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 eventually went on to become President of Poland.  The game focuses on the Polish strikes of 1980 and the agreement reached between the workers and the government. (Yes, really.)

This theme may sound unusual even compared to some other board games, but the historical Polish theme is more understandable when you know the game is by Karol Madaj the designer of Kolejka (Queue) – one of my favourite games ever – who designs games for Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.  One of their goals is to mark important moments in Polish history.

Theme-aside, Strajk is fundamentally a deck-building game mechanic but with a board and a bit if a difference too.  (If you’re not familiar with deck-building games such as Dominion, players each have their own deck and play cards to add better cards to their deck, take special actions, remove weaker cards from their deck, etc.  Whenever their deck is empty, they shuffle their discard pile and start drawing from it again so their deck builds as they play.)   Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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Ogonek (which means ‘Line’) is the expansion for one of my favourite games Kolejka (meaning ‘Queue).  Kolejka is a game where players are queuing for goods at shops in 1980’s Poland.  As crazy as it sounds, it’s a superb game and a very historical theme.  For more details on Kolejka see my full review.

Ogonek adds a few new elements to the game.  One item is that it adds the potential for a 6th player (as Kolejka is 2-5 players) which is a welcome addition.  Having 6 players adds a bit more chaos into proceedings than with fewer players as more things can happen to your plans between your turns.

Ogonek adds alcohol as a new item.  Rather than having to queue at shops for this, players can place one of their queuers on one of the available alcohol goods cards at the side of the board.  At the end of the round, the player receives the alcohol (so it’s not usable in the round they obtain it).  Alcohol can be used to bribe the speculators (the neutral queuers that get in the way) which allows the player to swap places with them in the same queue.  Alcohol can also be used as a substitute item when swapping goods at the market.  So, alcohol is useful but too powerful.
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