Fort

10th August 2021

We're with the Woking Gaming Club for board gaming night at The Sovereigns in Woking for the second and final game of the evening.

So apparently, if you're a kid, the most important things to you, other than building a fort, is pizza and toys. Welcome to Fort, a game about very fickle personal relationships!

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What's in a game?

• ​Player board: Each player gets one of these groovy recessed game boards used to manage various elements of the game.
  Fort track: In a game called Fort, there better be something about forts and I'm not disappointed here. Every player's fort has a level from 0 to 5 and that's what this tracks, it also shows the cost to level up and associated benefits. Increasing their fort levels allows players to gain special cards, including the fabled Macaroni Sculpture Card and confers victory points.
  Stuff tracks: There are 2 stuff tracks in Fort, with 4 spaces each, they allow players to store tokens. One track is for pizza and the other for toys.
  Pack space: As in backpack I guess. Players can store extra stuff here, the bigger their fort, the more they can store.
  Lookout: On the left side of the board is a semi-circular indentation, to which you can send friends to! The bigger the fort, the friend cards can go to the lookout. Cards placed here can provide a permanent action improvement bonus to cards with a matching suit. More on this below.
  Yard: Finally, along the top edge of the board is space marked out as the Yard.
• Friend cards: In Fort there are 2 types of friend, normal friends and best friends! Apart from one specific rule, they're more or less identical and each card will have the following elements.
  Suit: In the top left of every card, its suit is displayed, Fort features 6 suits and a wildcard. Some cards will have 2 suits. These suits are Skateboard, Shovel, Glue, Squirtgun, Crown & Book. The wildcard is a Coin, money counts in any amount I guess!
  Public action: When a card is played, all players can perform the public action.
  Private action: Conversely, only the active player can undertake the private action.
  Public/Private actions are the card's special abilities, they allow to recruit or trash cards, gain resources, etc.
  Best friend cards: Where would you childhood be without best friends, those friends you'll probably never see again when you see again! However, in fort, they'll never leave you, unless of course, you shun them first!
  Friend cards: your general neighbourhood kids, the ones from a few doors down that you occasionally play with.
• Made up rule cards: These cards score players additional victory points during the endgame, provided they meet the required conditions of course. Any made up rule acquired is kept face-down until the endgame.
• Perk cards: Acquiring a perk card confers some sort of bonus or benefit during the game.
• Victory track: This board tracks players' victory points. There also a space along the bottom edge of the board marked as the park.
• Tokens: There are 3 types of token, for the game's 2 currencies - pizza and toys and for tracking tokens for victory point scores and fort levels
• Macaroni Sculpture card: Scores points for the player who acquires it and also triggers the endgame.

The cards and boards are pretty standard, normal quality components, what you'd expect from a modern game.
​The tokens are anything but average, big, chunky and colourful, they're a great addition to the game.
Stylised child-like art is used throughout Fort to decorate its cards and components, normally against a plain but colourful background, fairly effective art in my opinion.

Fort uses a lot of iconography; between the 7 suits on the cards and a plethora of symbols for card actions, there quite a lot to remember and the stylised art used for icons isn't always instantly clear. It's not a gamebreaker by any means but it does add to the learning curve. 

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How's it play?
Setup

• Perk cards: Shuffle the perk cards into a face-down deck. Deal a number of them equal to1 higher than the number of players face-up in a row above the victory park. The remaining cards will not be used.
• Made up Rules cards: Shuffle these into a face-down deck
• Player Board: Give each player a player board, the player should also receive the 2 best friends cards displayed on the flipside of the board.
• Park deck: Shuffle the friend cards into a face-down deck, deal 8 to each player. Then deal 3 friend cards face-up in the area below the victory track (The park area.).
• Player decks: All players should shuffle their 8 friend card and 2 best friend cards into a single 10-card face-down deck and draw 5 cards.
• Leader: Determine a 1st player.

On to play
​A round is pretty standard in Fort, the active player plays a card and the other players react. Then the player to the left becomes the active player.

• Clean up: At the start of the active player's turn, any cards placed into the yard at the end of their previous turn that are still there, are then placed into the active player's discard pile. This'll make more sense further down.
  Obviously this doesn't occur in a player's first turn.
• Play a card: It's playtime! The active player can choose to play a single card in front of them.
  Actions: Each card has 2 actions, a public action and a private one. The active player may choose to do either action or both in any order they see fit.
  There is one restriction only, the active player must fully perform 1 of the 2 actions, if they can't, then that card cannot be played.
  Improve action: Certain card actions have a variable effect, in this instance, the active player may also play 1 or more cards of a matching suit to increase the effectiveness of that variable action. Cards that a player has placed in their look out provide a permanent bonus that can possibly be used.
  However, the player must still be able to fully complete an action, if an improvement would make it impossible for the active player to do this, then the improvement cannot be used.
  An example of an action might be 'add 2 pizza tokens to the pizza track', if the active player only has 1 space left, then they cannot fully complete the action and cannot choose to do that action. The excess token could not be discarded.
  Follow: Once the active player has completed their action(s), other players may perform the public action the card played, again they must be able to fully complete the action in order to carry it out.

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• Recruit: Once action have been completed, the active player must recruit a new friend card.
  This can come from the park or blindly from the park deck, or from another player's yard. The card goes directly into the active player's discard pile.
• Discard: Cards are either discarded into the active player's discard pile or the yard at the top of their player board.
  Discard pile: The played card and any cards played to improve actions are placed directly into the player's discard pile. Best friend cards are always put into the discard pile, regardless of whether they were played or not.
  Yard: Any card left in the active player's hand - that is cards they did not play, must be placed in the active player's yard.
  This means they are vulnerable to being recruited by other players. That's what you get for ignoring your friends.
  ​Any friend cards left in a player's yard at the start of their turn are send to their discard pile as part of clean up.
  
• Draw: This also means the active player's hand is now also empty. As their final action, the active player now draws 5 more cards.
• Play on: Play now moves on to the player to the left, when a round is completed, first player moves one player to the left.

Endgame
There are 3 ways the endgame can be triggered.
If the park deck is depleted.
If any player reaches 25 or higher on the victory track.
If any player reaches fort level 5, they acquire the Macaroni Sculpture Card.
Once one of these criteria have been met, the current round is completed. Points can come the victory track, fort level, made up rule cards and the Macaroni Sculpture Card.
Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
The central theme and premise behind Fort is quite clever and charming. That is that friend cards are literally friends: Don't play a friend card, then that friend may go hang out with another player, although best friends are always loyal and more potential friends may be found at the park.
Building a fort is of paramount importance as are pizzas and toys. Halcyon days!

Fort blends together a bit of deck-building and a bit of drafting. Broadly speaking it provides players with the choice of performing actions to increase their victory points, or build up their fort. One provides points towards winning and the other confers benefits which hopefully helps later on.
Another very important strategy here is to watch what other players put into their yards, some vulture-like scavenging may net the sharp-eyed player's a useful card, simultaneously denying another player of it.
Thus players will also want to play as many of their 5 cards as possible, minimising the risk of losing friends. The better combos a player can generate, the more cards they can play.

But despite this, I found Fort a finicky game to play, there's lots of suits to remember, somewhat indecipherable iconography to navigate and occasionally overly-complex actions to comprehend.
The rule about having to fully complete an action in order to perform it all was a sticking point for me. I'm sure it's there's for balancing or a legitimate reason, but it felt so unnecessary and counter-intuitive.
It's frustrating being unable to use a card because it's too powerful and having to discard it into the yard, only to watch another player snatch it up. It turns Fort from what could have been light, breezy and quick, into slow, pedestrian grind instead.
Fort is a mechanically sound game with a strong theme and great presentation but somehow becomes a forgettable experience.