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The Hunger
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Description
The Hunger is a race in which each vampiric player must optimize their card deck, hunt humans to gain victory points, fulfill secret missions, and eventually acquire a rose and return to the castle before sunrise. The more you hunt, the slower both you and your deck become, which will make it harder and harder to get back before daybreak. Can you become the most notorious vampire without burning to ashes at sunrise?
During the game, players spend "speed" to move their vampires around the map, hunt humans worth victory points, and add new cards to their deck.
The game ends at dawn, after which the surviving player with the most victory points on their cards wins!
Vampires have been a mainstay in folklore for centuries. Inspiring many movies, stories and of course board games. Countless perceptions of vampires have been created over the years, allowing the imagination of their creators to run wild. So how have Richard Garfield and Renegade Game Studios interpreted their version of these blood-sucking legends? Let’s find out if you dare, with The Hunger!
Fancy A Steak
In the Hunger 2-6 bloodthirsty vampires have awoken and its feeding time. As you venture out from the safety of the castle grounds looking for your next tasty meal of refreshing human blood. But be aware! You must precede with caution, because if you fail to return to the castle by the end of the 15th round, you will suffer the fate of the rising sun and be burnt to a crisp. Losing all your accumulated points in the process!
Sound harsh? This is the beauty of this game. If you’re not careful all your hard work will become undone. At its heart, the game is a deck builder, seeing you deal 3 cards each from your deck to determine your speed points for that round. You will then have to decide how many of these points you want to commit to your movement and how many you want to hunt with. To the side of the main board is the hunt track. Each round a new set of cards is added and cards from previous rounds are shunted down to a lower cost. This is where you will spend your speed points for hunting and effectively build your deck with new cards.
Do You Come Here Often
The village in which you and your vampire buddies go hunting in, is a one-way road all the way to the labyrinth. This is the furthest point from the safety of the castle but can also provide the best rewards. So, you must decide if you want to risk it all for more bonuses which will lead to bigger points, or do you stay close to the castle to increase your chances of a safe return?
Visiting crypt spaces will enable you to gain mission cards, which if completed will grant you end of game points. Chest spaces further on into the village will give you a one-time effect to use when you see fit and if you are lucky enough to get the parasol bonus, this will give you an extra turn at the end of the game to get back to the castle if you should need it. Each round the first turn is given to the player that is furthest away from the castle, so add this to your thinking and you can get first dibs on those tasty new cards.
Pick A Card, Any Card
There are 4 different card types to choose from during the game.
- Power cards will provide you with speed points which can be spent on movement and on the hunt track, some will provide you with effects to aid you on your journey.
- Familiar cards are your friends, mythical creatures that will stay permanently in your hand once played and will grant you bonuses until the game end.
- Eternal rose, these beauties lie furthest away from the castle and will certainly be risky going after them, these rewards are great, but will they leave you hard pressed to get back? There are only 3 available so choose wisely.
- And of course, humans, these will be the main source of points during the game but won’t offer you any speed points. Lower scoring humans will just give you points, but the tastier higher scoring humans will give you negative effects when drawn, slowing you down in the process and certainly drive a stake into your plans. Human cards are sorted into 4 different types which can offer points at games end for certain set collection bonuses.
All the cards that you hunt will go into your personal deck and at some point, be drawn out into your playing hand. So, you must be mindful as to what you’re hunting, you don’t want to keep drawing a hand full of humans otherwise you won’t be moving at all. The cards on the hunt track start at a cost of 3 speed points, then each round all un-hunted cards move right and decrease in value to 2 speed points and finally to 1 speed point where the cards can get pooled, so the opportunity to hunt multiple cards for just 1 point could be a smart bit of business, consider it like a vampire buffet.
Component Quality
The artwork in this game is great. The characters have been portrayed in a cartoon style, which give the vampires a less threatening feel than the usual gory gothic personas we are probably used to seeing. This in turn welcomes a wider range of players to the game and allows slightly younger players to get involved who may not like the darker side that surrounds vampires. But this does not take away the essence of the characters, the artist has done a fantastic job in achieving this. This has been transferred into the game board giving it a very thematic feel as if you are playing in an eastern European village.
The player tokens are different coloured wooden discs, which have a screen-printed image of each vampire on them. The scoring counters are also coloured wooden pieces matching your scoring tokens. I was a little disappointed by the cards as I felt they were a little thin, and considering they are the main component to the game and will be handled quite a lot, it may be advisable to sleeve them if the game comes out a lot. But this is a minor grip. The box insert also gives you plenty of slots to separate and sort the cards and components, which is helpful when you have a large deck of cards and 6 personal starting hands.
Final Thoughts
I enjoyed playing The Hunger and felt it brought a few interesting elements into the game. Even though the game is a deck builder, it does feel more like deck destruction as the game goes on. Your hand effectively gets weaker the more humans you hunt. So, striking that balance of what to hunt and when really come into play. But by far the best part of the game is the push your luck side of the game.
Do you risk moving further away from the castle for the allure of greater rewards? If you do, then you run the risk of being burnt to a crisp if you don’t make it back. That’s the beauty, you could be flying high one minute scoring lots of points, then bam! You mistime your return or get a run of bad draws from those pesky humans and its all for nothing. You lose! And all you can do is add up what could have been. But it did provide plenty of discussions after the first play about tactic and strategies for our future endeavours on the hunt, and I am looking forward to getting this game back to the table.
So, you have awoken from your long slumber and you, and your blood sucking buddies are in need of some refreshments. With so many choices available let’s take a look at how you go about finding the best meals to satisfy the Hunger!
The Setup
Just to pre-warn you, there are a lot of bits to the set up so I will try and streamline it as best as I can. Before you start playing the Hunger, you must decide if you want to play the Rookie mode or the Elder mode. In this how to play I will be covering the Elder mode. Place the Hunger game board in the middle of the table ensuring that side B is face up. Construct the hunt track next to the board ensuring there is one extra row to the number of players (e.g., 4 rows in a 3-player game).
Each player then chooses a vampire and takes their corresponding sheet, vampire token, scoring token and starter deck of 6 cards (these are identified by your vampire picture) Remove the 3 rose cards and place them in the labyrinth space, shuffle the remaining cards and place them near the hunt track. Next shuffle all the bonus tokens face down and place one on every chest space. If the chest is illustrated as open, then turn these bonus tokens over. Return all unselected tokens to the box. Take 3 cards from the top of the hunt deck and place them face down onto the tavern space.
Place the moon token on the first space above the hunt track, this will act as the round indicator. Place the castle point tokens onto the castle, for 2 players use the 10/6. 3 players use 10/6/4. 4 players use 10/8/6/4 and 5 players use 10/8/6/4/2. When preparing the mission tiles remove all the ones showing 5+ if you’re playing a 2-4 player game. Collect all of the missions with a beige background and mix them together, randomly choose 2 for the public mission spaces. Now mix in the tiles with a gold background, then each player draws 2 and chooses 1 to keep and 1 to discard back to the box. The remaining mission tiles will get stacked into the crypt spaces, with the corresponding amounts shown on each space.
The First Turn
In the Hunger, to determine which player goes first, each player shuffles their deck and draws 3 cards. Each player then adds up their speed score, this is shown on the top left of the card. The player with the lowest speed will go first. Stack up the vampire tokens at the castle in turn order. Once this has been decided, you can prepare the hunt track by drawing one card face up in each row in the 3 column.
Move & Hunt
At the start of each turn, each player will draw 3 cards from their personal deck. If you don’t have enough cards, then shuffle your discard pile to create your new deck. Once you have drawn your cards you must always activate any draw and discard effects first and they can be completed in any order. Then calculate your speed, you must then decide how much you want to commit to movement and how much you want to spend on the hunt track.
When moving your vampire, you are free to move through any space, if you finish your turn on a space that is occupied by another vampire you can push them to an adjacent space if you want to. Remember you don’t have to move your vampire if you don’t want to, but you won’t be able to claim the space benefit if you don’t move. The value of cards on the hunt track ranges from a cost of 3 down to 1. When you hunt a card from the track, they will have a VP value that you add to your score track and some will have effects that will be instantly activated or later on in the game. All cards that are hunted will go into your discard pile (unless effect states otherwise) and will be shuffled when its time to create a new personal deck.
Board Effects
There are many board effect spaces on the map, and these are usually activated or scored when you land on them. The most common are the bonus tokens that will score you 2 points when claimed and will offer you a one-time effect when you choose to use it. Landing on a crypt space in the Hunger will allow you to claim a new mission, these will be a mix of in game and end of game scoring opportunities to help build your score. All the effects are listed within the rule book.
End Of Turn Clean Up And Next First Player
Once each player has completed their turn, you must discard your hand and draw 3 new cards into your playing area. Move the moon token one space. Slide all cards on the hunt track one column to the right and draw a new set of cards into the 3 column. You will find that as the game progresses multiple cards will start pooling in column 1. If you buy from this column, you will take all the cards that have pooled.
The first player to move in the next round will be the vampire that is furthest from the castle. If there are players in the same region, then it will depend on which road they are on. Players that are on the road will go first followed by players on the railroad, then on the boat path.
So, How To Win
After 15 rounds of play dawn breaks, and that triggers the end of the game. Any player that has not made it back to the castle will get burnt to a crisp, and any points you have accumulated during the game will also be lost. If you want to add up your scores for poops and giggles to see how you would have fared, then feel free. If you only manage to get to the 3 graveyard spaces next to the castle then you have survived, but you must sacrifice 5 VP from your score.
If you do manage to return to the castle you will score the points on the castle bonus tokens, getting there first will bring you greater rewards. If you were lucky enough to acquire a parasol bonus token during the game this will enable you an extra turn at the end of the game to try and reach safety. But you won’t be able to purchase from the hunt track. All safely returned vampires will add any card bonuses and completed mission bonuses to their score, remembering to check if you have completed any of the public missions. The winner will then be the vampire that has the highest score. In case of a tie, the vampire that arrived back at the castle first or closest to the castle will win.
The rulebook does offer a very good appendix, explaining all of the iconology and their effects in case you get stuck, which can be very useful during the game
That concludes our how to play for The Hunger. Did this help you out? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy The Hunger today click here!!
Zatu Score
You might like
- Great artwork
- Deck builder/destruction
- Push your luck
- Highly replayable
Might not like
- Could walk away with nothing
- Too many humans will lie heavy on your stomach