Review: Homeland: The Game

• October 20, 2015
• James Skemp
• review

A sort of board game Resistance

Reading through the rules for the first time I kept thinking about the game The Resistance (although there are many games like this). In The Resistance every character is either part of the resistance, or part of a group trying to sabotage them. As the game progresses you start to figure out who's who, in an attempt to score a win for your team.

Homeland: The Game, is sort of like that, although here you have terrorists, politicians, and the feds, with the terrorist trying to cause havoc, the feds trying to prevent it, and the politicians trying for a 'healthy' amount of both. Like other variants missions come in, with each player playing as needed. However, in this game it might turn out that you can only play cards that will threaten the mission, even though you want it to be squashed, and vice versa. There's also, depending upon how many people you play with, a chance that there won't even be a terrorist or politician in the game (there's always at least one of two though).

When you first open the box you might be surprised by the thickness of the rules, combined with the number of pieces you need to punch out. However, the rules do have a number of photos from the show (which I have not seen). They're still a little complicated, but as you play you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. It also comes with cards detailing the turn actions, which is awesome.

The board itself is a little unfortunate. It's constructed well enough, but it's sliced in an odd spot. As the game progresses you end up moving cards from one end of the board to the other. However, the way it was cut results in the inability to smoothly slide half the board's cards up. A cut from north to south, instead of left to right, would have been preferred.

Some of the cards are also half-sized, but the way these are actually used during play works out rather well. It just results in a little trouble shuffling them.

The game will play 3 to 6 players, with a length of 90 minutes. The more players you have the more tricky it might be (in a good way), but you can also expect play to go longer as well.

Like many others I haven't seen the show, so I can't speak to that, but I hope to get in a game with someone who has seen it (and also loves these types of games), and will update the review once that's happened.

For now I give Homeland: The Game a 5 of 5. I'll update once I've had the opportunity to play with more people, but the components are well constructed (minus the cut placement in the board), the game plays well without needing to know the source material, and it even comes with, very nice, little marines and agents you can use during the game. Recommended for people who like games like The Resistance.

• review
• board game