Form the ultimate band and head out on tour together as you reach milestones and climb the charts. You'll need to choose your cards wisely though in order to gain the most star power as you draft cards to assmeble your crew, manage your schedule and create the best harmonies.
As a couple, we enjoy both roll and write games and drafting games, so when we saw this one that combined the two along with a music theme from Inside Up Games, we knew it would be right up our street.
First Impressions
The box really captured our attention from a distance and when you get up close, it has a beautiful texture to it akin to a vinyl record. Upon opening the box, you're met with an overwhelming pad of personal action sheets followed by a well designed insert that seems to allow plenty of space for future expansions whilst not feeling like there's an excessive amount of wasted space. The cards all have the same vinyl record texturing to them and are made of a good quality card stock as well as being nicely illustrated. It was a nice surprise to see a pencil sharpener accompanying the many pencils included in the box and that the standard pencils all have a rubber on the end, although the coloured pencils do not. The components certainly intrigued me, even if the player sheets felt rather daunting!
Game Play Overview
As it turns out, the player sheets weren't all that scary once I started reading the rules! Once you understand the different elements to it, the sheet makes alot of sense and is very cleverly designed. Draft and Write Records is played over a series of rounds, each made up of 2 phases, the week and the weekend. During the week you'll be drafting cards, each player begins a round with 5 cards, from which they'll select 1 to play and pass the remainder to the next player (either clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on the round). Once all players have chosen a card, reveal it and resolve your actions simultaneously. These actions relate to different sections on your player sheet and can create a chain reaction if planned well. You'll need to be careful though as some areas are off limits until you have payed a fee to unlock them. Once you've all resolved your card and any chain link actions, choose another card to play from the hand passed to you from the previous player. Continue choosing and playing cards then passing them on, until you have 2 cards in hand. This time, you'll choose 1 to play and 1 to discard. After your final card has been resolved, move onto the weekend.
During the weekend phase, you'll check each goal, one at a time from left to right to see if any player(s) has completed the goal. Multiple players can complete each goal at the same time, however once a goal has been completed and marked off on the players track, the card is discarded and replaced with a new one. Once all the central goals have been checked, players may check their personal goal and score it if complete. Once all goals have been checked, look to see if the end game has been triggered and if it hasn't move onto the next round.
There are 3 ways the end game can be triggered: A player completes their 6th goal, a player checks off all 5 fail spaces or a player fills all 12 posts for their crew. If the game end is triggered during the weekend phase, complete the round before moving on to final scoring. If, however, the end game is triggered by a player filling all 12 crew slots during the week phase, all players complete their current action, discarding any remaining cards for drafting and move onto the weekend phase before then calculating final scores. Once final score have been calculated the player with the most star power is the winner!
Pros and Cons
This is a cleverly designed game of drafting and harmonies. Whilst the player sheets feel very overwhelming when you first see them, the rules explain the sheet really well and the basics of the game are relatively straight forward. The most difficult part of this game is following the chain reactions and remembering which actions within the chain have been completed when 2 or more chains are set off simultaneously. However, between making those connections and the variety amongst the cards, there is always a satisfying strategy.
Final Verdict
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth this game offered and I'm so glad that I chose to read the rules and took the time to understand the player sheet as I thoroughly enjoyed this draft and write game of musicians and star power. If you like flip and write games as well as strategy games, it's likely this will be a game that you enjoy. I look forward to finding new harmonies with each game that I play of it.
In conclusion, we would rate this game a 8.8/10
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