Either way, you don't need to watch the movie to get a vintage, heist feel - you can just play Burgle Bros! I often describe this game to people as "Ocean's Eleven: The Board Game." Burgle Bros is a cooperative heist game. You work your way through two to three levels of a building, looking for loot. You have several different actions you can take on a turn and each character has a unique personality and special action. As you move around the building, you can rush into rooms (more dangerous) or peak first (more time wasted). You need to balance this approach as you try to avoid the guards moving about. You need to find the safe on each level of the building and crack the combination (using a distinctive dice system) and then find the stairs to the next level. The final staircase gets you to the roof and your chopper.
I mentioned the guards and they're very important. The guards on each level have their own little deck and tells you which space they're headed to. That means you have a little planning room, except you don't know where they'll go after the current space. Plus, triggering alarms and moving up levels causes the guards to move more quickly. Beware! If any member of your team is caught too many times, you lose!
I've already confessed my somewhat guilty affection for the Ocean's Eleven movie, but what about this game (which is definitely not officially associated with Ocean's Eleven)?
TOTAL PLAYS: 10 cooperative, 15 solo
COMPONENTS
This is one of the best things about this game. Everything feels really sturdy and high quality. The chunky wooden meeples feel good to move around. Burgle Bros has a very nostalgic art style that is really enjoyable - gives it that extra Ocean's Eleven feel. Everything is done really nicely in this department. 5/5
RULES
For such a small rulebook, it's not very good. I remember spending the early days of playing this game flipping back and forth through the rulebook trying to find specific rules. I believe the most confusing ones were about the guards and when they sped up and when they moved when the players were on different floors. The basic mechanics and rules are easy enough to gather from the book, but anything specific and fiddly was tough to find. 3/5
GAMEPLAY
This game runs on a similar system to the Forbidden games (at least Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert - I haven't played the newest version, Forbidden Sky). The board is made up of a bunch of tiles laid out in a square. The players use different actions and powers to move around the board and interact with it, flipping unknown tiles over in the process. Burgle Bros has, by far, my favourite theme pasted on top of the tile system and a lot of other cool features as well - cracking the safe, the moving guards, all of the alarms and special rooms you need to watch out for. There are a lot of choices to make and even though there is randomness, you do have a decent amount of control to mitigate that randomness. 4/5
This game runs on a similar system to the Forbidden games (at least Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert - I haven't played the newest version, Forbidden Sky). The board is made up of a bunch of tiles laid out in a square. The players use different actions and powers to move around the board and interact with it, flipping unknown tiles over in the process. Burgle Bros has, by far, my favourite theme pasted on top of the tile system and a lot of other cool features as well - cracking the safe, the moving guards, all of the alarms and special rooms you need to watch out for. There are a lot of choices to make and even though there is randomness, you do have a decent amount of control to mitigate that randomness. 4/5
REPLAYABILITY
There is a lot of variability and randomness in the set up of the building floors. The stairs and safes are in totally different spots each time. You can choose to follow the plans in the rulebook or totally build your own buildings and place the walls wherever the heck you want. Different characters have different abilities that make them play different. There is a lot here that makes each game different. And yet...I still found it feeling very much the same after 10 or so plays. Don't get me wrong, this is a good game, but it didn't have the same draw after a while. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on exactly why, though. 4/5
There is a lot of variability and randomness in the set up of the building floors. The stairs and safes are in totally different spots each time. You can choose to follow the plans in the rulebook or totally build your own buildings and place the walls wherever the heck you want. Different characters have different abilities that make them play different. There is a lot here that makes each game different. And yet...I still found it feeling very much the same after 10 or so plays. Don't get me wrong, this is a good game, but it didn't have the same draw after a while. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on exactly why, though. 4/5
FUNWhat's not to love about stealing from the rich to give to...yourself? There is a lot of good stuff in this game. It's a relatively unique theme, but it builds on a familiar and successful model. There is a lot of cooperation, although it does have the tendency to be taken over by the strongest personality at the table (although this depends heavily on your game group). The art and feel of the game is fun and quirky. This game should have a lot of replayability, but it begins to feel the same after a while. The rulebook is not strong and it can be pretty frustrating when you're first learning to play. Even after playing it for a while, you can't be sure you're doing everything properly. That's not a good feeling to have. All that being said, I did have a lot of fun with this game, both cooperatively and on my own. It was stronger as a cooperative game and since I do most of my gaming solo, I've since sold it. 7/10
TOTAL SCORE: 23/30
This is a really good game and if you love cooperative games with this kind of theme, you should check it out. I will warn you though - the price point is high for what you get in the box.
This is a really good game and if you love cooperative games with this kind of theme, you should check it out. I will warn you though - the price point is high for what you get in the box.
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