Silk Road Fury: A Ruination Board Game Review

Ruination...

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Good review, Wade.

I like this one, more so than you I'd reckon, but it hasn't received much attention at all.

Dan Thurot feels it's a little soulless, which I understand even if I don't agree. There's something about the confluence of mobility, combat, and the upgrade system that really lands well with me. I think the narrow field of action choices also is very interesting.

I'm a weirdo in that I really don't love Kemet. One of the main reasons are the obnoxious upgrade tiles and having to know what they all do pretty much immediately to make informed choices. That's always been a black spot on the game with me.

So in that sense, Ruination fills a void and occupies it's spot of a very fast, in your face area control game with large amounts of combat.

Solid writeup. I'm on one play of this so plant a big inky asterisk on everything I'm about to say:

Ruination is probably better than most of its ilk in that it understands its focus and feel better than a lot of games it resembles. It's more focused on delivering a DoaM experience, which is to say the violence is better. There's some good fightin' to be had here. I don't even mind the card system, though I wish it was possible to plan for the turn more than not at all.

What rankled me was the admin. Travis Chance loves tracks. Loves 'em. I'm pretty sure every game of his I've tried has had them. And I just hate constantly making micro adjustments across the board any time I so much as breathe. Is this petty and stupid? Yes, very much so. But my brain immediately processes that as "this should be a video game". I don't have a solution for it. Like the game, don't like tracks. Should play this more and see if that fades.