Hunger Games: Training Days

At the end of 2010 I was at a local book store trying to spend a gift certificate when a board game caught my eye. It was a board game based off of a book trilogy (the third book had just come out) and was marked down 75% off. A quick look at the game didn't get my hopes up that it was going to be very good and I'd never heard of the book series. I decided to get the first book and then later pick up the other two books and the game if I liked the first one.

It turned out that the first book, Hunger Games, is awesome. Possibly my favourite book of all-time, though we know how hard it can be to compare things across years and years. At any rate, it's really good. I eventually went back for the second two books (sadly only in hardcover when I got them) and the game. The game was gone, however. Oh well...

I was out at 401 last month and saw they actually had a copy of it. I snapped it up and gave it to my sister for Christmas since I knew she liked the books as well. The board game, sadly, was a bit of a disappointment.

Now, without spoiling the book too much (seriously, go read it if you haven't) the basic idea is every year they hold a 'hunger games' where 12 districts each appoint a teenage boy and a teenage girl to enter the games. The 24 kids get put into an arena of sorts and battle to the death. Last kid alive wins food and stuff for their district. There's all sorts of crazy things that can go on in a death arena...

A board game based on that premise seems like it could have a lot of potential. I envision a dungeon that gets built as you're playing the game with players linking up randomly to fight. It would be an elimination game, of course, with different characters and stats. I'm thinking it could have a Scotland Yard style mechanic so you don't really know if you're following along behind someone else or not... There may be some clever way to have the game track that sort of stuff but it could work with a GM character who oversees the arena while the players compete to see who will win. (Maybe give the GM some 'cylon leader' style goals?)

Unfortunately the board game doesn't have anything at all to do with the arena. There is no battle to the death. The key is in the last part of the name... 'Training Days'. The game simulates being one of the kids and training to get ready for the arena instead of the arena itself. So you do weight lifting and archery and junk like that instead of actually fighting each other. The theme was rather disappointing after the expectations I had.

As far as the gameplay goes it's a hidden auction system. Each round you flip up a card for every player and then you bid face down tiles to try to win the cards. You have a 1, a 3, and a 6 to spend each round. On top of your tiles you have a character with stats that you get to add to the card check. So someone with a high agility would be better at the archery challenge and someone with high strength would be better at lifting weights. The challenges are all vaguely related to the book and all of the characters are from the book too so it is still flavourful... Just no killing.

It has some interesting gameplay as you try to figure out who cares about which card and how much you need to invest in a specific card in order to win it. But it has a random game end condition and there's not really any long term planning. There are obviously correct plays every turn and you just need to figure out who is going to deviate from the script to try to steal a card cheaply.

Overall I'm happy I played the game once but I don't have any real desire to play it again. I am intrigued by the prospect of working out a system to play out the actual arena deathmatch though...