Peaky Blinders is a massively popular show on Netflix, retelling the story of the notorious Peaky Blinders, one of England’s most deadly gangs in history. The Peaky Blinders controlled everything back in the days and the weren’t afraid to move a body or two in order to get what they wanted. Dressed in their typical style, they were a force to be reckoned with and now it’s your time to join the gang! Do you have what it takes to control the board? Let’s find out in the newly released Peaky Blinders: Under New Management board game.
Read the instruction booklet
Before you can start playing this new board game, it’s recommended to carefully read the instruction booklet first. The game has a lot going on and there’s a lot to take into consideration. As a player, you’ll need to control a certain district, recruit members for your gang, control the weapon, car, and gun industry, bet on horses and improve your own stats. For a board game, this results in a lot of different rules and phases while playing. All these rules really are a lot to absorb while playing for the first time and I was puzzled why the creators didn’t add a small cheat sheet to the game. Having a small cheat sheet next to your character board would have been extremely helpful, instead, we were forced to keep the instruction booklet as close as possible during all phases of the actual game.
Clear your mission
At the start of every game, you’ll have to pick certain mission cards, one always including your control over one of the four different districts on the board. Before you start, you’ll have to show one of your three missions to the other players, making the start of the game very tactical and even deceiving. At the end of the game, which will take you around ninety minutes to reach, you’ll have to control your district and you’ll have to clear your two other missions. These other missions mostly consist out of gather enough recourses our boosting one of the player’s stats to the maximum level. It all sounds like a lot but once you’re playing, you’ll immediately get immersed in the misleading world of the Peaky Blinders.
Bluffing is a huge part of the game, setting your opponents off on the wrong foot can easily result in a win if you handle things right. The challenge of the game is its pacing. During each round, you can place your henchmen at certain spots, depending on the district you’re in. If you, for example, place your gun henchmen on the rum barrels and roll the die, you’ll be able to take home a certain amount of barrels, depending on the die roll. The game focusses heavily on the die roll so luck is certainly an important factor to keep into consideration, although there’s a lot more strategy to it.
The player with most leadership can always start off the new round, which proved to be a huge advantage. Being able to grab the most interesting spots in the districts gives you an edge over your opponent so battling for most leadership tokens is certainly one of your top priorities. But, the game goes a lot deeper than just this. In order to control a district, you’ll need to place all four of your color markers in that district while an opponent can always challenge you by starting a conflict. The conflict is the game’s most thrilling and unpredictable feature that will force you onto the edge of your seat each and every time.
Conflict cards
Conflicts are the beating heart of the game since you can directly confront your opponents in conflict. What happens in a conflict is that you challenge the ownership of a certain district. You do so by rolling the die and adding the extra points of that henchmen together with your gang members to your score. If you roll the highest number, the losing party loses its leadership points and influence in a certain district, which is a rather harsh consequence. Since conflicts can really turn the tables for the players, it’s an important mechanic in the game. During our first round, we didn’t really take this mechanic into consideration, resulting in a rather unfair battle. If you want to make your opponent struggle to advance, you’ll need to start conflicts and gather normal conflict cards while playing. These conflict cards can give you a defensive or offensive advantage over the other player while moving forward, giving you an extra buffer for hard times or taking money and resources from your enemies during the open phase of the game.
The open phase arrives at the end of each round and enables you to manage your business a little more. During the open phase you can sell some of your resources, buy your control over one of the districts or play one of your conflict cards. Unlike other board games, the open phase really is crucial since it can impact the flow of the game enormously. Due to this phase, you’ll have fun playing from start to finish. On top of that, the game also adds fun bonuses such as horse racing at the end of four rounds, to keep you entertained as much as possible.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the Peaky Blinders board game is a fun one to play, although it might have a bit too many mechanics to easily keep track of. A small cheat sheet would have done wonders and the leadership position might give you too much of an advantage. That being said, it’s certainly a thrilling game to play and I’m pretty sure fans of the show will absolutely adore it. If you’re looking for a new strategical board game, this one is certainly worth trying!