Review: The Grizzled

When reviewing a game, the discussion of quality often skews heavily in the favour of describing the level of fun related to playing the game. That seems inappropriate with The Grizzled as it is a game that rather overtly highlights the horrors of war and the effect it has on the people involved. The packaging clearly states that the game is “not for people under the age of 14” and that guideline comes from the theme of the game rather than the complexity of any gameplay systems. Just because the game is not “fun” does not mean that it is not good – The Grizzled is a high quality, quick to play cooperative game with a strong theme and great artwork. I may not be able to recommend that you will have fun playing the game but I can say you will appreciate it from a game-play perspective – while also possibly coming away from it with a feeling that you have been better educated on how tough it was for a group of friends in the French military to support each other through the arduous trials of the trench warfare of WWI.

Players are tasked with cooperatively coordinating the laying of cards from their hand into the middle of the table (representing No Man’s Land – the deadly area between the entrenched forces of Axis and Allies troops). In each round players are looking to play as many cards as possible but each card represents a threat or hard knock. Hard knocks represent a negative personality trait that has befallen our soldiers due to their exposure to warfare. Threats are represented as symbols (a whistle, mortar shell or a gas mark) and background weather/conditions (such as rain, snow or nighttime.) If any of the same threats appear three times than the mission is a failure and cards are reshuffled back into the threat deck, further pushing away the possibility of reaching peace.

The threat deck is stacked on top of the peace card that you are all desperately trying to make it to. Each round you add more cards to the threat deck equal to the total number of cards collectively in all player’s hands. At the start of each round, the mission leader decides the level of intensity of each mission by designating the number of cards each player will pick up. In the first round this intensity is set to three, meaning three cards must be picked up by each player. In subsequent rounds you will want the mission leader to always make sure to pick an intensity higher than the number of cards that have just been added to the threat deck – but caution must be employed to try to not overload any of the players – and we generally found that an intensity of two was advisable.

Each character has one type of threat (for example all gas masks) that he can remove from No Man’s Land by using his special power – but this power needs to be recharged after one use. After a player has taken their turn as the team leader they are awarded a motivational speech, which can later be used to rid everyone’s hands of one type of threat too. Well timed uses of speeches and special powers are likely to be the difference between winning and losing the game.

Hard knocks need to be even more carefully managed as they have a persistent effect on all subsequent rounds as long as they are still in play and if any one player is burdened with four hard knock symbols at once, then the team loses the overall game. Fortunately you also have a method to remove hard knocks. Each player starts the game with three support tokens, one of which is played whenever a player withdraws from a round. You start with one token that can be passed to the player on your left, one token that can be passed to a player on your right and another random token which might be left, right or a token to be passed to a player sat two places away from you. At the end of each round the player who has been passed the most support tokens choses to either remove up to two hard knocks or reset their special power. If two players end up with the same amount of support tokens then no one gets the bonus

It is the support tokens and similar elements where I found some minor difficulties in the way the game is supposed to be played. The information regarding who is passing tokens to whom is supposed to be done in secret – as is other factors such as which threat to remove from player’s hands. It is likely more of an issue for people in a similar position to me (i.e. teaching the game to a variety of groups) but it is difficult to know exactly where to draw the line between the discussion of what should be done and what can be done within the confines of the mechanics of the game. There were lots of discussions that were along the lines of; “Well, what do you want me to do?” and “You are not supposed to tell me that!” It does make the game a bit too easy if these factors are openly discussed but I do not think the game was deliberately designed to include an (albeit thematically appropriate) grey area minefield!

The game was designed by Fabien Riffaud and Juan Rodriguez but the message that friendship can conquer conflict becomes even more poignant when you realise that the artist, Tignous, was killed during the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. As sad as that may be it somehow seems appropriate that he handed in the last piece of artwork just a week before the attack. The artwork has an appealing charm to it, while still having an element of gritty melancholy with a respectful reverence for the war and those involved. It is almost unreservedly French in style and seems all the more appropriate as a result.