Standing on the edge of the land, taking careful aim upon the enemy. With a rye smile you launch your rocket, full gusto towards them… However, the wind blows the rocket off course, it hits a mine, it blows up and sets off an oil barrel that sets aflame the area around it, setting off a second mine which sends one of your own tumbling into the sea to their untimely end!
The enemy, standing smiling back.
This kind of chaos is something only Worms can achieve. This, however, is not a review of the longstanding and much loved video game, but the board game by Mantic Games. So can Mantic capture the essence of the video game for the tabletop? Let’s find out.
Standing on the edge of the land, taking careful aim upon the enemy. With a rye smile you launch your rocket, full gusto towards them… However, the wind blows the rocket off course, it hits a mine, it blows up and sets off an oil barrel that sets aflame the area around it, setting off a second mine which sends one of your own tumbling into the sea to their untimely end!
The enemy, standing smiling back.
This kind of chaos is something only Worms can achieve. This, however, is not a review of the longstanding and much loved video game, but the board game by Mantic Games. So can Mantic capture the essence of the video game for the tabletop? Let’s find out.
Miniature combat Worms style!
In essence, Worms: the board game, is a miniature combat skirmish game, where you command a team of worms, fighting to the death. Armed with an array of weapons, including some whackier choices, your aim is to be the last worm standing, taking every measure to blow up everyone and everything you can to do so.
If you have ever played the Worms video game, you get it, and you know exactly what to expect here… and believe us… Mantic have really captured the video game, including the chaos that often takes place.
Under the surface
The box comes with everything you need. First and foremost, the most awesome miniatures that absolutely capture the character of the Worms from the game. In the box is enough worms for four teams, each with a worm holding a different tool or weapon. The miniatures are full of personality and unmistakably achieve the goal of paying homage to the games characters.
You also get four land tiles. This does not sound a lot, but you can configure these in any manner, which means you have a significant amount of variation available (we are not doing the math!!). This does mean no two games will likely be the same. The rest of the goodies in the box include custom dice for the game, water tiles, crates, oil drums and mines, other various tokens and sets of cards, which make up the weapons and cards that trigger end of turn actions.
The artwork on all of the contents is Worms to a T, and you can tell the team developing the game really cared about how the game looked.
Absolute Chaos
There are not many miniature games where you would look forward to unpredictable chaos. But this is Worms!!
You set up the game by placing land tiles, Worms, oil drums, mines and crates. The important thing to note is at this stage, you do not know which team is yours. So it forces you to think about spreading out all the ‘things’ as they are affectionately referred to as in the rules.
You create a starting deck for each player, with four predefined cards and one random, and then set up the weapons deck, and drop deck. The drop deck also includes a special card that triggers the end game rules.
Once everything is set up, you then draw from the available reference cards, only being able to see the grey side. Flip it over, and the colour of the card tells you which team is yours and a number denotes turn order. The first player rolls one die to get the first wind direction.
Each turn, players can activate a worm, move them and play weapon cards. Movement is simple enough, you can inch, which means you get to move one hex, or jump, which allows you to jump over mines or water hexes, but you run the risk of scattering. Scattering is done by rolling one die, and the number refers to the wind directions, and that is the direction you scatter to. If you are lucky enough to get a target, you land where you wanted. Unlucky enough to scatter on to a mine or water tile…. Well it is Worms, so your opponents (and to be fair probably you as well) will be giggling away at the following result. As in the video game, land in the water and your worm drowns… “bye bye” , land on a mine and you flip a token. Land on the good side, you are all good, land on the side depicting a grave, well the mine goes off, potentially scattering you again, but definitely damaging your worm.
Damage is easy enough, if you are damaged you lay your worm down. Get damaged again and your worm meets its maker. But if you are lucky enough to survive to your next turn, you can heal the worm as part of your activation.
If you are able to and decide to move on to a crate, you get to pick up a new weapon card. If you have played the video, all your favourites are in there. Yes! That does in fact include the good old Holy Hand Grenade and the Banana bomb to name a couple.
When playing a card, it tell you an order of actions you can take. These actions include move (yes movement is also built into the weapon cards, so you can do a hit and run), action the card as per its written instructions and also, play another card. It’s this combination of actions that weapons feel like they do in the video game. For example, the shotgun allows you to shoot, move, shoot and move again.
Different weapons do play differently. You play the bazooka; you get to roll dice. Get numbers and the target scatters, potentially hitting other worms, objects or just simply blowing up land (assuming it doesn’t sink into the abyss of the sea). Get a target and it is a direct hit. Some weapons however operate by simply damaging the hex you target, or in the case of some weapons, you use the air strike mechanic which strikes the target hex and a further two hexes in your chosen direction. Some weapons will set fire to hexes, others will blast them. When blasting, you place blast tokens and when you reach the third token, sinks the land tile and you place a water tile, making for a more hazardous (and arguably more fun) landscape to scrap upon.
Once your turn is over, you draw a drop card and follow the instructions. This will often include placing new crates, mines and oil barrels. If you reach the last card in the drop deck, you end up with an end game set of rules – this is your sudden death card. This has everything from removing all weapons with the exception of the super weapons (aka banana bombs and holy hand grenades), to sinking the landscape bit by bit, or just blasting the landscape at the end of each turn. This means the game can speed up towards the end a lot, much to joy of its players.
“Excellent… He He He He He”
Video games used as inspiration for board games face a real challenge of capturing how people expect the game to play based on their current experiences. With Worms, Mantic have really understood its source material. The chaos, the character, the wackiness, it is all there. It’s hard to believe that they have managed to translate a game that has varying height levels, into a flat surface, but they did. Every aspect from the artwork, to play style to simplicity has captured Worms as it should be… Fun over fancy, simple instead of overly complex, character and chaos over hardcore tactical. Whether you are a big miniatures skirmish and warfare game fan or simply looking for a fun experience, this game will tick boxes. Mantic’s typical approach of simple straight forward rules, mean you will pick up and play this game in no time, with set up to tear down happening all under an hour. Everything you need is in the box, and honestly expansion wise, the only way we can see it going, is boxes of new worms to play with, or additional land tiles, but honestly it does not need rules expansions. The game is a complete game and will be fun for all of your family and friends.
The box insert is designed with storage in mind, but sadly there is not enough room to sleeve your cards to protect them, not a deal breaker but may be a disappointment for those wishing to preserve their cards from too much wear and tear.
All the components feel good quality, but perhaps some more water tiles and land tiles would be welcome, but again the land tiles could form a future expansion. It is also worth noting that the copy we played, some of the coloured base rings are too big for the worms. This may be a manufacturing error, but weirdly it is all the worms with girders that we have the issue with.
With everything said though, Worms is a truly “excellent” game and we would recommend it as a great gift for someone or just an impulse purchase for yourself.
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About the author:
We are Peaches and Meeples, busy professionals who love to chill out to fun tabletop games. We love board games, card games, miniatures games, competitive or co-operative. Put some dice in our hands and we are in our happy place.
We are also proud guinea pig parents to two lovely fluffballs of joy.
