Grendel: All In Edition

Four factions fight for control of the streets of New York. Grendel — the masked alter ego of author Hunter Rose — rules by fear, while his archenemy Argent, a centuries-old werewolf, is on his trail. The Mob wants its turf back, and the Police mainly want the bodies in the streets to stop piling up. The game is based on Matt Wagner's legendary indie comic and features his own new artwork.

Game Mechanics

All four factions are asymmetric and each uses different mechanics — yet you'll grasp all of them within a few turns.

• Grendel pulls chits from a bag he builds up over the course of the game (bag building).
• The Mob allocates dice to different actions (dice placement).
• The Police move around a rondel (rondel action selection).
• Argent pushes his luck with a deck of cards (push your luck).

What all the factions do have in common is Aggression. Each of the three districts on the board has its own Tower, into which players put their Aggression. Sooner or later a Tower drops and the night erupts into Mayhem — everyone cashes in the Aggression they put in, the fighting starts, and points are handed out. After the third Mayhem the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

What Makes It Special

Three of the city's buildings are physical towers with a see-saw hidden inside. Players drop in Aggression tokens of different weights until the billboard on top drops — then you empty the building out to see who invested the most. Whoever tipped it goes first in the Mayhem phase, and the game flips from quiet scheming to open violence. It's the kind of hook you'd expect from Off the Page Games, the studio behind MIND MGMT, Harrow County and more.

What's in the Box

• 1 double-sided map
• 3 towers + 3 counterweights
• 4 player boards with solo mode
• Faction cards, tokens, chits, dice and figures for all 4 factions
• 15 solo cards
• 10 setup cards
• 1 starting player token
• 1 rulebook
• Press Faction Expansion — 5th faction: polyominoes, newspaper pages, reporters chasing down leads. Plays in any 1–4 player game and adds 14 new setup combinations.
• Pursuits and Payoffs Expansion — Pursuit and Payoff cards, Informants, Felonies, Bonus Tiles and Stacy. Several pulled straight from the comic.

Click the image below to see the original crowdfunding campaign: