Unboxing – Freedom: The Underground Railroad

Freedom: The Underground Railroad is a cooperative board game from Academy Games, published through Kickstarter.

A lot of people are raving about the game, which clearly also delves into an unusual theme, the US anti-slavery /Abolitionist movement of the 19th century.

Freedom is the most recent addition to my small collection of board game.

Let’s see what you get in the box.

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#1 – Rule Book & Player Aids

Freedom is a fairly complex game. Certainly, there is no playing it without reading the rule book first. The books is a full-colour softcover, which feels like it is good quality. There are also quick-reference sheets for the players.

The rules are well-explained and well laid-out. Setting up, with different set-ups for 1, 2, 3 or 4 player games, takes up almost as much space as the rules for playing the game.

Furthermore, the book explains every single card in the game in a bit more detail, should the cards themselves cause confusion (which hasn’t happened to me yet) and even includes a very brief historical introduction to the time period and the abolitionist movement.

All in all, an excellent rule book.

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#2 – Game Board & Game Pieces

The board itself is one of the highlights of the game. For one, it is huge!

Made of sturdy cardboard, it roughly 2/3rd of the board show a map of the eastern parts of the United States (and a bit of Canada). This is where the actual game of moving slaves from southern plantations to the safety of Canada takes place. The other 1/3rd is designed in the style of the North Star anti-slavery newspaper, and used to manage cards and tokens.

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#3 – The Cards

The cards are, by a long way, my biggest complaint about the game.

The design is great, often with period photographs, reasonably intuitive symbols for what they do, and a small historical explanation at the bottom. The last makes the game such a nice educational experience, if you want it to (though you don’t have to read them).

The quality however, is horrible. They are some of the worst material/production I’ve seen. Even after my first game, I’ve had cards get nicked and scruffy around the edges. And to play this game, you’ll be doing a lot of sorting and shuffling, which will not be easy on these.

Definitely the weakest components in the box, as far as production quality goes.

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 #4 – Kickstarter Exclusive Components

Like many games these days, Freedom was launched with a Kickstarter campaign. As such, there are Kickstarter-exclusive components, which are not receive in the retail version.

1. Wooden meeples for the “Slave Catchers” (cardboard tokens in the retail-version).
2. Extra cards (not included in the retail version, though they are available online).
3. A miniature lantern turn-marker (a cardboard token in the retail-version).

The lantern is a gimmick. More cards are nice, but hardly essential.

The wooden slave catchers however, really should be a standard in the game. All other game-components that move on the board itself are wooden. If you don’t have these colour and form (hexagon, triangle, etc..)-coded slave-catcher-tokens, these will be the only cardboard pieces on the board, which feels out-of-place.

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#5 – Player Role Cards

Like many games of this type, each player gets a specific role in the game. This role effectively determines each player’s specialty. Some roles are better at moving slaves around, others are better at generating money, etc.., that kind of thing.

Each role card also comes with a powerful one-off ability, which you can only use once per game. When and where you used this ability is often critical to the game. To show players used their one-off ability, you turn over your card (which is two-sided).

In addition to the role-card itself, there is also a larger player-board from (thin) card-board, which really only lists thee order of play. I tend to keep these off the table.

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#6 – Thoughts?

I am not sure if there is an official retail release (yet). Last I checked on Amazon, it was going for ~ £50,- this side of the pond (admittedly, it’s much cheaper in the US). With that kind of price, I am a heavily torn on this game (from an unboxing point of view).

• On one hand, the game is undeniably gorgeous. The game board itself is fantastic. The rule book is great. Everything oozes theme and detail and the obvious love of the designers for capturing the feel of the period (grim as it might have been).

• On the other hand, several components aren’t up to scratch, not for a 40 or 50 quid game. The cards are the most obvious culprit. If I don’t want them to be in tatters soon, I’ll probably have to sleeve them, which is doable. Still, card games costing 1/10 as much regularly do better. Likewise, while I love the Kickstarter components, their omission, especially the lack of wooden slave catchers, really hurts the retail-version in my opinion.

Either way, stay tuned for some game-play thoughts for Freedom: The Underground Railroad, and leave a comment below to let me know what you think!

Z.