Hollywood Blockbuster (Dream Factory) Review

Recently I've gotten several opportunities to play a game called Hollywood Blockbuster.  You should know - there are several different versions of this game, and I think that the current one is called "Dream Factory."  However, I'm not entirely sure what (if anything) has changed, so I will go ahead and review based off of my version of the game.

In Hollywood Blockbuster, each player takes on the role of a movie studio trying to have the most successful year.  Success is based on the number of stars on a movie as well as the number of awards the movie earns.  Play is divided over four rounds ("quarters"), and at the end of the year, best movie awards are handed out.  Each quarter consists of a number of auctions and parties.  In each auction, the players are bidding contracts (the currency of Hollywood), on various pieces for their movie - it could be for special effects, sound work, actors, guest stars, directors, or agents (which are wild).  All of the auction tiles are face up from the beginning, so that you know what else is available.  Whenever a player successfully wins and auction, he must immediately place or discard all of the new tiles that he has purchased (generally you win 2-3 tiles).  In addition, once the winning bidder pays for his new tiles, all of the other players get to divide the contracts spent among themselves.    Parties work a little differently.  Once you arrive at a party space, all of the tiles are flipped face up.  Then, starting with the player that has the most actors and guest stars ("star power"), each player gets to select a tile (for free) to add to his board.  As soon as a player completes one of his (up to three) in progress movies, he calculates the score and collects the corresponding scoring tile; then he receives another potential movie from the stack.  If he has completed the first movie of a given genre, then he wins a smaller award.  Plus, at the end of each of the first three quarters, whoever has the overall best movie gets a small award.  At the end of the game, all of the final awards are handed out, and the player with the best total score between awards, completed movies, and leftover contracts wins the game.

Each movie has different needs

So.  I've realized recently that I love auction mechanics.  As I perused my collection for games to take to game night the other day, in addition to Hollywood Blockbuster, I was tempted to bring For Sale, Modern Art, Vegas Showdown, Money, and a bunch of other auction games.  (Eventually I decided I should diversify a bit.)  But, with all of these auction games available, what is different or unique about Hollywood Blockbuster?  There are really two auction mechanics in this game that I think fit well together that I want to discuss - and I'll go ahead and list them as separate pros.  First, I like that whatever you pay is immediately divided among all of the different players.  One of the beautiful things about auction games is that players truly set the value of everything in the game - in one game, things may even go for half as much as in the next.  However, in my experience, this has never been more true than in Hollywood Blockbuster.  Since the contracts are constantly flowing back and forth, your group can really set the value for tiles as high or as low as you want.  I've played games where everything went fairly inexpensively, and I've seen games where almost every time someone bought something, they had to spend all of their contracts.

The second auction element that I think works well is the fact that tiles are grouped together.  There is only one auction per round in which a player buys a single tile - the first auction (which is for a 4-star director).  After that, the auctions will always be for at least two tiles.  I like this because it will cause more bidding wars than if the players were bidding on single tiles.  Sometimes this war will be because one player wants the sound board, and another wants the special effects.  Sometimes it will be because both players are just desperate to fill several empty places on their movie.  Sometimes the only special effects available for the round are paired with the best actor.  But, overall, auctioning several things at a time allows much more tension and excitement to be in the game.

My third pro for Hollywood Blockbuster is about the only other way of gaining tiles - parties.  I like the intrigue that parties present, where you don't know how good they will be.  Because you don't know what will be available, you always hope for the best.  What this indirectly does is increase the value of actors.  In addition to helping you with your movie, if you are able to purchase a lot of actor tiles, then you will get to pick first at the party, thus potentially giving you a nice 3-star tile for free.  And, of course, the downside of not having actors is that your opponents might get to pick a nice 3-star tile for free!  Of course, you might show up to the party, and there is nothing that you want.  I feel like the parties are a perfect element of controlled randomness in the game.

You don't have to win awards - but you should

The final pro that I will mention for Hollywood Blockbuster is the awards.  First of all, what kind of game about movies would be complete without awards?  So they definitely make sense thematically (well, except for the one that is for "Worst Movie").  However, the awards add an extra layer of strategic decisions.  Suddenly, you're faced with the following questions: Should I complete this now and get best of the quarter?  Should I complete a bad movie in order to be the first one to complete a comedy?  Do I really want to complete this movie now, when a drama will be the next movie, or should I wait, since someone else has already completed an amazing drama?  Should I make this movie awful and try for the Worst Movie award?  And, the awards also allow players to have a second path to victory - instead of simply getting the most stars on movies, getting the most stars on the right movies can also lead to victory.

The last thing that I will mention about Hollywood Blockbuster is more of a "point of note."  My copy of the game doesn't have licenses to any movies or actor names, so they are all spoofs.  You will see things like "Star Battles" instead of Star Wars, "The Prince Groom" instead of The Princess Bride, "Jim Scarry" instead of Jim Carrey, and "Dental Washington" instead of Denzel Washington.  Some people will like this, and will enjoy trying to figure out what all of the spoof names are referring to, whereas other people will probably be annoyed by it.  I know that at least one German version of the game is able to use actual actors and actresses (I'm not sure about movies), but it uses historically famous people - like Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra.  I am unsure of how Dream Factory addresses this issue.  Anyway, if this is something that is important to you, I'd recommend you looking at the different versions to decide which one will fit your tastes.

Overall, I give Hollywood Blockbuster a 9.0/10.  I really enjoy the game, and I intend to keep it in my ever-growing collection of auction games.

If Hollywood Blockbuster sounds interesting, then you might also check out Mice and Mystics, Notre Dame, and Legacy: Gears of Time.

Ra Review

An auction game that I picked up in a math trade recently (and then donated to my FLGS after it got quite wet in the tornado) was Ra.

In Ra, players are attempting to purchase different tiles to ensure that they either score victory points (or don't lose victory points) at the end of each epoch (scoring phase). To do this, each player starts with three bid tokens of different numbers. On a player's turn, he gets to choose between 1) drawing a new tile from the bag and adding it to the set of tiles available for auction (this could potentially start an auction), 2) purposely start an auction, or 3) steal one of the tiles that is currently in the auction pile (this can only be done if they have a special "god" tile that they have previously purchased). Whenever an auction begins, the players each have one opportunity to place their bid using one of the bid tokens that they have available. The winning bidder gets all of the tiles that were on the board, in addition to the bid token that was in the center of the board (which they turn facedown until the end of the epoch), and then they place their bid tile in the middle of the board. Play continues this way until all of the players have run out of face up bid tokens, or until a certain number of "Ra" tokens have been drawn (Ra tokens are tokens that instantly start an auction when they are drawn from the bag). One of these conditions signifies the end of an epoch. At this point, players score based on the number and selection of tiles they own. Rinse, repeat. (At the end of the third epoch, a few extra things score). After three epochs, the person with the most victory points wins!

The first pro for Ra is how the bid tokens work. I absolutely love this mechanic - and it really gives the game a different flavor than any other auction game that I have played. I love so much about them, that I'll probably have to split this into several "pro's". The first bid token pro is that they switch out whenever you win an auction. Because of this, the person with the highest token at the start of the game won't necessarily have the ultimate trump throughout the game. In fact, depending on what he purchases, he has a chance of trading in his high token for the #1 (worst) token, in which he'll only be able to win an auction if nobody else bids! This causes there to be a sub-game inside of Ra - each player being careful to not only collect the best tiles, but to also make sure that they don't wind up with the worst bid tokens. But even then, a skilled player can do well with very low bid tokens if he adjusts his strategy; he must simply start auctions more often so that the players with the better tokens don't get the luxury of spending them on a large set of tiles! The bid tokens are just plain awesome.

The next thing that I like about the bid tokens is that when you win an auction, you have one less token available to bid with for that epoch. Therefore, nobody can ever win more than three auctions in an epoch. This really helps keep any single player from gaining too much of an upper hand in the game. It does, however, allow an opportune player to have the privilege of having a "push your luck" element at the end of an epoch. If one player can outlast everyone else to where they have used all of their bid tokens (thus he is the only player still playing), he can keep drawing new tiles from the bag - but if he fills up the Ra track, then he will lose all of the tiles that have been drawn, as there is not an auction once the last Ra is drawn! The bid tokens continue to be awesome.

The last pro that I will mention about Ra is that there are both positive and negative tiles that can be drawn. Some of the tiles are "destruction" tiles, and whoever wins the auction that contains these tiles loses two of his useful tiles of the given type (for example, gaining a "Pharaoh" destruction tile makes you discard two of your "Pharaoh" tiles). This prevents the push your luck element that I previously mentioned from becoming overpowered. It can also drastically change the mood of a set of tiles instantly. A set of tiles that would easily draw out the largest bid token can go from being completely wonderful to only being somewhat good in a single draw. This is a nice element to the game; whereas the game would probably still play well without it, this element really adds a nice touch that helps take Ra to the next tier of games.

The only real con that I found when playing Ra is that passing the bag around for everyone to draw a tile on their turn winds up taking about as much time as the actual gameplay. After the first time playing, we quickly gave that up and designated a single person to draw for everyone. This speeds up the game as you're not constantly worried about passing the bag, making sure that the tiles don't fall out, and making sure you don't accidentally cheat while drawing.

Overall, I give Ra a 9.5/10. In my opinion, this may be the best auction game on the market. It is quick and easy to play, but also has the depth to keep me wanting to play it again and again. I would highly recommend that anybody that doesn't have a strong aversion to auction games make a point of trying it out.

If you like auction games like Ra, you might also want to check out Princes of Florence, Power Grid, and Furstenfeld. And, for another opinion of Ra, you can check out this Review of Ra on I Slay the Dragon.