The copy of Downfall used for this review was provided by Tasty Minstrel Games . Where's the score? The tiles are quite large, and a different mix is used based on player count. Even though each tile is sizable some of them can be split into as many as 3 separate spaces, which can lead to some component crowding.

Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich Preview 3 — The Soviet Offensive Continues, by Bob Heinzmann and John Butterfield You like games with randomized setup, but don't mind that the randomization can also lead to imbalance. A closer look at the setup of the Yellow player in one game. Each player starts with 5 survivors, a bunker, and 3 gathered food. Each player then chooses a mix of 4 outposts and airships.As a whole Downfall is a pretty simple game. The rules take minutes to read and about the same amount of time to explain to new players. The game has a recommended age of 7+. I think children under the age of seven could play the game as they shouldn’t have any trouble understanding the rules. I think the age of 7+ is due to younger children not understanding the strategy behind the game. I mentioned semi-simultaneous turns because, even though the rulebook says you can do most actions simultaneously, in practice that only works for a few of the actions. Any action that requires a player to move to new tiles or, more importantly, discover hidden tiles can't really be performed unless all players are paying attention because it's important for all players to see what has been discovered as resources are so scarce, and doubly important once players start to expand their territory and bump into the territory of other players. Downfall is a two-player game for players aged 7 and older, first marketed by the Milton Bradley Company in 1970.

On top of contending with the omnipresent radiation, players have to find enough food to feed their survivors, and stone, oil, and metal to fight the radiation, build shelters and units, and research new technologies. Resources can be hard to come by, and it can be difficult to feed all of your people (and it gets progressively harder as the game moves forward) so the game really feels like a struggle for survival in a deadly world, even when you don't take the other players into account. The game falls into two halves: before and after the eruption of Vesuvius. Before the eruption, players play cards to place their pieces in buildings. After the first eruption, they can also place as many relatives as the number of pieces already in the building they placed their piece in. When Omen cards are drawn, the player can take any opponent’s piece and throw it into the erupting volcano. In this manner, players try to get as many pieces onto the board as close to the exits from the city as possible. Downfall is what I would call a casual game. You can put some thought into the game but it isn’t a brain burner. It is probably best when you just play it and see who ends up winning the game. I had some fun with the game and it would be something I would play occasionally if someone else wanted to play the game. Downfall does have some problems though.Find sources: "Downfall"game– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( March 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Thematically this game is an absolute winner. So if you are a fan of post-apocalyptic dread, you don't mind the likelihood that the board won't offer perfect balance to each player, and you like 4X games but don't often have 4+ hours to spend playing them then Downfall just might be your irradiated cup of tea. I really don’t think anyone will want to play the game frequently enough to memorize the other side of the gameboard and I don’t know why you would want to. If you have memorized the other side of the gameboard, I don’t think the game would be that fun anymore. Most of the fun comes from not exactly knowing what is happening on the other side of the gameboard. It is somewhat exciting to turn a wheel not knowing whether you will end up dropping one of your opponent’s discs helping them out. It is also interesting watching the other player/team’s turn to see if they are going to help you out. Downfall: Conquest of the Third Reich Preview 4 — Action Rounds Continue, by Bob Heinzmann and John Butterfield