Mid week I got a pleasant, but big surprise, when my Kickstarter copy of Sabotage arrived.

I really was taken aback when the delivery driver handed over the package. It was massive. I had not been expecting a game this big.

When I opened the box and looked inside you can’t help but be bowled over by the high production values of this game. The 20 cardboard tokens are really thick, chunky things. Probably twice as thick as ones I’ve seen in other games. Which translates to a satisfying feel when holding them. The inclusion of two game trays, the really cool minis. I think the only company that equals this sort of quality is Stonemaier Games. These two companies are setting such a high bar for others to match.

Although there is a minor blemish on the Sabotage production, there is a misprint on a character card, and text missed off the spies player boards. Plus some boxes don’t fold out fully when used. But stickers are being sent out to correct this. Along with a video showing how to correct the box issue.

It took me a couple of days to get my head round the rules. Which involved a few readings of the thin rule book, looking at the official FAQ, watching YouTube videos, and reading the odd bgg forum post. So I think it would be fair to say that the rule book isn’t the best. Although the little first turn booklet is a nice touch.

Once I was happy with how the rules worked in my own head I felt confident enough to ask Jonathan if he fancied a learning game of Sabotage.

Friday evening then was spent at The Luxe with a bunch of heroic spies attempting to foil the evil plans of a gang of ruthless villains by trying to infiltrate the villains lair and destroy their doomsday devices.

Jonathan played the villains, whilst I played the spies.

The game trays make set up so quick and easy. You just hand the players the relevant tray and they have everything they need.

Boy does this game have table presence. With the box between the players acting as a screen this takes up a lot of space.

This game is either a 1v1 game where both players play 2 characters each. Or it’s a 2 player co-op once the app is out, or finally it’s a 2v2 game. Although the 1v1 option isn’t explicitly mentioned in the rules, and is an assumption I made that made sense.

The main mechanics of this game are a battleships/hide and seek/hidden movement type thing, and programmed actions. Which combine really nicely.

The round structure is simple, roll dice, plan actions, take actions, clean up. Which is nice. And it flows really quickly.

Both sides are asynchronous. The villains earn extra dice to use for actions in a different manor to the heroes, and they gain more powerful action tiles differently too. What I like is that both sides have a way to mess with the other player and get rid of those extra dice the other side are using.

Each character feels unique, having a core set of action tiles, but then unique more powerful ones to obtain.

I like that when you take actions you are giving out partial information. Some actions don’t get announced, just performed. Whilst others you announce the action name and that’s it. The other player then has to guess what you did for that action. Take for instance the spies move and scan action. The spies don’t declare the move part, but they do the scan. The area you scan, either a quad, row or column gives the villains a clue to where the spy is. But the problem is a scan action may not be just with the move. There is an action that just scans, and can be any where on the board. So it could be misdirection also.

So you are getting this incomplete information all the time. That you are trying to base decisions on. I like that.

In away Sabotage reminds me a bit of Spectre Ops, but with both sides hidden!

I liked the game, it’s fun. Would like to try it with the app, and 2v2. But it worked as a 1v1.

Luckily for the world the spies narrowly managed to disable to doomsday devices and save the day. Which means I won.

Oh the title of this post, it’s the first line of the song Sabotage by the Beastie Boys. Predictable I know but it had to be done.