Fort Review

Take a trip back to the nostalgic days when the only things that mattered were pizza, toys, and building the best fort possible for you and your friends. Playable by 2 to 4 players aged 10 and up, Fort is a board game that lets you play an awesome deckbuilding game while reliving the austere years of your childhood life.

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What does the box contain?

To play Fort, you need four player boards, a victory track board, four reference sheets and a rulebook. Each player board has a wooden fort marker and a wooden score marker.

The resources of this game are 30 wooden Pizza tokens, 30 wooden Toy tokens, 68 Child cards and 22 Other cards. These elements allow you to play the game and build your fort!

How to play ?

Configuration

As with most board games, to play Fort you must first set up your table. To do this, the first step is to review the small cards (the other 22 cards) and find the first player's card. There is no hard and fast rule for who is the first player, so choose randomly and play clockwise around the table. Sort your wooden pizzas and toy icons and set them aside so they don't get mixed up.

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Each player receives a game board. You have the choice between red, orange, yellow and green. Your choice of color determines which best friends you start the game with, which you will find on the back of the game board. For example, if you chose the red board, you will start with Blades and Zip as your best friends. All best friends are marked with a star next to their name. Your best friends from the start of your game. Best friend cards that are not used must be returned to the box.

Each player needs their score and fort level markers, as well as their player board and best friends. Place the victory tracking board in the middle of all players and set all used score markers to zero and your fort level markers to zero on your board.

Among the other 21 remaining cards, find the “macaroni sculpture” card and place it next to the victory track. Take and shuffle the 11 “invented rules cards” (red backs). Deal, starting from the top, a quantity of cards equal to the number of players plus one, face down, in a pile located near the victory track. Return any cards you do not use to the box.

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There should be 9 advantage cards remaining (blue backs). Shuffle these cards and deal a number equal to the number of players plus one face up on the table, then return any cards you are not using to the box.

Start building your deck.

The last thing to do before playing is to start building your deck. The goal of the game is to build your deck to become stronger, but you have to start somewhere.

At this point you should already have your two best friend cards, so all you have to do is shuffle the remaining 60 child cards, excluding the 8 best friends, and place them face down to form the draw pile Park. Deal three Child cards in the Park (the area below the victory track and marked Park).

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Each player must draw 8 child cards from the park draw pile and add their two best friends to obtain 10 cards.

These 10 cards form the basis of your game. Shuffle your cards and draw 5 of them, leaving the others face down. As the game progresses, you will add cards to this deck.

Play the game

The rulebook explains the anatomy of the cards and boards, which is very helpful because the boards have a round summary that reminds you what each round should look like.

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The first step of each round is to discard the cards you have in your court. Obviously you don't have anything in the yard in the first round, so don't worry until the second round.

For step 2, you play a card. This part can be a little confusing the first time you play it because you may wonder, “Why do I have 5 cards in my hand if I can only play one?” “. This is because you can “back” or change the card you play with others if the suit matches. This is where the reference sheet really comes in handy.

Each card has a public action and a private action. The player has the choice of playing one of the two or both. Suppose a player chooses to perform the public action on their card but needs help to complete it completely. In this case, he must completely carry out the private action.

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For example, let's say you play Spike, whose costume is skateboarding. In this case, Spike allows you to move a resource (pizza or toys) from the area of ​​your board called Stuff to the area of ​​your board called Pack equal (by) the number of skateboards played. You can add the Rocket Bros to move three pizzas to your Deck.

If you only had two pizzas to move in your pack, you could only partially complete the public action. You must complete Spike's private action and add a copy of a rival's deck to your stock. You can only do this if a player has a deck that you have room for in your stock.

Whenever you choose to take a public action, a rival can “follow the leader”, using a card from their hand that matches your played color to take the same action. A rival can only follow this action up to the number of colors indicated on his card.

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As in the previous example, to move resources from their Equipment to their Pack, a rival can “follow the leader” and play a card matching Spike's color, which is a skateboard. If a rival had a card like Rocket Bros, they could move two resources instead of one.

The third step is to recruit. You can choose a card to add to your draw pile. You can choose a rival's yard (area above the game board marked Yard), the three ParkPark cards, or the top card from the Park deck. Sorry, Player 1, you will not be able to choose another player's yard. Once you have recruited the card of your choice, you place it in your personal discard pile. Once your personal draw pile is empty, you shuffle your discard pile and the cycle continues.

The fourth step is to get rid of the cards. Make sure your best friends don't go to your yard, but always go to your discard pile, whether they are played or not. Put all played cards into your discard pile and any cards you haven't used this turn (your hand) into your court. Since you haven't played with your friends this round, your rivals can now choose them.

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Finally, draw five cards from your draw pile and prepare for the next round. Then it is the next player’s turn to play.

The aim of the game is to accumulate the most points before one of the three conditions is met:

• A player reaches 25 on the victory track.
• A player advances to level 5 of the Fort and gains the “Macaroni Sculpture” card.
• There are no more cards in the Park deck.

Once one of these conditions is met, all players must complete the current round so that all players have had a fair number of turns (you know how kids are, very keen to make things as fair as possible). possible), and the counting of points can begin.

At the end of the last round, if the players have obtained invented rules cards, they must reveal them and add up their victory points on the victory track, the level of the fort (each level is worth a different number of points, from 0 at 23), all the points that the player was able to earn thanks to his invented rules, and four additional points if a player has the “macaroni sculpture” card. Whoever has the most points wins!

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What did we think of the Fort board game?

We are in our twenties and we happily played Fort, a bridge building board game that took us back to the days of building forts in the backyard with our friends, and which might make you think about your favorite childhood movie if you've never experienced it yourself.

The rules of the game are well explained in the rulebook, but at times they can seem too complicated to understand. Keep the rulebook next to you the first time you play. Additionally, it would be good for your first player to watch a YouTube video explaining the basic rules of the game in a slightly simpler way before explaining the rules to the other players instead of trying to learn the rules together.

Once you understand the rules, the Fort is an entertaining board game. We unleashed our inner child and had a good, clean, fun game. If you want to add the Fort to your board game collection, you can find it on Solarpop.