Brink Board Game Review
Negotiation style games is generally a genre I steer clear of, but when I first played Moonrakers I decided I needed to rethink that opinion. I really enjoyed completing contracts with the help of others around the table, and enjoyed negotiating rewards as a part of that experience. IV Studio has another game in this universe – Brink – which uses trading, a type of negotiation in my books. That said, it melds that with another mechanic I really enjoy, worker placement. This game, however, has a bit of a twist!
Players will be exploring space, earning resources, trading with others, and hiring crew in an effort to earn points. At its core, this is a work-placement game, with each player having three ships they can deploy out onto the board. Single space ships are placed directly on hexes, while the additional ships – one that borders two hexes and one that borders three hexes – are placed between tiles on the board, supplying a variety of benefits.
Ship placement also influences the power players have over specific factions in the game (colours, to make it simple) and at the end of each round, players will use accumulated resources to bid on which factions will earn points, which is the core loop of Brink. Add in some negotiation, trading (as some resources can’t be used to bid and must be traded), and a few other things and you have a compelling board game experience that takes familiar ideas and gives them a slight variation.
Brink really isn’t doing anything other board games haven’t done before. We have tons of games with trading, tons of games with negotiation, tons of games with bidding, and of course tons of worker placement games. But with each mechanic, IV Studio has given those moments a slight twist that makes you think, “this is familiar, but fairly unique.” I love having resources you are FORCED to trade. I love having three different sized ships that require a ton of thought when it comes to placement. It’s a breakaway from the one-worker, one-space formula that we are so familiar with.
Brink, like all other IV Studio titles, showcases why this company has been so successful in a very saturated, and niche, market. Innovative designs that just work.
And after half a dozen games of Brink at various player counts, I have very few concerns. If you check out our components overview and impressions article, I do have some concerns about the quality of the trays included in the box, but mechanically this game is really solid. It is, unfortunately, a game that can be ruined by a bad gaming group. When we reviewed Moonrakers I said the exact same thing: this game is only going to be as good as the group you play it with. If people will only accept or suggest outrageous resource trades, for example, the overall experience is going to take a hit. While this is a result of how the game is built, it is more so a reflection of the group you are playing with. Fortunately, I only had one experience soured by a sub-par performance from another player.
Despite its complexities, though, I do find this game pretty approachable for a wide audience of players. There is a bit going on that will take time to digest, but I have no concerns teaching this to someone familiar with board games. It’s not an overly long teaching experience, and game flows incredibly well turn to turn and round to round. There is an obvious advantage to those who have played the game before, but not so much that a new player can’t figure out how it all works and pull out a victory.
It’s a well balanced game, with a good variety of card powers that can be acquired. I’m often concerned that some cards are wildly better than others, but that doesn’t seem to be a major problem here either. I think specific cards work best with specific strategies, but there doesn’t seem to be a one-card-to-rule-them-all situation here.
I’m really impressed with Brink – at this point, anything IV Studio puts out will have high expectations from me, and at some points I’m sure those expectations won’t be met (likely a fault of my own to be fair). Brink hits all checkmarks in what I want in a game, and I’m reminded yet again why we called IV Studio the publisher of the year for two straight years.
Article By Adam
