Flash Review — Bomb Busters

Players: 2-5

Works well with just 2: Yes!
Age: 10+
Playtime: 30 min
Complexity: 4/10

Bomb Busters requires a team of players to work together to defuse one bomb after the other (after the other). Sure, you’ve got cool gadgets to help you along the way and more than one trick up your sleeve—assuming you’ve got any arms left—but will you manage to keep your cool long enough to avoid triggering that damn thing?

The game is all about cutting (the right) wires, which are represented by narrow cardboard tiles that each show a number between 1 and 12, with four copies of every number. Each player gets a stand where those tiles—distributed at random—are stood up in ascending order, with the wire values facing the owner of the stand. So you know what your wires are, but nothing else. Using a clever system of very limited clues, you may eventually deduce some information about a few of the wires held by your teammates.
Now since wires must be cut in pairs, if you want to cut, say, your 5 wire, you must first cut a 5 wire on someone else’s stand. So when you think you’re sure (...), you point to a specific wire, say “I’m cutting this 5 wire!” with as much confidence as you can muster, and hold your breath. If you’re right, your teammate lays down that wire tile face up in front of their stand (and the position of that revealed tile in your friend’s spread hopefully feeds you with further information you can use) and you do the same with your like-numbered wire.
And if you’re wrong? Boom.
(Okay, each mission allows for a handful of mistakes before everyone gets blown to pieces. That counter goes down fast: don’t get too comfy.)

Oh you thought that was all? That’s so cute.

There are also yellow wires, each numbered as a .1; so you get a 1.1, a 2.1 and so on all the way to 12.1, with a few of them thrown into the mix before tile randomization. The trick here is that yellow wires must also be cut in pairs, meaning you must point to a tile on someone else’s stand, say “I’m cutting this yellow wire!” and hope to God you’re right, so that you can also cut a yellow wire on your own stand.
Red wires? Of course we’ve got red wires, each numbered as a .5: 1.5, 2.5, etc. Those you CANNOT cut at all. And there are no oopsies when you cut whatever circuit was keeping the bomb from embracing entropy.

Each mission consumes at most 30 minutes of your time (sometimes way less, trust me) and the box comes with a whopping 66 increasingly difficult missions for your exploding pleasure.
Plus there's a very nifty twist that makes the game work like a charm with just two players.

If this doesn’t win the Spiel des Jahres for 2025, I’ll eat my bomb suit helmet.

Most easily forgotten rule: If one player has all four copies of a numbered wire on their stand (say, all four 2s), they can do a “solo cut” and reveal them all at once. Same thing if anyone holds the two remaining wires of any one number.

# # #

Flash Review — Skyrise

Players: 2-4

Works well with just 2: Yes!
Age: 14+
Playtime: 30-90 min
Complexity: 4.5/10

Skyrise is an auction game where three different factors are always at play: currency (what you’re bidding), building (what you’ll put on the board if you win) and location (where you’ll build if you win.)
And wouldn’t you know it? Turns out that in this case, all three of these things are one and the same.

The game is played on a modular board: the more players partake, the larger the playing surface becomes. Each space shows one color and houses a token assigned to it at random. Each player is issued a series of buildings in three sizes, with each building sporting a number on its bottom. One player places a bid, putting a building (upside-down so the number is visible) on a space they want to occupy. The next player can outbid by placing a building with a higher number on an adjacent space, and so on until everyone passes. Then the highest-numbered building gets built on the space where that winning bid was placed, and a new auction starts. When you build a building, you grab the token from that space and add it to your collection; it contributes to the points you’ll score, in one way or another.

The goal here is to accumulate the most points over two scoring rounds—one mid-game and the other at the very end—according to secret and open objectives, plus domination over sections of the board, depending on who’s got the most tall buildings here and there.

The whole thing is over in about 30 minutes, the game looks fantastic (even in its basic wooden-buildings retail edition) and it’s refreshingly different from whatever else you stock your shelves with. (Except maybe Metropolys, the original game Skyrise reimagined.)

Most easily forgotten rule: You can always start a new auction next to a building already on the board or on the central island.

# # #

Expansion review — Heat: Heavy Rain

(I posted this review—a rare negative review when it comes to what I usually use this space for—on Boardgamegeek.com back in May 2024, and for some reason I completely forgot to publish it here. 

Better late than never, I suppose. Especially since this has been my most controversial game review so far.)

Let me preface this by saying Heat is one of my favorite racing games. It was also my #1 game in 2022. I preordered the expansion the minute it was announced.

And yet, after Heavy Rain, I will not buy another expansion for this amazing game.
The reason is simple: I think it's one of the worst expansions I've encountered in over three decades of boardgaming. (And no, I'm not even talking about the price, which I'll admit is surprisingly steep.)

Now this is no snarky review: I'm not writing this while angry, nor do I have an ax to grind with anyone. I'm just writing this as a consumer, a player of games, and one who's disappointed.
I really wanted this to be good.

So what are we getting in the box?

1. TRACKS
We all expected two more tracks, and two more (fun) tracks we got. So far, so good.

2. FLOODED SPACES
For some reason, it was decided that flooding would not be backwards compatible with the previous four tracks. Which I could maybe understand if it were some complex new game mechanic. But no: it's a super simple thing where you have to pay an extra heat when you shift down on a flooded space. (So simple a thing, in fact, that when I explain what the big blue spaces do on the Japan track, players always voice some disappointment. "That's it?")

This strange design decision comes with several equally strange wrinkles:

• It's only present on one of the two new tracks. (Mexico's dry as a bone, which I guess makes thematic sense.)
• You'll never be able to play on the Japan track without it—it's printed on the board itself, which robs the whole system of some (expected) variety.
• If flooded spaces make an appearance on future tracks, it'll also mean those tracks can only be played with flooded spaces.
• You'll also never see flooded spaces on any of the four base-game tracks.

This last point is particularly painful, because there are a number of ways in which flooded spaces could have worked on the four original tracks—as well as all of the future ones—with many other players pointing out the obvious "weather tile" solution. (You could even have, say, three different flooding tiles, indicating different numbers of flooded spaces before and after the corner line.)

3. CHICANES
Another very small change from the base game, chicanes are simply two corners that are closer together.
It makes sense for this not to appear on every track in the game, just as it’s logical for long straightaways not to feature on each track. Chicanes do exist on both of the new tracks, so that’s fun.

4. AGGRESSIVE LEGENDS
This rule allows Legends (the "bots") to cross both corners of a Chicane in one move, which gives cars on autopilot some welcome teeth. To avail itself of this option, a Legend needs to start its move on a space marked with a chevron, and those are depicted on both the Japan and the Mexico tracks.
It’s also possible to use that rule on the Great Britain track, and the expansion provides little chevron markers you can put over the relevant spaces.
I wish.
The reality is this: Players are invited to draw chevrons on their Great Britain track.
I’m not one of those boargamers who would never take a Sharpie to their game and implement alterations. (In fact, I did just that to number the spaces on my Grand Prix, Thunder Alley and Apocalypse Road tracks so we could race against each other remotely at the height of the pandemic.) But it’s the first time I run into an expansion suggesting that I modify some material in the base game without giving me what I need to do so, and asks me, instead, to just draw something on one of the original boards.
I was very much not impressed by this.
(Sure, they could also not have said anything about Chicanes on the Great Britain track, but it would have meant one more expansion element that’s impossible to use on the base tracks.)

5. SUPER COOL
Some cards sport a new symbol that lets you take a heat card from your discard pile (instead of your hand) and put it back in your engine.
This is a really fun concept, but it’s only deployed on advanced upgrade cards and sponsorship cards. I wish they’d decided to add a basic upgrade with super cool for each car, which would have given even the basic rules a fresh feel. As it stand—and if you, like me, tend to always play Heat with new players and opt for the basic rules—you won’t partake in much of that super cool fun.

6. NEW CAR + MATERIAL
The base game shipped with six cars, with room in its insert for two more. This was surprising to me, because the core of racing games—what we’re all here for—lies in negotiating a track full of opposing vehicles. The venerable Formula D could accommodate 10 players right out of the gate, and apart from Flamme Rouge (from one of the same designers), I can’t remember any racing game that added more vehicles/players as time went on.

The argument could be made that both Flamme Rouge and Heat require “more stuff” (i.e. a deck of cards and a player dashboard) than just a vehicle for each new player, and being prudent with a lower price point so you can gauge interest in your base game before you invest in more material for more players does hold water here.
But once you have a smash hit on your hands, why hold back on the number of cars in your follow-up product? We’re even told this time around that the game was designed and tested with 12 cars, but we’re still just getting one more. (The new tracks reflect that intent with 12 starting spaces, when the four base-game tracks only displayed eight.)

7. CHAMPIONSHIP
We get four new event cards, which we can never have too many of. More championship options is always a good thing.

Other comments, in no particular order:

No update to the Legends deck
I’ve read discussions of production considerations (there are only so many card slots on a print sheet and so on) and I guess that’s a valid argument from a strictly monetary point of view. But the fact remains that if you want to play with seven cars on the track (and why wouldn’t you?) then one of the human players must play orange—because the Legends deck, as printed in the base game, doesn’t take orange into account.

Sure, you can say that whenever green comes up on a Legends card it really means orange, but that’s an unnecessary mental layer I would not expect a game that’s sold oodles of copies to burden me with in an expansion. And if it was too expensive to reprint the Legends deck for just one additional car… then why not a) add more cars in one go, or b) reprint the Legends deck right now to accommodate all 12 cars and be done with it?
No room on the cards? There’s a ton of different formats out there ripe for the picking, but the simplest idea (to steal from the most recent edition of Formula D) would have been to make all 12 cars into six pairs of cars: two yellows (one with a black stripe), two reds (one with a black stripe), and so on. Not only would you be opening the way for a “racing stable” variation in the future, but you’d also be making sure that your original Legends deck will work no matter what: the yellow number moves both yellow cars, the red number moves both red cars, etc.
Right now, racers are wondering how many new cars will need to be in the game (i.e. how many expansion boxes later) before we get an updated Legends deck. Not a great feeling.

Very little content for the basic rules
I’ve mentioned it earlier in this review: Almost every time I get Heat to the table, we have a handful of new players around the track, and it just makes sense to use the basic rules with those people. (And it’s also true for most of the Heat owners around me.) So no garage options, no championships, no sponsorships… (Thought we tend to add Legends and weather as soon as we hit race #2.) This means that most of the time, for us, the expansion comes down to one more car and two more tracks. It’s pretty thin.
As I’ve previously highlighted, nothing in here is backwards compatible – not even the Legends deck – so nothing in the expansion will affect the way you race on the four original tracks if you don’t use the advanced rules. Well, there is a seventh car, and you can always draw those chevrons on your Great Britain track. But it’s not much.

Overall quantity of content
This is debatable, and I won’t get into the whole pricing knife fight. (But yes, I was taken aback at the box’s contents after paying for it.) Even if you consider every item in the expansion, it’s not very much. But beyond that, my main gripe here is that it’s a feeble expansion that probably won’t really change the way you play Heat. My consumer perception—and I don’t seem to be alone in this—is that you’re getting two new tracks and one new car, plus some other bits, most of which are weirdly integrated and not backwards compatible.

For a system where we’re told everything was thought of long in advance, Heavy Rain sure doesn’t feel like it. There are too many instances that make you go, “Well, if they knew they were going in this direction, why did they print it like that?” and furrow your brow about the future (“So I guess all future tracks will either be permanently flooded, or never?”) I mean, what about strong winds or night conditions—are things like that also going to appear on selected tracks only?

As such, I cannot recommend Heavy Rain to my boardgaming friends. It just doesn’t feel like an expansion worthy of that name. Even at half the price, I would still say that Heavy Rain doesn’t feel like an expansion for our beloved Heat.

It just feels like a couple of new tracks.