Battle of the Bands Reviews
Encore Edition
Reviews for the current version of the main game published by Third World Games.
Shannon Appelcline (RPG.net)
Brian Ridge (boardgamegeek.com)
Brian Ridge (RPG.net)
Travis Lee (Gaming Report.com)
Backstage Pass
Reviews for the current version of Backstage Pass published by Third World Games.
Chris Kice (RPG.net)
Chris Camfield (RPG.net)
Battle of the Bands
Reviews for the first version of the main game published by Third World Games.
Tom Vasel (boardgamegeek.com)
P.D. Magnus
Gene Vogel, National Gamers Guild
S. John Ross
Jonathan Straw (RPG.net)
D. Nicholson (RPG.net)
Eric A. Dewey (RPG.net)
Older Reviews
Reviews for the original black and white version of Battle of the Bands (Out of print). The new improved color version is available from Third World Games! (Note: The color version is packaged in a full-color box, perfect for retail display).
All full reviews reprinted below are used by permission of the copyright holder. All reviews are owned & copyrighted by their respective holders.
Games Unplugged
Fast, easy-to-learn-and-play game of rock bands. Good art and amusing cards make a game that even non-gamers can get into easily. Each player starts with a band and expands it with band members, instruments, and reputations. Victory is determined by Star Points, which are gained by winning Gigs, getting a contract and playing Hit Singles, or just stealing Hits from other players. For just five bucks, what's not to like?!? A-by Jayson Gralewicz
Pyramid
Dan Smith is well known to gamers as an illustrator of SJ Games products, Sparks paper miniatures, and so on. Now he offers a game that he has both illustrated and designed. Priced at $5, it would be hard for Battle of the Bands not to be worth the money. Every player gets to play out their dream of starting a Rock and Roll band and making a go of it in the music business. Some band members come and go, but the music goes on. At least, it goes on until one of the bands achieves superstardom beyond the ken of all the others.by P.D. Magnus
Game play is simple and easy to learn. Each turn, players draw enough cards so that they have six in their hand and then play or discard one of them. There are several varieties of cards.
Players play Band Member cards to add to their band. Everyone begins with themselves as a member (in the form of a card labelled "Me") and can add up to three members from a varied lot including such rockers as the voluptuous Kym, a grinning Mr. Death, a gorilla named Fella, and Santa.
By playing Instrument and Reputation cards, players can make band members more or less hip. In game terms, this means that the member has more or fewer Hip Points, an attribute abbreviated HP. Of course, HP are just a measure of the band member's coolness, and may not translate into commercial success.
There are also Hit Single and Gig cards, which give a player Superstar Points. Although Superstar Points ultimately decide victory, these cards can not be played unconditionally. Instead, players may only play Hit Singles if they have already played Contract cards. A Gig can be played at any time, but starts a contest between bands. Regardless of who played the Gig card, the band with the most HP's -- the cooler band -- is more likely to win the Superstar Points.
There are also Music Biz cards. This is a catch-all category of cards that allow players to change reputations, steal hit singles, force members to leave rival bands, and so on.
As one would expect, the game is visually impressive. Band members and instruments are drawn with Smith's characteristic flair. Even the fonts are spiffy-looking. Not all the cards have drawings on them, but all are attractively designed and well laid out. The Reputation cards, for instance, list a positive reputation on one end and a negative reputation on the other. If a band member has a positive reputation as a Sex Machine, then the card can be put under the band member with just the bonus showing. If that later changes so that he has a negative reputation for being Diseased, the card can be rotated so that just the penalty is showing.
Battle of the Bands does not involve complicated strategy. If you and your grognard buddies are looking for something to alternate with Squad Leader, this is not it. That said, there is enough strategy that players get to make choices during their turns and won't feel straight-jacketed.
No doubt spoiled by Cheapass Games, I was slightly disappointed by the game material itself. The game comes in a zip-lock bag with the cards wrapped in the game rules, unlike the printed paper envelope and cards bound with a strip of glossy paper that come with many Cheapass games. Moreover, the cards for Battle of the Bands are printed on flimsier stock. There are a whopping 103 cards, however, making the stack of cards two to three times the size of what you get with comparably priced Cheapass games. In any case, if I learned anything from Cheapass it was that material is not nearly so important as playability.
Ultimately, this is a charming and entertaining game. In my first time playing, my dad and I (the band member cards were "Me" and "Dad") got a record contract and recorded a single that went double platinum, while the opposing band (a talented bunch with double-digit Hip Points) languished in obscurity. Just the image of me and my dad making it big in the music industry was silly enough to make the game worth my while. You don't know either me or my dad, but I daresay that you'll have a good time with Battle of the Bands.
November 10, 2000
RPG.net
Battle of the BandsSeth Mayne
Author: Dan Smith
Category: Card game
Company/Publisher: DSI
Line: n/a
Page count: n/a
Genre tags: Fantasy Modern day Comedy
I didn't know what to think when I got this. 5 bucks wasn't much to pay for this, but the price could mean any number of things. The cards were pretty simple, black and white, and the rules were printed on a folded sheet of paper.
Apparently I was going to get to start a Rock and Roll band. Excellent! I read the rules. They're easy: you recruit band members, give them instruments to play, and try to make your band famous before the other players do the same for theirs. Easy, did I say? Deceptively simple, really. At one point, I had in my band: a gorilla, who played the accordian, and had found Jesus; a former mariachi player named Renaldo, who ended up playing a saxophone, and had caught a diease from his legions of groupies; a longhaired Gen-X slacker with the moniker of "Pezzz", who wasn't particularly skilled, but still liked to do long solos on the microphone; and my Mom, who had taken up devil worship while I wasn't looking. The people loved us, and we won their respect in many a gig. Everything was going great until Pezzz, the little weasel, got a new girlfriend and decided to bring her on tour. Wow... shades of Yoko Ono, even. The rest of the band left in disgust. I lost to an even stranger band. Even though I conned their record company into believing one of their songs was back-masked and was summoning demons, my little cadre never recovered from Pezzz's vile deeds. The whole game plays like that. Always. It's not a game you play to win, but a game you play for the sake of playing.
The art is, of course, all in black and white. It's quite good, but a bit of color might have helped. That's really my only complaint; the game plays smoothly, the rules are clear, and it's a heck of a lot of fun. There's a lot of replay value in this one.
Definitely worth my 5 bucks :)
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)
08/30/00