Black Orchestra: Review
Black Orchestra: Move ahead with the plot, or retreat?
We say…
To read more intel, look ahead…
Taking place in Germany and the nearby areas during the rise & fall of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party, Black Orchestra takes a hard look at what goes into the process attempting to assassinate Hitler. The players take on the roles of true to life German conspirators as they cooperatively plot various attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life in order to bring down the rising Nazi Party in Germany.
The first thing that one notices, especially when one examines the various event cards, stacked into chronologically ascending 7 event stacks is that Black Orchestra uses real historic events and photographs to depict the various events that occurred to Germany during that tumultuous time period. The conspirators and plots were real and true to history.
Just as in the Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, the players are cooperatively collecting items and closely scrutinizing the movements or Hitler and his deputies, as they wait for just the right moment to initiate their daring plots to kill Hitler.
Plot cards are collected throughout the game from the Conspirator deck along with various events that help the conspirators, some legal and others illegal.
Meanwhile, as the march of the Nazis progresses, the various conpirators take actions (3) in order to build their tableau of conspirator cards, move about the map, find and collect needed items to pull off their plots, sell items, trade items/cards, or add dice to descent. Attempting descent can improve a player’s motivation, which improves a player’s actions and special abilities, and it can raise a player’s suspicion level. Suspicion levels must be maintained throughout the game, as the players never know when a Gestapo Raid might be pulled. When the Gestapo Raid, the players who are at extreme suspicion levels go straight to prison. The others must either discard an illegal conspirator card, if they have one, or raise their suspicion level. They could go to prison too if this leads them to extreme suspicion.
After the player has taken their actions, an event card is pulled and the consequences of that event happen These are true events from World War 2 and how they affected Hitler’s military might. Often the events will move Hitler and his deputies around the map, others will affect your conspirator’s motivation and level of suspicion, after all, you are committing treason. Often, these events will bring your plot closer or farther from reality. Every now and then a Gestapo Raid might occur, possibly putting your conspirator in prison.
After all, initiating these plots at a time when Hitler’s Military Might is at its lowest levels is the key to winning this game. Each plot has a set of required elements that must happen in order for it to work. The required elements gives that player one die, therefore, the player must also try to fulfill the optional elements as well. Each of these offer either more dice to roll, or protection from arrest. Once the player has met the required elements and has enough dice to roll, aided by various conspirator cards in their tableau, they can make an attempt on Hitler’s life.
At this point, the conspirator rolls the dice they get from their plot. First, before the attempt can be made, the player must find out if they are noticed and arrested by the Gestapo. There are symbols symbolizing Nazi Germany on the dice. If the number of these rolled exceeds the number necessary on the player’s current suspicion level, then the plot fails and the conspirator is taken to prison. If Hitler’s military might is greater than the number of gun sights rolled, then the plot fails, but went unnoticed. If they roll more red gun sights than Hitler’s military might, the plot succeeds and the players win the game!
So what do we think?
The Black Orchestra, besides being historically accurate, offers the players a massive amount of theme, immersiveness, and a deep visceral experience which will have the players reminiscing about their failed Hitler assassination attempts for years to come.
Some people complained about the amount of randomness generated within this game, with long thought out plans failing based on simple dice rolls, but to me, this is thematic. This is what actually happened historically. You’ve heard that the “best laid plans can go horribly wrong.” This is what happens in The Black Orchestra. You scheme and plan for a long time, only to have Hitler go away from where you want him, or to have some event mess up everything. Furthermore, success or failure can come down to simple dice rolls. Many find this irritating, I find that conflict should have an element of chance and luck to it, just as there is in real life.
We schemed and waited until just the right moment to strike and take out Hitler. We had it setup so we could strike if event went many of several different ways. As it turned out, just as in real life, events didn’t pan out for any of our set up plans, so we had to make contingency plans. Guess what, one of these contingency plans panned out, with all of us on the edges of our seats as the current player attempted the assassination attempt. The dice did not go our way, but thank goodness we had ways to adjust for this and allow for changes and rerolls to happen. However, as the beads of sweat were rolling off of our brows, things ultimately did not go our way, and we lost the game with Hitler staying alive and us being arrested and horrible unfathomable things being done to us by the Nazi Gestapo.
We played 5 games with none of them being successful. We came very close once, and I’m assuming these are the sorts of things that actually happened historically. And this, along with the long lasting thematic impact that Black Orchestra left on us is why we say…
