I honestly never thought I’d see the day. “Defense Grid: The Awakening” (the original video game by Hidden Path Entertainment released in 2008) was one of the first tower defense games I had ever played. It, and another game called “Sol Survivor”, frequented my time in between longer sessions of whatever Star Wars Flight Sim or 4X game I was playing at the time. “Defense Grid 2”, released in 2014, only improved on the formula by adding multiple AIs that gave you different abilities. Enter, “Defense Grid: The Board Game” and as mentioned previously, learning about it came to be an unexpected (but pleasant) surprise. Special thanks to Anthony Hanses from Forged by Geeks LLC for providing me with a free press copy for review purposes.
“Defense Grid: The Board Game”, a 1-4 player solo/cooperative experience, is essentially a cross between a deck-builder and a tower defense game. Prior to every mission, players will choose an AI and build a deck. Each AI has a limit for the different card types. For example, Cai can have a max of 14 attack cards, 3 special cards, and 3 support cards while Taylor can have a max of 8, 3, and 9 respectively. Some AIs only have access to certain towers to start. You can increase your deck count across these three types and access more towers/cards by upgrading your AI. Some cards are locked and become unlocked as you play through the persistent campaign.
Beating a level earns you medals that can be used to upgrade your AIs for future levels, though how many cores you protect determines whether you earn a gold, silver, or bronze…and yes, you can go back and replay previous levels with your better cards to earn a higher medal which will help you out on future missions. (In the video game, medals were awarded based on points but didn’t really affect future missions) This was my favorite part of the game…persistent upgrades. It made me want to go back and play again, just to unlock that next rank of a tower.
It’s a beautiful game, albeit a pricey one. I can partially understand why though, considering the quality work that went into this. This isn’t a casual game and there is a learning curve, so casual gamers who are put off by the price would probably find themselves a bit out of their league anyway. Fans of the video game will be pleased to know that there is indeed a raspberry tracking token, as there should be. When it comes to the theme, art, and components quality, I have nothing but praise.
It’s not without its problems, though. The bookkeeping in-between rounds is tedious and messy. Every time you complete a mission, you update EACH AI’s card and their earned/available spending points. Rather than including some kind of ledger, there’s just a box or two that you continuously have to erase and update. There was a missed opportunity here to make this process automated via a digital app. Along those lines I created an Excel spreadsheet with formulas that help mitigate the messy, busy work. It’ll also save you from having to ruin cards or print out the free ones provided online. To be fair the game does come with card sleeves you can write on, but meh…it just doesn’t solve the overlying problem.
The rulebook itself, I felt, was incomplete. Despite my experience playing hundreds of board games, I was left scratching my head at times. The rulebook tells you how to upgrade your towers and how to play cards, but doesn’t tell you which dice to roll when attacking. There’s also no components listing like I’d usually see in the opening pages of the rulebook. To the developer’s credit there are links to how to play videos, but there are close to 20 of them and some are 5-10 minutes a piece. I would have preferred one, no-nonsense, condensed video to help explain the key concepts. I monetize my videos so I have no room to complain, but I find it odd that said how to play videos are monetized…you’ve already paid for the game, why should you sit through ads to learn how to play it through official means? You wouldn’t stand for ads in a rulebook, would you?
I’ll be honest…I like the idea, but with the typos I’ve found on the cards/rulebook and the way the rules are laid out, I feel like this game hasn’t been fully hashed out yet. It’s going to appeal to a very niche audience and initially frustrate the rest, the latter of which includes myself. As a result, setup time took 2+hours. Beyond that, I’ve had to reach out to the developer to get rule clarifications on multiple items, which could have been avoided had more care been given into creating the rulebook in the first place. I included my Q&A with the developer below, should you wish to buy the game and want quick answers to some of the issues I had. The developer also provided me with a link to an on-going FAQ on Board Game Geek should you wish to check it out.
At present, “Defense Grid: The Board Game” is being sold through ForgedByGeeks for $99, though from what I’m told there are plans to bring it to Amazon in the upcoming months. If you’re willing to overlook the problems with the rulebook, do some homework, AND accept the moderate to high learning curve, then this tower defense game might be for you. I myself loved the art, theme, and quality, but the lack of QC when it came to the rules partially ruined the experience.
Final Verdict: 7/10 (Good)
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Q&A
1. Page 9 and 10 talks about playing cards to activate towers. At the top of page 10, it goes from “When rolling dice” to “After all dice have been rolled”…completely cutting out how to roll them and relevant examples. For example, how many do you roll? I assumed it was the damage value. If so, then why is the yellow upgrade the same damage as the green? I’m also assuming I roll a special die for the yellow and red upgrade, but which one, the blue movement die? There’s no component listing section in the rulebook, so I’m only guessing as to what some of these components are used for. The grey dice seem to be 50/50, so it’s possible to get very bad luck and never hit the aliens when attacking…which seems odd. I’m just surprised they don’t do some sort of base damage. Easy mode seems to cover this, but I’m not a fan of luck based attacks.
There is a silver die icon on the cards showing when to roll dice. As an example, if an Overcharge Tower Card is played, based on player Special Card rank, you roll between 1 and 3 silver dice for that activation.
If you look at the Tower Activation (Red) cards, you will see the same icon next to Level 2 and Level 3 for damage.
In the Case of the Tesla, you would deal
Level 1 = 2 Damage
Level 2 = 2 Damage + 1 Silver Die
Level 3 = 3 Damage + 1 Silver Die
You will always hit aliens as we have a fixed base damage on all towers of at least 1 point. You never miss. When attacking some armored Aliens you may not do enough damage to actually hurt them, but you always hit.
2. If I understand alien movement, all aliens from the wave move at the same time. Once the round is over and the new alien movement phase occurs, the existing aliens move in accordance to your three step order, then the next wave moves all at once starting with the left-most alien. Is that correct?
Yep this is correct.
3. Random aliens: I know what the random alien means. My question is in how one is spawned. “Look at the pool of aliens already destroyed in the wave.” – Page 12. If I do that, then there would never be a random alien spawned because the current wave had just appeared. I’m interpreting this as “look at the alien TYPES for this wave, see if they have deceased aliens available to use, and include them in the random draw deck to spawn the random alien(s).
Example, wave 7 of mission 1 has 2 random spots. That wave has a bulwark, swarmer, and walker. So, I’m thinking I have to look at the graveyard of aliens to see if there are any of those three available to be included in the random drawing. Let’s say there were no bulwarks in the graveyard, but there were swarmers and walkers available. I’d use those two cards as a random draw for the random alien(s).
If so, I’d recommend rephrasing “Look at the pool of aliens already destroyed in the wave.” – Page 12 to something like “The random aliens that spawn will be of the types in the current wave. Look at the graveyard of aliens to see if any of that type are available, and if so, include it’s card in the random drawing” or something to that effect.
It means the ones destroyed. So as an example using Mission #1, by wave 7 you will most likely have killed at least a Swarmer and a Walker. You may not have killed any Bulwarks.
In other words you expectation is correct, but we just are talking about excluding cards from the random draw for aliens that haven’t been destroyed yet. In your description, you draw from all and if there aren’t any dead, you draw again. Either way works.
We are still working on how to word this better, but I do like how you wrote it. Its really on the mark.
4. Special Locked Cards…do I shuffle the entire deck and draw two after completing a mission for the first time and pick from those OR or do I take one card of each type to form a small deck, draw two from those to avoid duplication, then add ALL of that type as available for deck building?
You shuffle the entire locked Special Deck and take 2 from it. That being said, some people prefer to just shuffle 1 of each card or just pick 1 themselves. We put in a couple variant rules to allow this and encourage people to do what they prefer. The key thing is you only get 1 per mission completed.
5. Page 8 – Build a tower. I don’t see the shot counters covered here. Do you get to load your tower with orange shot rings/tokens when it is first built? Or is that only done in the refresh phase?
When Towers are built, they are immediately loaded with shots. You can fire them right after building them.
You can even build, fire until out of shots, sell, build again, and fire some more all in the same round.
6. Page 7 – Earning Resources – Resources earned seemed simple enough…the aliens list how many you get when they die. However, on the very back of the rulebook, there’s a “Earning Build Resources” section that says +2 per alien destroyed, +1 per armor point on alien destroyed, and +1 per card discarded. Page 7 didn’t mention anything about armor. Which is it? The card or the back of the rulebook? Or does the math always work out either way? If that’s the case, why confuse the reader with a breakdown without context when you can simply tell them to look at the alien card to determine resources earned?
The resources on the cards line up with the math on the back and on the resource tracking sheet.
So as an example, if you look at the Decoy Alien Card, you will see it gives 4 resources. It also has 2 Armor. So 2 base resources + 2 Armor = 4 earned resources.
In hindsight, we shouldn’t have included the math formula for the Aliens resources earned as it has confused a few people.