Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game
	Flying Frog Productions
	Ages: 12+     Time: 90-180mins    Players: 1-8
	Grades Awarded:
	Al's Grade	Tom's Grade

Interview with Jason Hill	Interview with Scott Hill
Lead Designer/Co-Founder Flying Frog Productions	Lead Graphics Designer/Co-Founder Flying Frog Productions

 

Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Gamer (herein known as FANG) is a pulp adventure board game set in the 1930s. You take on the role of an intrepid adventurer on a quest in which you will encounter various enemies, traps, events even death defying feats for, surprisingly, fortune and glory (didn't see that one coming did you!). FANG comes in a large "coffin" style box and is packed with goodies. You get over 165 plastic pieces, 340+ game cards, 8 player characters, 16 dice, a host of additional counters to be used in conjunction with "house rules" and of course you can't forget the CD soundtrack that should accompany every playthrough of the game. One other awesome feature of the gmae is that it has been designed to be either a competative game or a co-operative game but more on that later. I was lucky enough to attend the FANG launch event in Seattle, WA, and managed to get a run through of the game with the creators themselves. 5 of us played with one of the guys from FFP running the game. It took approximatly 90 minutes to finish off and was quite a close game. Some of the elements were stripped down to keep things simple and running smoothly for the event but it was still a very enjoyable experience and great to learn the rules from Flying Frog Productions themselves. Interviews with both Jack and Scott Hill are above. Heres how to play the competative version, once you have all sorted which charaters you want to play (either by selection or randow draw) and all of the componenets required for the type of game you are playing are in easy reach of all the players you need to create the starting artifacts. These are created by drawing both an artifact card and an adventure card and nesting them together and placing them along the top of the board. Then draw a location card for the artifact and place one of the coloured skulls on this location and the matching skull on the artifact. Once you have four skulls on the gameboard you are ready to start playing. A game round consists of four phases; initiative, movement, adventure and the end phase. To keep things honest and fair (as fair as dice can be) the initiative phase determines who the first player is each round - highest dice roll wins. If a 1 is rolled at any point then that player must draw a card from the event deck. Then each player, in turn order, rolls a die and moves that amount of spaces on the game board - again if any player rolls a 1 for their movement they must draw an event card from the deck.  The adventure phase is where all the trouble and peril lies. Those on an artifact adventure (if you moved sufficently to be able to be sitting on one of the coloured skulls) then you get to encounter a danger. The danger deck is double sided so the danger is drawn either from the bottom or the middle of the deck (it just wouldn't be fair to allow the adventurer to know what dangers lie waiting). The card text is read out loud and then the danger is overcome by either a skill test or a fight. To retrieve an artifact you need to have overcome the number of dangers indicated on the bottom right of the artifact (number in the tribal shield). Once you have successfully overcome a danger a certain amount of glory (glory is the trading currency of the game) will be placed to one side and you have the choice to press on straight away (like the heroic types always do) of camp down, heal fully, collect your glory and wait untill your next turn to continue with your adventure - but remember no guts no glory!! If you fail to overcome the danger then the danger card will be flipped over (to the cliffhanger side) which will have another more grusome danger to overcome and then play passes to the next player to continue with their adventure (did you spot the cliffhanger element??) - you won't get a chance to overcome the cliffhanger until it is your next turn. If players aren't on an artifact adventure then that doesn't mean there isn't any trouble around; if you are in a city space you draw a city card and if you are either in a land or sea space then you roll a die to see what happens (1 - Draw and enemy card, 2&3 - nothing happens, 4,5&6 - draw and event card). Once you have successfully overcome the number of dangers shown then you can take the artifact and hope to sell if (or use it) on your next turn. You sell the artifact for the fortune listed on the left hand side of the artifact (+1 if you are in a major city). Fortune is the victory resource of the game and the first to 15 wins! There are other ways to gain fortune like looting ancient temples and raiding the nazi zepplins, finding Nazi gold ... etc (oh didn't I mention the Nazis - the Mob make an appearance too!) as well as many other elements to the game that I have left out here but you'll just have to give the game ago to find out what other treats Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game has in store. FANG is oooozing with theme and you really do feel like you are on some kind of indiana jones style adventure. The dangers are tough enough to make the game adequatly difficult whilst being easy enough to lead you into this false sense of security that makes you believe that pressing on rather than camping down is going to be easy - think again! If you are not a fan of luck elements in a board game then you probably won't get on with FANG but, if like us, you like your adventure games with a handfuls of dice and massive amounts of theme then this game is definitly for you. I love it and to be honest can't wait to play it again!