Burned. A Kickstarter preview by Ben Bruckart

Kickstarter link:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stonecirclegames/burned

BGG link:  https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/358324/burned

Burned is a new game from Stone Circle Games. Burned is designed by Jon Moffat, who also designed “Horrible Hex”, “Traders, Raiders & Runners”, and “Pirate Kings”. Burned bills itself as a two-player asymmetrical game of cat and mouse that plays in 20 minutes. The cat and mouse part cannot be understated.

Each player’s goal is to eliminate their adversary. One player plays as a Burned Asset that is using equipment and stealth movements to evade capture while targeting and laying traps to kill the Director of the Agency. Across the table, the Agency employs a host of agents to try to flush out and kill the Burned Asset.

Setup:

The board is made up of location cards of 4 different colors.  The game comes with six different setups and the icons on the cards tell you which cards to use for each setup. Each card is adjacent to every other card that it shares a color with. The cards also are labeled with a letter that matches its color, to assist color blind players. Adjacency is only determined by the color/letter of the cards, not by its physical location in the display.

The Plaza is adjacent to everything, but the blue cards are only adjacent to each other blue card, not to the purple or orange cards.

Agency setup:

After putting out the location cards, the Agency can secretly select up to seven characters from various combinations of personnel – each with different abilities – but one must be the Director.

Each character has a hidden side that they start with and a revealed side with their name.

Each character can be in one of four states, designated by turning the orientation of the card: Sneak, Run, Overwatch, and Stunned.

The Agent places the characters facedown at the starting location, the Grove, with the sneak status.

Since movement is the primary Agency action, moving from one adjacent place to another allows them to sneak. Moving beyond adjacency forces the player to run (leaving them more vulnerable to attack). Staying in one location switches them to overwatch and effectively permits thinning out the Agent’s deck of location options. Stunned is a status used to take a character out of its other status for a turn.

Burned Asset setup:

The Burned Asset takes a set of locations identical to what has been selected on the table for common play and a package of five equipment cards. There are recommended kits for playing that generally resemble loadouts that I might see in Battlefield Combat or a good spy movie.

The ‘Burned Asset’ can play two equipment cards per turn and use one of them during their turn. The Burned Asset also plays a location where they are present (to either their sneak or run side) and a location to their aim side which might be the location their equipment is targeting. Prior to the start of play, they place one location card face down next to the Sneak side of their player card—this is their starting location.

Players take turns in alternating order starting with the Agency.

The Agency

1. Moves Characters
2. Searches eligible locations
3. Rotates stunned Agents to sneak (cleanup).

Moving Characters. The Agency can move any of their non-Stunned characters (cards) to a new location, where their status either becomes Sneak (for an adjacent location) or Run (for a non-adjacent location). Cards which aren’t moved have the Overwatch status. Then each location where there is a non-Stunned agent is searched. The ‘Burned Asset’ must reveal those cards from their hand or play area. If there is a trap card (more on that later), it triggers first. If the location has at least one agent with an Overwatch status on it, place an Overwatch token on the location; it cannot be hidden as long as an Overwatch agent remains there. If the ‘Burned Asset’ is at the location, reveal a combat card for each agent there.

The combat deck is a small deck of 7 cards that contains 4 hit cards, either killing an Agency agent or wounding the ’Burned Asset’. When the ‘Burned Asset’ is wounded, place a wound token on the location—it can never be hidden. Four wounds will signal killing the ‘Burned Agent’ and the Agency wins.

The Burned Asset

1. Use one of their two active equipment cards
2. Move and aim
3. Select two new equipment cards to be active for the next turn.

Revealed Agency cards are never hidden again but the ‘Burned Asset’ can constantly take all their location cards back and move like a leopard in a jungle.

When playing equipment cards, they can target certain locations like the ‘Aim’ location or be placed upside down on locations where the Burned Asset is currently at. This allows you to inadvertently find where the ‘Burned Asset’ has been and spent the last two turns determining, only to get a surprise.

Trap Cards work differently from other equipment. It is played face-down on the ‘Burned Asset’ Location Card. The Trap will stay at that location, even when the ‘Burned Asset’ moves. If one or more Agents search a trapped location, the Trap is revealed and resolved.

To move, place a location that doesn’t have a wound or overwatch token on it next to the player card, at either the Sneak or the Run side, as is appropriate. Another location can be played at the Aim side; this affects some equipment usage.

If the ‘Burned Asset’ player can kill the card which represents the Director, they win.

How it plays and my thoughts:

With those basics established, let me tell you that this is a game of deduction, luck, and clever anticipation. This is a very fun, loose, and enjoyable game of narrowing down your opponent’s options and cornering them only to have your best-laid plans messed up by a smoke grenade or a claymore that takes out your agent, thus narrowing down your tools for use in the future.

I tend to lean toward the heavy deterministic Euro-games, but this is a very satisfying lighter game with a fun blueprint for asymmetric play. I can only imagine they will add more characters, locations, and equipment cards for even more varied and exciting plays.

Things we uttered during plays: “It’s a good thing I left that trap there for you.” “I could see you coming a mile away;” and “Are you sure that Camera caught all my Agents in that location?”

After your first play, setup is effortless. You have a plethora of options to build your team (Agency) or equipment (Burned) and even more ways to employee them. It’s simple and effective. There’s plenty of options for taunting and even more for a-ha moments when traps explode, or the Asset moved from somewhere and left a nice surprise behind.

It has a simple footprint, cards that are well described and allow for many ways of playing.

Let’s take a beat to talk about the theme. The theme is clearly akin to a Hollywood action spy thriller. While I don’t care much for theme, it does tie the game neatly to the locations and the gameplay. I immediately felt like Mark Wahlberg in Shooter. That’s how well it fits and the eagerness to see your opponent’s cards can only result in wanting more future plays.

While we had a great time playing it, we did have some suggestions for improvement. I think the final copy of the location cards should have labels facing both directions, not just one. We were also momentarily confused by the Canal card, which is blue but has a hinge of orange. Does that mean it’s connected to orange (the beach)? We weren’t sure. Some icons could help here. I also thought the labels on the back of the cards were very helpful with setup. We also thought that the ‘Burned Asset’ had more fun with their options to play with, but that might change with repeat plays.

The game is simple but devilishly fun. Do you lay low and take out players or scout the enemy and try to leave breadcrumbs for them to follow? At a twenty-minute play time, you can try all the strategies and then teach your cat to play.

If any of this piques your interest, head on over to their Kickstarter page and give it a look.

Kickstarter link:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stonecirclegames/burned

-Ben Bruckart