Red November Review (Fantasy Flight Games)
Well the damn holidays are done. I can put down all this family BS-time and get back into gaming again (I do love my family, but I’m glad I’m a few states away from any of them!). Around this time of year new games show up on my shelves and of course with everyone’s busy schedule getting those games to the table is sometimes a problem. Red November, a cooperative game by Fantasy Flight Games, is one of the first that hit the tables after the holidays and I’m happy to report will be hitting the table for a long time to come.
In Red November players take the role of Gnomes on a sinking submarine. Supposedly the game was originally or loosely based off the tragedy onboard the Russian Oscar II Class Submarine Kursk. I don’t know if this is true, but there are enough threads that seem to give this rumor some footing. It is also fully understandable as to why that theme may have been scrapped since all 110 seamen were all lost and a lighthearted gnome theme was chosen.
So replace vodka-lovin’ Russians with Grog-lovin’ Gnomes and here we are. The game is about surviving long enough on a submarine that has multiple system failures happening. Rooms start flooding, fires start spreading, the oxygen pumps keep going down and even more calamities happen to this ship when the proverbial “shit hits the fan”. The sub is divided into ten rooms which are connected through hatchways with rooms containing different pieces of equipment. So when the engine is about to overheat one of the gnomes will need to rush from wherever they currently are in the sub into the room (if not on fire at the time) and try to cool down the engine so it doesn’t explode taking out everyone on the ship. The game itself is very simple to play, but the real beauty of the game is the way that time is kept.
Players have one hour of game time that they need to survive before the rescue ships come to evacuate the ill-fated gnomes. Around the edge of the board are sixty rectangles with each rectangle representing one minute of game time. During a player’s action they are able to spend minutes moving around the ship, opening hatches and trying to fix the systems that are going wrong. The longer they spend on a piece of equipment, the better chance they have at fixing it. For every minute spent, the player has to roll equal to or below that for the system to be repaired. For example if you were to spend six minutes trying to cool down the engines, then you’d need to roll a six or less on a d10 to succeed. Then of course there is additional equipment that can be gained and used during the course of the game to adjust the roll to increase the chance of success.
Back to the time track though. As a gnome performs actions, time is consumed. During the course of a gnome’s actions, a marker is moved around the outside of the board (the ‘ghost’ marker) and this keeps track of how many minutes the gnome used during their turn. For example, if he moved thru 2 latches (1 minute each) and then spent 6 minutes on repairing the engine, the ghost marker would end up 8 minutes past the active gnome’s marker. At the end of the turn the gnome’s marker “catches up” to the ghost marker, but in some of the spaces a little star is printed on the board. Each time the gnome’s marker enters a space with a star a new event card is drawn. This event card could start a new fire, increase the pressure on the outside of the hull, flood a new room or have a “timed event” start as some of the obstacles thrown in the gnomes way.
A timed event is an event which the players have a certain amount of game time to fix (usually 10 mins after the activation). This could be the missiles in the silos about to explode but the gnomes have ten game minutes to fix the problem. If all the gnome markers cross that point in time, game over, the sub is lost as well as everyone onboard.
Overall the game is very simple. The timer, perhaps not fully innovative, was something fresh for me. It does create some interesting situations though where it is possible for a fire to be put out before it even starts, but if you ignore the “time is a linear thing” concept it doesn’t matter. It has no impact on gameplay outside of that moment that you realize that a fire started in the 15th minute was actually put out in the 13th minute. Overall though the timer adds a nice escalation to the damage the sub is taking and keeps the game nice and exciting.
One thing that I’ve yet to mention though is how the gnomes could turn on each other. In the standard rules a player could find what is called the “Aqualung” which is an underwater respirator and allows a gnome to be outside the sub for a short period. If a player has less than ten game minutes left and has the aqualung, they are able to abandon ship and leave the rest to their fait. If the others get rescued, then the one that bailed loses. If the sub is destroyed without saving, then those that bailed will win the game.
Overall this game packages what I’ve been lamenting about lately, which is a general lack of pure fun in games as of late. This may just be me but I feel as though game design has gotten to a point where emphasis is put on terms like “innovative” and “elegant” and “deep” and “balanced” but the word “fun” seems to get lost in the mix. Almost as though if all the other terms are achieved then the fun will follow. This is not the case with Red November. I wouldn’t call Red November any of those terms, but it more than makes up in spades with just pure juvenile fun. And after all aren’t games supposed to be juvenile fun?
Rating: 4.25 out of 5
‘Til Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT
