Strike is a game about Lech Wałęsa – a Polish electrician who became a trade-union activist, co-founded Solidarity (the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union) and even became President of Poland.  The game focuses on the Polish strikes of 1980 and the agreement reached between the workers and the government.

The game is by the designer of Kolejka (Queue) which is one of my favourite games and which also has a historical Polish theme.  The game itself has a deck-building game mechanic at its centre but the game has a difference.

On their turn, a player uses their cards to move Lech Wałęsa around the board and gain better cards by using cards in their hand.  The first player to gain 2 agreement cards wins (in the real events, 21 demands were made of the government by the workers and these cards represent agreement to these demands).

The reason this seems a bit different is because there is only one Lech Wałęsa on the board and each player continues moving them from wherever they have been left by the previous player.

Like with other deck-building games, there are cards that allow players to draw more cards and remove cards from their deck completely.  I get the impression from the rules that players will be trying to keep a focused and constantly evolving deck of cards.

Strajk looks like an intriguing (and relatively short) game using a solid game mechanic with  twist.  I’m definitely looking forwards to trying this one out.

I have encountered the deck-building game mechanic in some unusual and inventive places recently where it works well, such as Freidmann Friese’s humorous electioneering game Copycat, AEG’s railway line building game AEG’s Trains, and now Polish strikes of the 1980’s.

You can read the rules and see the details of the game on the publisher’s web site using this link:  bga.me/strajk

James.