions.

 Redrawability

 Without exaggeration, Reichbusters is one of the most addictive games in my collection. Thanks to an option like RAID, you can quickly generate a mission for yourself with a variety of tiles, objectives and enemies. With so many heroes to choose from and the ability to choose starting gear and skills, each game is completely different from the last. This is one of the main advantages of Reichbusters.

 I will also write down the quality components, thematics and decent complexity as pluses.

CONS

 Unfriendliness.

 The 1.0 rulebook is just awful. The redesigned version is better, but still not great. Key mechanics (patrol level, alert level, line of sight) are explained in a very vague way, making it difficult to get into the game.

 Plus keywords. The game has "silent", "stealth" and "stealth". They all work in a similar way, but in the same way. The same goes for "accurate," "focused," and "unmissable."

 I think cramming so many keywords into a rulebook like a wargame was a mistake. This creates a big barrier for newcomers. Oddly enough, some of the items that can be mined have icons that clearly demonstrate their effect. Why couldn't the same be done with character attributes?

 Fortunately, the era has larger cards for each of the characters that list the main keywords. But they should have been included in the game from the beginning.

 Layout

 Inevitable evil, unfortunately. Primarily due to assembling a map from tiles, as in Descent. A good organizer will reduce time costs, but you will still have to spend 30-40 minutes on the layout. Assembly is fast: 5 minutes.

 It is easy to be deceived in expectations.

 This is not a simple cube thrower. There is almost no loot. When the alarm sounds, you should run, not stay and fight.

CONCLUSIONS

 I love Reichbusters. I bought the game more out of curiosity and was surprised at how long it took. The gameplay is polished and very fan-friendly, there are many successful mechanics. The regalness is off the charts, plus chic art and underpants. It's a shame that Reichbusters' reputation has been severely damaged by its lack of newbie friendliness and terrible rules.

 Rating - 9/10.