A gamer that prefers thematic games like Mansions of Madness, Pandemic: Legacy, Eclipse, and Fleet Captains, Christopher played FAZA four times with a variety of different people before sitting down to write his review. The game piqued his interest due to its replay-ability and brevity. He goes on to say:
One thing that I want to make sure I impress upon the reader is the amount of variety provided in what appears to be a small package. It looks like it has the same amount of content as both Pandemic or Forbidden Island, but that is deceptive – it has more.
After receiving significant feedback about FAZA falling victim to quarterbacking, we’ve devised a modification to address this issue. The main way a player engages in quarterbacking is by commanding others via spoken word and hand gestures. There are a few ways we can address this issue: we can give players secret information, private missions and goals, someone can become a traitor to the group, and/or we can limit communication. We decided limiting communication is the best option because it fits within the war story of the game.
Introducing a new set of rules we’re calling Radio Communication.
In real life war scenarios, radio signals are used to transmit data to communicate between various groups. These radio signals are the only way to communicate while not in line of sight and these transmissions can be intercepted. This idea laid the foundation for this rules update.
Theme & Story Update:
While designing FAZA, we do our best to root any game mechanic within the story to help players remember the game’s rules. That said, here’s what we’ve come up with for implementing Radio Communication.
As players traverse the apocalyptic landscape of FAZA and travel from tile to tile, players are rarely in the same location. They have to fight the FAZA on many fronts in different locations while also discussing tactics and strategy. To talk with one another, players now need to use their radio.
Game Mechanics Update:
At Start of Game: All players start with 1 point.
New Action, Radio Communication: A player may spend 1 point to start Radio Communication with all other players sitting around the table. All other players may choose to reply in any order (or even at the same time). The length of transmission is one full breath. (Choose your words carefully)
Communication Restrictions: Players may NOT talk or hand gesture or make facial expressions about the game with one another. If you want to talk strategy or tactics (i.e. which motherships you’re going to attack, which tile you’re traveling to, which drones you’re going to combat, etc.) you need to start Radio Communication. Of course, you’ll still need to make a remark about passing the dice in order to engage in combat and you may still chat about getting food, going to the bathroom, getting drinks, and your day-to-day lives.
While On The Same Tile: If players are on the same tile, they do not need to start Radio Communication to speak with one another. They may speak freely with each other. The communicating players must do their best to ensure other players will not hear the exchange or see any gestures.
Modifications for a Harder Difficulty: If you want to up the difficulty, you may add the following rule. After Radio Communication has ended, the FAZA have a chance of intercepting your communication. Whoever decided to speak must roll a die. If you roll a 4 or more, add a drone to your location. This only applies to players that engaged in Radio Communication.
New Players: If this is the first time you’re playing FAZA, we do not recommend playing with the Radio Communication rules in place. You should learn the game as well as you can before adding in this rule.
Questions, Comments, Feedback: If you have any questions, comments, or feedback about any of these changes please contact us or leave your thoughts below. We’ll do our best to address it.
A gaming omnivore and father of two, David played FAZA with his kids. He gave FAZA an 8 out of 10 for himself and his kids rated the game a 10 out of 10!
“The game is so much fun, and has something to offer for everyone, that I keep getting requests for it.”
“If you enjoy cooperative games at all or like the feeling of being backed up against the wall that has more personality and fun than a virus (or if viruses ravaging the planet seems just a little too real these days), you ought to go out and grab a copy of FAZA. You won’t be disappointed.”
Erik was sent a copy of FAZA to review, and some of his top games include Star Wars: Armada, Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness, Eldritch Horror, and Scythe. His core gaming group consists of him and his wife. He enjoyed playing the game and also had useful suggestions to help improve the game.
“Faza is a fun game to play- My wife and I could play it in about 30ish minutes, counting setup/teardown, as 2-4 characters. It was enjoyable, and the components are really nice.”
The pandemic has been a difficult time on many small businesses across the country and ours is no exception. The lack of in-person board game conventions to demo FAZA to early adopters and potential customers has been especially hard hitting.
We’ve been feeling stuck, so over the past week we’ve decided to try something new and old fashioned. We’re sending postcards to board game stores across the country.
We scoured the internet for retailers, their contact info and addresses. We designed a postcard, printed shipping labels, and purchased over two hundred stamps.
They’re now in the mail and on the way to retailers. As different stores start carrying FAZA they’ll start appearing in FAZA’s retail locator. So if you’re interested in getting a copy of FAZA, please consider buying from one of your local retailers. And if your local game store doesn’t carry FAZA, do let them know that you would like them to carry it! 🙂
Depending on how these postcards are received, we’ll then move on to step two: calling each store to see if they’re interested in carrying FAZA. Once we call different board game stores we’ll write another blog post about the experience.
Now that a few retailers are carrying FAZA in their stores, we’ve added a dedicated page for people to find their local board game store that carries FAZA.
When you land on the locator page, you’ll see a Google Map with points of interest showing the different retailer locations.
