Orc Review

This review of Orc is possible thanks to the review copy Chris Handy made available to us. Orc and the rest of the Pack O Games games are now available on Kickstarter (ending April 3rd). Check out our overview article for our thoughts on the rest of the Pack O Games series.

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“Hey Boss! Why we out ‘ere? Aren’t da Greenies invading back home?”

“Don’t worry lads. Da Big Boss made an agreement with da yellas. They’re takin’ da fight to those pussy greens.”

“But Boss… aren’t we invadin’ da yella lands now?”

“No! We aren’t invadin’, we’re… liberatin! From those white aggressors across da valley. Now grab yer spears, looks like battle is on!”

 

Orc is a game of war, a series of battles with you as the Machiavellian overlord directing countless (well, several) orcs into the slaughter. Orcs from six orc tribes, tribes you and your opponent have turned upon each other, brother against brother over the lands they once called home… wow I’m really making this dark aren’t I?

Let’s try this again. Orc is a game of war, but it is not a war game. Rather, this is more akin to a bidding game, in which you commit troops from the different coloured sets (the orc tribes) to each of the 6 battlefields arrayed across the table between you. Commit more troops to a battle and you’ll win it. Surprising, no? Yet behind that simple sentence lies a stunning depth of strategy and tactics!

The key stems from the multiple uses to which each card can be put. Naturally, each card can be committed to a battle, but once a colour is chosen you must continue to use that colour for the duration of the battle. Surely then, you would chose to use the colour you hold most of in your hand? Nope! Because you will only score points for the orcs you’ve held on to at the end of the game, and only if you hold their territory! By holding them back from the fight you commit yourself to winning the battle for their territory… yet you do so with a colour you are weaker in. Every turn becomes an agonising decision, pitting risk against reward – how many orcs can you hold back?

Tying into this neatly is how you gain new cards. Each of the cards has a one orc and a two orc side, if you commit two orcs to the fight you’ll draw a new card to replace it but if you only send one orc into the battle you’ll get to draw two cards, once again encouraging you to make suboptimal moves in order to gain a later advantage. But then it get’s even more interesting since there are draw piles placed next to each of the battles and only once the draw pile is exhausted is the adjacent battle resolved. The end of each battle is therefore player controlled, and trying to snatch opportunities to end battles early, while making sure you don’t cede too much ground to your opponent, is one of the game’s big challenges.

Then on top of this the game has actually managed to make a draw interesting! If any battle ends in a tie, it will be broken by the battle adjacent to it, in the direction of the box (that you place next to the line of battles at the start of the game). Every battle therefore has a dependence on the other battles in the line, adding yet another layer of decisions to think about. Can you just draw this fight because you are in a good position to win its neighbour? Can you race to an early win, giving you a lynchpin around which you can focus your strategy to try and snowball through battles? It’s just fantastic, and that’s drawing a fight.

Let’s just hold on for a second to take in all these decisions. You have to choose a card to play, yet you don’t want to break up any sets you’ve managed to collect. Yet you also need to win the battles for that terrain. On top of that is the number of orcs to commit, since playing fewer gives you more options and lets you end fights sooner, but makes it easier for your opponent to catch you up/pull away in key battles. Then you might want to force a draw in certain battles if you don’t think you can win it… but then you’ll have to win the adjacent fight! And then you’ll have to carefully draw cards in such a way that you don’t give your opponent an easy turn by mistake, without really knowing what they want to do! It’s just great. Can you tell I love it yet?

Another fascinating thing is how the game is naturally self-correcting: as you win battles, your turns only get harder. Once you’ve won a territory, you want to stockpile all the orcs of matching colour since they will be worth points to you, but that same colour has just become completely worthless to your opponent, giving them an army they are free to throw against your even more limited hand. It keeps the game tight in a way that emerges naturally from the core mechanisms of the game! At every turn you are forced to make sacrifices to get ahead, yet you don’t truly know who is ahead until the final reveal once all battles are over!

I am just so impressed by Orc! Almost from the first turn the decisions will grip you and not let up until the very end. I think what amazes me is that each choice is fundamentally simple: which card do I play and to which battle? Yet each of those choices has numerous hugely important implications for the remaining game, all of which are immediately understandable from a glance at the tabletop. But you never truly know what your opponent has available, you can’t ‘solve’ the game, making this as much a game of playing your opponent as it is playing your hand, of knowing when to stand and fight, when to push and when to retreat. I said that this wasn’t a war game, yet it captures the ebb and flow of a battle, or a war, to an extent that is not obvious from the surface. While the box my say war is ugly, this game is anything but!

 

Rating: Orcsome

 

If you like the sound of Orc too, then check out our thoughts on the other games in the Pack O Game series, here!