How to Play Adrenaline Board Game & Review

Adrenaline is an action point allowance, arena combat game.

Title: Adrenaline

Year Published: 2016

Designer: Filip Neduk

Publisher: Czech Games Edition

Players: 3-5

Game Time: ~60 mins

Set-up Time: ~3 mins

Ages: 12+

Theme: Sci-Fi Computer Game

Mechanisms: Action Point Allowance

How to win: Score the most points by making kills and dealing damage.

Game Description

In the future, war has left the world in complete destruction and split the people into factions. The factions have decided to stop the endless war and settle their dispute in the arena. A new virtual bloodsport was created. The Adrenaline tournament. Every faction has a champion, every champion has a chance to fight and the chance to win. Will you take the chance of becoming the next champion of the Adrenaline tournament?

Set Up, Game Play & Game End

Adrenaline Round-Up

How cool does this game look? The colours are great, the red skulls glow as do the ammo cubes. The blood drop damage markers look really cool. The art and iconography have a nice aesthetic too.

I’m torn about the combat in this game.

Combat

So, I (mostly) love dice and my favourite way to do combat is always one roll to hit, one roll to damage. (Or both in one roll like Imperial Assault) This simulates the character’s skill in a fight followed by the randomness of combat. Maybe a small weapon hits a headshot or a big weapon just hits splash damage, that’s combat.

But this deterministic combat, while not close to my preference, works very well. It helps to give a game a more ‘Euro’ feel which opens this game to a wider audience. When I really think about it I don’t shoot randomly in an FPS, I shoot when I think I’ll hit.

Actions

You’re restricted in actions having just 2 per turn and some of those will include ammo pickups which give you plenty to think about seeing as you don’t reload until the END of your turn. You can pick up a new weapon if that works out to be more ammo efficient but if you’re not shooting you’re not scoring so get the balance right 🙂

The downside I, and most other people had is that the game lasts 10-20 minutes too long but that’s fine. You can play between 5-8 kills and I think 6 is about right for both myself and the people I’ve played with.

At the time of writing, there is an expansion on the way that adds team play and some other cool-sounding mechanisms. But personally, I want some official rules for tournament play as currently playing a game feels empty and I’d like kills/deaths tracked over several games so they matter more. **cough** Adrenaline Tournament **cough**

Adrenaline Rating

A fun game that, in the end, I’m glad doesn’t use dice.

I give it 7/10

Jesta ThaRogue