Black Rose Wars: Rebirth

I acquired Rebirth with the sound judgement of someone who may have clicked all-in by accident, then had to face the courier. What arrived was roughly half a metric tonne of plastic and cards, with production values at the ceiling: the sort of thing that spreads across the table and makes an ordinary evening feel faintly ceremonial. We played it clean, without expansions or flourishes, at four, and it was plainly a better experience than my previous encounter with the ROTAS box and all its madness.

The game still runs on spells, cards and scoring, but the spells are much more streamlined now. That does not make it any less substantial; it means the information and the choices do not all land on your head at once after a Tuesday at work.

How the cards fall still matters enormously, because in these eurotrash constructions it can fundamentally alter the feel of a session. Here, though, the scoring is more measured and the running time better judged, so the tension between players does not disappear into a process that outstays its welcome.

The designers have clearly put in the work to address a good number of the first edition's problems, and the result is a very good thing indeed. The one sour footnote is that the eight boxes from the first edition are now close to redundant, since there is no upgrade kit. The price of progress, I suppose: Rebirth is the version I wish I had played in the first place.