FUSE is a Real-Time, Pattern Building game.
Title: FUSE
Year Published: 2015
Designer: Kane Klenko
Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Players: 1-5
Game Time: 10 Minutes
Set-up Time: ~1 Minute
Ages: 10+
Theme: Sci-Fi
Mechanic: Co-op, Real-Time, Pattern Building
How to win: Defuse all the bombs.
Game Description
Intruders have made their way onto your ship, and their goal is total destruction! More than twenty bombs have been detected on board, and the countdown has begun. Your elite Bomb Defusal Team (BDT) has been called upon to neutralise the threat. Does your team have what it takes to work through the intricacies of the bombs and defuse them all in time?
FUSE Set-Up
For setup, separate the Bombs and Fuse cards. (Remove the cards with 2 double stacks and 3 large pyramids for your first games)
Shuffle the remaining bomb cards and deal 2 to each player, place them face up. A player can’t have 2 cards that are both worth 3 or 4 points so if they have one the next card they have should be a 1 or 2 point card… Deal these out as you wish.
Make a bomb deck of 19-23 cards depending on the player count from one to five players for Standard difficulty, just add 2 bombs per difficulty level after that.
Put 5 of these bombs in a line from the deck then shuffle 6 random Fuse card into the Bomb deck and put the 25 dice in the bag.
Game Play
To start the game, start the timer… yes, the timer, you have 10 minutes to defuse all the bombs. You can use any timer, but there is a free app which is really cool. (Search the app store for ‘Fuse Renegade’)
The start player takes a number of dice out the bag equal to the number of players and rolls them. Be careful and don’t rush because if you draw too many dice, they ALL must be put in bag and you have to draw again. You’re defusing bombs here, less haste more speed.
Each player can take at most 1 die and work out how best to use it. Dice must be added to a correct space on a bomb card., if a die is placed incorrectly on a bomb, all dice on that bomb are returned to the bag. Again, you can’t make mistakes when defusing a bomb!
Re-roll any dice that players did not take. Then each player will put one die for each of that number or colour from a bomb they have back in the bag if able. Any dice under the other dice in a stack does not need to be returned.
Symbols
You can place dice in any order unless it involves stacking upwards. Let’s look at the different types of symbols and how to play them.
# – The Number matters here and the player will choose the number is chosen by the player
Colour Wheel – Colour matters and the colour is chosen by the player (White spaces mean any colour)
Split Line gives you a choice
? – Any die can be placed regardless of colour or number
That’s the basics of dice placement, now to the more complex ones…
Stacks, Boxes with an Arrow – Stack these in the order shown, if the stack falls over at any point, return all of the dice to the bag. The ? allows you to lace any die regardless of colour or number.
Stack Pyramids upwards, but build the bottom row first before the next row.
Bomb Defusal
When all dice are on a bomb correctly you have defused the bomb, yes!
Put all dice from the card into the bag, Put the bomb card aside (for scoring) and pick a new one from the middle. Reveal a new bomb card from the stack into the middle of the table… oh no, a Fuse card!
If a Fuse card is revealed, players return to the bag a die of that colour or number and a new card is drawn… This continues until there are 5 bombs again.
Once the dice have all been taken, bombs disarmed and replaced and Fuse cards have been activated, pass the bag to the left and repeat as quickly as possible.
FUSE Game End
If the last card is taken from the middle of the table and the deck is empty you win! (You don’t finish the remaining bombs that the players have in front of them)
If time runs out you lose.
Win or lose, you still score…
You get 10 points if you won the game and 1 point per 10 seconds left on the clock if you did.
You score points on successfully defused bomb cards and you get 2 points for each Fuse card you triggered.
The app can handle scoring, and save high scores too!
Round-Up
This is really great. They make this game where speed is key, but as you’re dismantling bombs the game punishes you for making mistakes.
There’s not really much else to say. If you read this you probably already know if it’s for you, but it’s definitely for me!
FUSE Rating
Fun, Frantic, Simple, Quick, Challenging.
I give it 7/10
FUSE First Impressions January 2015
A real timed co-op dice game…
Who could reFUSE that?
The app saves high scores which I’m always a fan of.
This was fun and frantic and we were close to winning but we spent a bit of time working out some symbols on the card.
It’s like a co-op Blueprints against the clock.
I’m looking forward to playing it more, getting the symbols and card requirements down, ramping up the difficulty and beating that first score 🙂
Jesta ThaRogue