Cost:$15.00 plus 10% shipping From: Avalon Hill Game Co., 4517 Harford Rd., Baltimore MD, 21214, 1-800-638-9292 Players: 3-4 Playing Time: 90-180 minutes Type of game: Family Complexity: 7 Skill level: 6 Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 1.3, Feb./March 1993
Avalon Hill is well-known for its simulations and war games, most of which tend to be difficult to learn, are complicated to play, and take a long time to finish. TV Wars is a happy exception. A game can be completed in under 2 hours (although it may go a little longer) and can be picked up quickly by even a casual game player.
TV Wars positions 3 or 4 players as the presidents of rival television networks (although it could theoretically be played with only 2 people, it would lose much of its excitement). Your objective is to get higher ratings than your opponents and knock them out of the game. The last surviving network wins.
Players start with an array of randomly selected action, drama, sit-com, and "other" programs varying in length from 30 to 120 minutes long. On your turn you roll the dice and move your token around the game board, following the instructions on the space you land on. The action centers around acquiring programs and stars which will bring your network high ratings, and it all comes to a head when someone lands on a Ratings War space. Players then secretly select programs to fill the 8PM-11PM time slots. When everyone is ready, all programming is revealed. Most programs have fixed ratings of 20-90. The ratings for some programs ("Specials"), determined by a roll of the dice each time they are played, can go as high as 120. Starting with the 8PM time slot, players compare programs. Programs of the same type (3 dramas, 2 sit-coms, etc) suffer a ratings drop when competing against each other. The lowest-rated program in a given half-hour time slot gets discarded from the game. If a player runs out of programs, he's out of the game, too.
Winning a time slot gives you a 5-point "lead-in" bonus into the following time slot. While moving around the board, you may get the opportunity to acquire items which can modify your ratings. At the talent agencies, players can bid on stars which give a 10-30 point boost to one program in your line-up. If you're lucky, you might win an Emmy for a one-time 50 point bonus to one show. On other spaces you draw newspaper or television reviews which will either help or harm your rating, depending on the review. When a ratings war comes around, you're obligated to attach all of your reviews to programs in your line-up, if possible. Each program can only have one modifier-- a review, star, or Emmy-- and all but the stars are discarded when the ratings war ends. But if a star's program loses in the ratings, the star gets discarded along with it.
Some spaces on the board allow players to choose a random program (of their choice of type and length) and put it up for auction. Nobody knows what the program or its rating is while they bid-- it could be a flop or a smash success. Other spaces allow the purchase of one-time broadcast rights of an Academy Award-winning two hour movie, guaranteed to bring in a 100 rating. Special bulletin cards introduce random events into the game, including union strikes, contract disputes, and the rights to broadcast the Super Bowl. And the right roll of the dice could entitle you to steal stars or programs from opponents, collect an unexpected windfall from sponsors, or pay an inconvenient fine to the government.
The rule booklet for TV Wars is well organized and indexed. All major compenents have clearly-labelled sections, making it easy to resolve questions during the game. The titles of all TV programs in the game are puns and parodies of actual programs-- M*U*S*H, I Hate Lucy, Stuporman, etc., and the tone is very much tongue-in-cheek. Fortunes can change very quickly as programs are eliminated and stars stolen back and forth. Celebrity and programming auctions are frequently tense and heated as players try to gauge their opponents' limits and drive the price as high as possible without getting stuck with the bill themselves.
The biggest flaw in TV Wars is that even after the first player gets knocked out the game can continue for quite some time, leaving the eliminated player with nothing to do but read a book or watch everyone else play. You may wish to stop the game at that time and declare the player with the most valuable assets as the winner.
TV Wars is suitable for all ages-- if they can handle Monopoly, they should be able to handle this. Moreover, it's an excellent board game for adults, and there are precious few of those. There's just the right mix of strategy and luck, perfect for the beer-and-pretzels crowd. You'll need to punch out all the programming chits, and you'll want to store each program type separately, so have a few baggies handy. With the prep-work out of the way, TV Wars should give you a pleasant alternative to zapping around with the remote control.