Review: The Message

Hi guys! We're back in action... Temporarily.

First I must apologize for the late post on the review/update, we've been very busy with our studies lately (that's a good thing :P ), plus I wanted to play this game a few more times before I make any comment on it. :)

So, let's jump straight to the review.

Objective:

Collect 3 messages that matches your team's colour.

1. FRS wins as a team if any one member collects 3 blue messages.

2. KDR wins as a team if any one member collects 3 red messages.
3. MOF wins individually if he fulfills the winning condition as stated on his character.

4. Forget which team you're on or just for the fun of it, mess with everyone! (Most sought after objective =P)

JC: Haha! These are my cards! Someone sent a trap as a "Exposed message" and to be honest, I can't remember whether I was KDR, FRS or MOF but I took it anyway since if I was on the team, I would want it, if I wasn't then I wouldn't want them to have it and if I was MOF, I needed 3 red msgs I think hehe! 

Pathophysiology/ Expatiation:

(kudos to all the rules-reader out there who understands "expatiation".)

(a) Each player would be dealt a secret loyalty card, which reminds me of Battlestar Galactica and even The Resistance or Bang! So you're either FRS (blue), KDR (red) or MOF (individual/neither). I think the MOF really adds a lot of fun to the game, they ALWAYS spoil your plans.

(b) Player also start with a character card, which gives them special abilities.

**Some cards with has a "S" on the top right hand corner requires you to play it face down and only revealed when certain conditions are fulfilled. These special cards are quite fun to play since some of them have powers that you can use multiple times or a cool power that you can only use once per game =)!

The Message is a card game, pretty easy to pick up actually. During your turn you basically:

1. Draw a card
2. +/- play cards for their effects
3. Transmit a message (play a card for it's color - blue, red or black. If anyone gets 3 black messages, he dies.)

The meat of the game is during the message transmission, where people can intercept or peek at it using cards or do all sorts of thing to it to mess with each other.

JC: The peeking part requires some level of poker face =).

JC: Normally MOF's play like KDR or FRS to either gain trust or get Red or Blue messages as their secret or revealed agenda =P!

Thoughts:

+ FUN, especially with the right crowd.

+ Short version of Battlestar (one of our FAVOURITE game, Hans was supposed to guest blog about it sometime in the future... stay tuned!)..... But actually we played this game so often that I think we could have finished a few games of BSG. The difference is that in BSG, you get to mess with your friends once in 3 hours. The Message allows you to mess with your friends a few dozen times in 3 hours. Of course, they both give different kind of satisfaction. BSG tells an epic and memorable story, this game on the other hand is comprised of a lot of funny moments.

+ Relatively cheap. http://www.boardgamecafe.net/store/shopexd.asp?id=706

+ I like the artwork.


- Need a few games to really grasp how the game works, at times I worried that a few of my friends would lose interest in the game after the first 2 rounds.

- You tend to lose focus after a few consecutive games, sometimes even forgot who your teamate was. (hmmmm did I prove you this round, or was it the previous game?)

- The rulebook. And the words on the cards............. Can be REALLY hard to understand (due to direct translation from Mandarin, I suspect). But the plus point is that we had a good laugh at most of the cards when someone reads their character/cards out loud. This is not a big issue for me, but I expect that many potential buyers/players would be put off by this issue. The translation by Hiew is a MUST.

Prognosis:
The Message is a fun and casual game, and it comes with a pretty attractive price tag and a lot of good quality cards. It's not a game that one can play the whole night (you'll be really confused, with memories mixed up from game to game), but certainly deserves a play every once in a while, e.g while waiting for everybody else to show up for Dominant Species.
1-year survival rate (what are the chances that I'd still ask to play this game  after 1 year of playing this game) - 95%

The last few times I went to OTK Cheras, the people there was playing this game. And boy it was so funny, just looking at them laugh. I tend to gravitate towards middle-heavy games, games that basically gives the mind a good exercise, but games like this reminds me how boardgaming should be - fun.

JC: All in all, absolutely fun =D! It can be a filler or just a game you can play over and over again since there are so many different character cards that you'll never get bored of playing the same old one many times =D!

Plus we played it in a way that everyone gets 2 character cards and choose one from the two then the one that was not chosen was placed into a separate pile so that during the next round, you don't get the same cards again.