Resist! Review

Summary

Will you be able to Resist General Franco as part of the Spanish Marquis, or will you succumb to failure? This is a solo only card game which offers a plethora of interesting decisions to make and an intriguing push your luck mechanism at the end of each round where you choose whether you are going to end the game or if you are going to carry on and try an achieve a more resounding victory.

Solo gaming has started to become more a more popular in recent years but it is still uncommon for a game to come out which is solo only. I have had mixed reviews on most of them but I found that Resist! was engaging and something I was more than happy to play game after game.

Gameplay

The game is fairly easy to set up and your deck is either randomly dealt out using half of the Marquis cards or, once you are more used to the game, you can draft them so that you can try and handpick the cards that you want. The missions are then set up a in a 3 stage deck so that you know the initial ones are easier than the ones to come with four missions starting out in play. Each of these missions come with a number of facedown enemies which will have varying abilities and effects that come into play when you to attempt to complete the mission.

Your deck of Marquis cards are nice, big and have two clear sides which is one of the first key decisions that you need to make. The effect on the left of the card is its hidden one, which is generally less powerful but means that you card will get shuffled back into your deck at the end of the turn. If you use it for the effect on its right, you will be able to take advantage of its more powerful side but he character will no longer be hidden though and you will lose them for the rest of your game. To be successful you need to make sure that you pick the right moment to use the revealed side of your characters, as every time you do, your deck is going to get smaller and smaller. Although this is a very small thing that we have seen done similarly in many other games, it works exceptionally well in this setting and fits the theme perfectly

At the end of each round, you get to decide whether you want to continue or end the game. You will know how many points that you have scored and there is a table in the rulebook which ranks you based on your score. This leads to a great push your luck mechanism as you get to the end of each round and have to decide whether you want to push on and secure one last victory despite a depleted hand, or will you call it quits with a less emphatic victory……

What is there to like?

This game sings in numerous ways for me. First of all is the speed of gameplay. Each round is quick to get through without sacrificing any of the interesting decision making. The games are as long as you want to push them to be.

I also love games where you don’t use all of the options. In Resist! For example you only use half of the characters, therefore you don’t know what is going to be in your deck or not. This is then ramped up if you use the drafting variant to try and cherry pick your hand which is excruciating when you draw your two favorite cards and know that you can only put one in your deck. Resist! is also just a couple of decks of cards which I love to have as a solo game, although it is not quite as portable as it could have been (more on that later).

Overall I love the decision making in Resist! The decisions on whether to use the Hidden or the Revealed side of your character and then, at the end, whether you are going to push on and try and get a new high score or whether you are going to call it quits where you are. All of these aspects make me want to keep playing this game more and more.

What is there to dislike?

Not every game is perfect and there are certainly areas of Resist! that let it down. Firstly lets look at the one that I have already touched on and that is the portability of it. Although it comes in a smallish box, it is still far bigger than it needed to be. This is simply two small decks of cards and could have fitted in a box half the size it came in. This is something that could have been easily fixed and would give the game more of a portability aspect.

The other aspect that impacts the portability is the sheer table space that it takes up. With the location cards and all of the troops at the location as well as a play area for yourself, this is no small game. This does reduce the times it might come out because I may need to make space to play it.

Finally is the rulebook. Similarly to the above, it is not as if the rulebook is bad, in fact it taught me the concept of the game fairly well. However, after that first game, and even during, there were questions that started to pop up about timings and how to do certain things which were not covered in the book and I had to watch playthroughs and research in order to figure out. Sure, I could have just made a decision and gone with that but I also think that they could have been covered in the rulebook.

On a final note the card quality is not great either. With production values at the point that they are now, a game can really be let down by mediocre components and I fear that this one may do. This game is purely cards and therefore I feel that a little more could have been done to ensure that the cards themselves were of a good quality.

Final Thoughts

Overall I do like Resist!. I love the way it gives you tough decisions in an small amount of time and that I can take it away with me if I want to. Due to the length of time it takes I can play it multiple times in a row which I also really enjoy. There is also a lot of variety in the box, both with the fact you don’t use all of the cards and then there is also a scenario book which I have not even touched on yet. There are things that bring it down but there is certainly more good than bad in Resist! And I would certainly recommend it to those of you into solo gaming!

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