Another great Back to the Future game where we will work as a team to try and make sure we are ready to go back to the future. Just like the first film we need to make Marty's parents fall in love and collect pieces for the DeLorean and move it into position. It is a fun co-op game that is a difficult because time is short and there is a lot for us to do! Let us look at the basic information for the game;
Players: 2 - 4
Age: 10+
Time: 50 minutes
What is in the box?
The other Back to the Future game I reviewed the other day gave us one cool opening, this one is cool but not on the same level, although the rulebook for this game is awesome!
So what do we get with this fine game?
1 Game board
1 Clock dice tower (can be used to roll dice)
1 Turn tracker 4 Character mats
1 Love meter 2 Tracker cubes 6 McFly photo sections
3 Knockdown tokens
18 Trouble cards (3 different levels)
61 Game cards 7 Character movers
1 DeLorean mover
3 DeLorean part tiles 8 Dice 44 Power tiles 1 Rulebook
Also a lot of fun!
I do like the game pieces with this game and the DeLorean piece is well cool, however the gangster lean on some of the pieces is a little annoying! Not sure why when they make some pieces they end up with an awful lean!
Setting up the game
Not a difficult game to set up, there is a lot of steps though but it does not take a long time at all.
1: Like any game put the game board in the middle of the table.
2: Each player needs to pick their starting character, take the game mat for that character, the 5 starting tokens (character power tokens) and take the matching character and place them in the town square.
3: Mix up the rest of the power tokens (remove all the other character power tokens before this) and place them in a face down stack.
4: Place George and Lorraine at their houses and place Biff at the clock tower.
5: Put the DeLorean mover on the start space of the DeLorean track marks on the game board.
6: Put the 3 DeLorean tiles in their starting locations, the location is noted on the tile.
7: Put the love meter above the board, place the love meter tracker token on 0 and put all 6 pieces of the McFly photo face up (side with the family on).
8: Place the turn tracker above the board also, make sure you select the correct side for the number of players. Place the turn tracker token above the tracker ready for the first turn.
9: Shuffle the movement cards and place them in a face down draw pile.
10: Place the item cards down in a pile, these do not need to be shuffled.
11: Shuffle the opportunity cards and then place them face down, draw the top 3 cards and place them on the locations marked on the card.
12: Separate the trouble cards into the 3 levels and then shuffle each level separately and place them down in 3 piles.
13: Place the dice and 3 knockdown tokens near the board.
14: Assemble the clock dice tower and place it on the clock tower location on the board. There we go we have set the game up and we are ready now to play!
How to win?
The game ends when the turn tracker token enters the 10:04 square, you need to make sure that the DeLorean is in one of the three positions on the board (these are fully coloured unlike the greyed out other positions) and the love tracker token is in one of the three heart zones! If you reach the end point and one or both of these conditions are not met then you lose! Also at any point in the game if all 6 of the McFly family photos are flipped over and the family is no longer visible at all it is GAME OVER! Managing the love in this game is a very crucial element and one that should never be over looked!
How to play the game
Pick a player to start the game, they will then move the turn tracker on to the turn board at the correct starting position for the number of players. When it is the next players turn they will move the tracker token one space to the right and so on till we reach the 10:04 space and the game ends. On each turn tracker space you will symbols under the space starting with the top one you work through them one by one.
The symbols are;
Draw a trouble card (it will also show which level to draw 1, 2 or 3).
Draw a movement card.
Check the love meter.
These are the 3 actions, some space will only have 1 some will have 2 and then to make it harder some have a x2 symbol which means you perform each action twice! Harsh......
Let us look at these actions here so you know what to expect, one key element to this game is knowing what is coming, always pay attention to what is on the tracker and plan ahead!
Draw a trouble card = If you have this symbol you need to draw a trouble card from the level shown. Once drawn you need to action the card and place it in the correct location on the board. Trouble cards tend to have a lasting effect on the board and they effect the entire game board not just the location they are in, these need to be resolved quickly. There can never be more then 1 trouble card on the board, if you get told to draw another you need to remove the first one and place the new card.
Draw a movement card = If you have this symbol you draw the top movement card and action its movements, it will tell you to move characters and how far to move them. These characters are always non playable characters. Always move them in the order they are shown on the card! If it shows the x2 symbol you need to do two cards one after the other not at the same time. George and Lorraine are pretty easy to move as it always tells you what to do with them.
Now Biff is a t**t and he moves differently to these! Any card that says Biff: will have a number of face symbols next to it, this is how many spaces you need to move Biff.
In any movement phase you can not move diagonally! Only up, down, left or right! This is important and only characters can move to the town square never non playable characters.
When moving Biff he always moves towards the closest non playable character, if it is a tie he will always move towards Lorraine and not George.
If Biff as multiple movements and he moves into a square with either George or Lorraine any remaining Biff face symbols reduces the love meter down by 1! This is bad, you need to try and keep him away from George and Lorraine. What also is a major bummer is the fact these symbols are also on dices so when rolling dice and you end up with his stupid face he will move or if he is an square with them he lowers the love meter. I can not stress how important it is to keep Biff at a good distance away from them!
Check love meter = If the love meter tracker token is in the spaces marked -1 to -4 you need to flip over any two pieces of the photo to the blank side. If the marker is in the spaces marked 0 to 12 you only need to flip over 1 and if you are in the 3 spaces marked with a love heart you do not flip over any! If it shows the x2 symbol you need to repeat this twice, now if you were in the -1 to -4 section and got the x2 you would flip over 4 pieces of the photo. At any point if the last piece was flipped it is game over and you all lose.
That covers the turn tracker and now we need to look at the action phase, this is where we will perform most of our actions in the game and use our special abilities and of course use our power tiles.
On each character mat is a special ability this can be used only once per turn, they are very handy and you should always try to use them on your turn, each character does have a different ability to read them before picking your character and make sure you use them. They do not need a power tile and can be used at any point on your turn. The 4 main actions you can take are;
Move
Attempt a challenge Modify dice rolls Use item cards
Let us talk about them now, this way we can understand what we need to do on each turn.
Move = You can not just move in this game, you need to use one of your power tiles which allows you to move a certain number of spaces, each tile will tell you how much spaces it will allow you to move up to. Most are 3 you can move up to 3 spaces. Remember movement can never be diagonally and if you stop to perform a different action the movement ends there you carry over any unspent movement.
When you use the movement on a power tile you need to slip that tile over and the other action on that tile cannot be used this turn. Pick the correct tiles to spend for movement! Never use a tile that you will need later in this turn. When you move you can also escort George or Lorraine with you, but never both of them at the same time. You need George and Lorraine in the same location to perform a love challenge and keep them away from Biff. If you are with George for example and want to move three spaces you can move him with you up t 3 spaces, this means you could move him 2 spaces and drop him off and then move 1 space on your own.
Attempt a challenge = In this game there are several different challenges we will need to perform in order to complete the game. In this section we will talk about each challenge and what we need to do for them. But before we do that let us talk about the dice in the game as we need to use them for challenges!
Dice = In the game we have 4 dice colours (blue, green, pink and yellow) and each dice is geared towards a certain challenge, now all the dice have a certain few symbols that are the same which are;
Lightning = These are wild card symbols and can be used as any symbol you wish. Biff = These are the dreaded biff symbol, these have the same effect as the movement cards.
Okay, now each coloured dice as a unique symbol with either 1 or 2 symboles on the side, any with 2 count as double and these are;
Blue dice star symbol = This is the courage symbol.
Green dice flux capacitor symbol = This is the knowledge symbol.
Pink dice love heart symbol = This is the love symbol.
Yellow dice arrow symbol = This is the speed symbol. Each challenge you attempt will show you the symbol they need and you need to match the dice to the symbol for a greater chance of success, you can also use other dice and hope that you get the lighting symbol of course.
Now we have talked about the dice and what they mean we need to quickly mention how you roll for a challenge, what steps you need to take and so on. These steps need to be performed in order when rolling;
1) Pick the power tile with the matching dice you wish to use, flip over the power tile and collect the dice, repeat this for each dice you want to roll, note that you can never roll more than 2 dice of the same colour at once! 2) You then roll the dice you collected for this attempt.
3) Move any dice with the Biff face symbol to the side.
4) Move any symbols you with to keep aside.
5) Re-roll any other symbols you rolled that you want to try again (not the Biff face ones they are locked at the moment).
6) Keep the final results.
7) Use a power token to re-roll any Biff face symbols if you have one, these results after are final.
8) Use any power tiles to modify the dice rolls.
8) Apply the results. If you use any power tiles to re-roll Biff faces or modify results then you need to exhaust them and flip them over.
So we have rolled the dice, we apply the non-Biff face results first (see the next section on the challenges) and then we apply the Biff face results.
One thing to note is that if Biff is knocked down the Biff face results are a little different but that is covered in a later section.
Now we need to really talk about the challenges in the game and what we need to do for each one!
Love = One of the key elements of this game is to make sure that George and Lorraine are in love by the end of the game. To do this we need to perform ove challenges to move the tracker forward. First of all you must be in the same space as George and Lorraine and Biff can not be there.
You then use the method above to select the dice to use, pink ideally and for each love heart or lightning symbol you roll move the love meter forward 1 space, this means if you got 2 love heart symbols and a lightening it would move forward 3 spaces. Any Biff results would move Biff closer to the non playable characters, possibly lower the love meter and see the knockdown section for these rules.
Move the DeLorean = Another key element is that we need to move the DeLorean into position before the end of the game. Now we can move the DeLorean up to Doc's house however if we do not have all the three parts collected it must stay there until we do, once we do have all the parts it can move past Doc's house to the end point, this is very important! So ideally try to collect these quickly in the game.
You must be in the space space as the DeLorean.
Then like before select the dice you wish to use, ideally the yellow dice. For each speed or lightning symbol you roll you move the DeLorean 1 marker forward, this is not a space on the board but the marker locations, to get the DeLorean from the start point to the Doc's house you would need 10 speed symbols! You can move the DeLorean out of the space you are in, but to move it again you would need to move to the next space and then try again. Just like before any Biff face symbols need to be resolved also.
Fight Biff = Biff is a t**t we all know it, one way to keep him under control is to fight him, when we fight Biff we can knock him down and take him out of action for a while. The best bit about this is that any Biff face symbols now stop him moving but instead go towards getting him back on his feet! First of all you must be in the same location as Biff of course.
Next select the dice you wish to use and of course go for the blue dice is possible, for every courage and lightning symbol we roll we knock Biff down and then place knockdown token on him.
This can be tricky to explain but here goes, we roll 2 blue dice, a pink dice and green dice, we get 3 courage symbols, 1 lightning and 1 biff face. This means we knock Biff down, place all 3 knockdown tokens on him (can never be more then 3) and then we remove 1 token for the Biff face symbol. Biff can never be attacked while he is down, we are not monsters here! From this point on any Biff face symbols are used to remove the knockdown tokens and when there are no more tokens the Biff symbol is then used to put him back on his feet and then after that they go back to moving him and lowering the love meter. Knocking Biff down and moving George and Lorraine are vital to this game.
DeLorean parts = Scattered around the map are the parts for the DeLorean we need! To collect these we must move to that space and attempt a challenge on them.
Firstly make sure you are in the right location.
Select the dice we will use and we need to roll the same number of knowledge symbols shown on the tile (lightning of course count). The parts will need either 1, 2 or 3 knowledge symbols to collect them.
If you roll the amount needed move the part to Doc's house, you will need to do this for all three parts to make sure you can move the DeLorean into position for the end of the game.
Like any other dice roll you need to apply Biff faces also, boo.
Opportunity = These cards are a great way to boost your characters and help the game, these cards will tell you the location, who needs to be at that location and the symbols needed to roll to beat the card.
First of all move to the location and make sure the correct requirement character is there.
Check the symbols needed to complete the challenge.
Select the dice you wish to roll and see if you match the symbols (lightning count as any symbol remember this).
If you fail then nothing happens apart from you apply any Biff face results, if you pass you then need to perform the reward on the card. This will always give you a new power token which you draw and place exhausted on your player mat. If you are full you can replace any tile you wish with the new one or discard it. You may also get an item cards, if so collect the item and place it near your player mat grey side showing as it can not be used this turn, you can use this when you need to. Of course make sure you action the Biff face symbols and then discard the card and draw a new opportunity card and place it on the game board, there will always be 3 opportunity cards on the board. We forgot about this when we played it and the game was hard! Trouble cards = Just like the above really, nothing is different from this and a opportunity card, roll to match the symbols, complete, collect rewards, apply Biff results and then discard but DO NOT draw another trouble card.
Item cards: You can use these once per turn once used perform the action then flip it over. There is no limit to how many items cards you can have.
Once you have finished your turn you need to pass the player marker to the next player, you then flip all your exhausted power tiles and items back over and wait. It is very important that you try to use all your items and power tiles on your turn, at the end of the turn they will all flip back over so there is no point in trying to save them. There is one more thing we can do on another players turn and that is assist them, if you are on the same space as another player you can flip over your item cards or power tiles to help them. If you flip over a power tile to roll dice you roll the dice and not them. However if you use a power tile it does not refresh for the start of your next turn it is used. Sometimes you need to do this to help boost a love challenge before a check love is coming on the turn tracker to make sure you are safe for example. That is everything you need to do to play the game, there is not a great deal to the game but it really is a thinker at times, planning your moves as a team is key, talking about what needs to be done before the next players turn is also key. Not to mention keeping Biff away from George and Lorraine, there is a lot of board management with this game.
Final Thoughts!
If you were one of the 5 people who read my last blog you would know that I am a big Back to the Future fan and that does sway me a little when I play these games. I have to say I love the graphic style of this game and the pieces that came with it not to mention the dice clock tower it was a great little touch. The game plays well and it is a bit of a thinker and controlling the board is the key to winning this game. The first game we played we got destroyed! We did not concentrate on the love meter and before we knew it we were out of the game! The rules are easy to follow and once you have played a turn or two you really start to understand the game and see where it is going. It was fun and difficult at the same time. There are different strategies you can use coming into the game. There was not much about the game that I disliked, apart from how annoying Biff is in the game and how often I seemed to roll his stupid face. Overall it is a great little co-op game and a must play for any Back to the Future fans like me.
8/10
