Matthew BaileyAs I go through my summer marathon, I am a firm believer that negative reviews are sometimes just as important as positive reviews. If you look across social media and various board game reviews, you will see some that only post recommendations. For those of you who have been reading my reviews for a few years now, you will know that, for me, that is very much not the case.
I vaguely plan out the order in which reviews are going to go live. I always try to mix up positive and negative reviews for the sake of flow. If I am being brutally honest, when “HIT” landed on my doorstep, I feared this was going to be a game very much falling into the latter category.
How very wrong I was.
Game 5# of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” is “HIT” by Ravensburger. Played with Jack(9) and Toby(6).
I am going to go on record now and say that while it might not be the best game I’ve played so far this year, “HIT” is definitely the game that surprised me the most and is definitely a game that board gamers need in their collection.
I can explain how “HIT” works in about a paragraph. Essentially, the game is the classic compendium game “Ludo,” but rather than movement being controlled by dice, movement is instead controlled by a deck of cards that you expand upon using a deck building mechanic.
Game is 2 to 4 players with a 2 sided board for 3 or 2&4 players.
Everyone starts with the same set of six cards that allow you to do basic things such as move your piece off of the starting point, gain coins, and move a certain number of spaces. As you play cards and gain coins, you can then spend those coins on better cards that give you more movement options, such as leapfrogging another player, immediately advancing to the next starting position, or going straight to the position of the next opponent’s piece and automatically stealing it.
This then turns “Ludo,” which is an unbelievably mainstream, simple game largely consisting of chance, into probably one of the most strategic games we have played as a family in recent memory.
As you build your deck, it’s also unbelievably important to pay attention to what the other players are putting in their decks. As you move around the board and try to avoid being sent back to the start by another player landing on your piece, you spend your time trying to work out what the chances are that the other players around the table are going to be able to land on your piece before it rolls back around to your turn again.
Moving a piece a few squares away from home and deciding whether you’re going to stop on a corner square or an arrow square, you vaguely try to remember if the player opposite has played their “move to the next corner” card since they last shuffled.
When I saw this game and opened the box, I had basically no expectations, essentially assuming this was some sort of modern variant of “Ludo.” But how very wrong I was. “HIT” is a very rare example of a gateway game that takes one of the most recognizable, ultra-mainstream classic games, turns the concept on its head with a modern mechanic like deck building, and makes one of the most strategic games I have played in quite a while.
When I first thought about this review, I was going to suggest they should have gone with a completely different theme. But on reflection, the perfect mainstream “Ludo” style graphics are essential to give it this dichotomy that makes it so compelling. Because of its friendly, mainstream nature, you could put this in front of non-gamer friends and grandparents, and within 10 minutes they would be playing a deck-building game.
This is not how I originally thought this review would go. “HIT” is something unusually special, and while, as I started my review with, this isn’t the best game I’ve played probably this year, it’s most definitely the one that surprised me the most.
Disclaimer: A copy of “HIT” was provided by “Ravensburger” for the purposes of review. Our thoughts and opinions are however my own (Toby(6) and Jack(9) aren’t going to have their judgement clouded I can assure you).
