Enough of the history lesson though, and onto the game itself. Beast Wars was released by Parker Brothers in 1997 and was a card based board game. It features 24 characters from the series (some of whom never made it on TV to my recollection) and 72 battle cards along with a 3D mountain top game board. The back of the box states “No Reading Required” and it’s easy to see why.

The object of the game is to either capture all of your enemy’s warriors or drive them over the mountains edge. The board has 12 spaces (6 for each side) to play your warriors.

Now here’s where things get difficult for me, as I’m not sure where my instructions went and I haven’t played since the 5th grade (1999-ish). So anything beyond now is how I remember playing it; so consider these “House Rules” if wrong. Also somewhere not long after getting the game, the Megatron card went missing so we just wrote it’s stats on a piece of paper (thanks to having a pic of both beast and bot form on the box to go by)

There are 4 different Battle Cards: Standard Diamond (the colour tells you which of the 6 categories you will use in the battle), Mutate (Allows you to switch from 1 form to the other and a coloured diamond in the background will again tell you which category you’re using), Energon +1 (Gives you +1 to whichever category the diamond behind it gives you) and finally Secret Weapon +2 (Same as Energon +1, but gives you +2 instead).

The 6 different colour coded categories are:

• Strength: Orange
• Courage: Blue
• Intelligence: Yellow
• Firepower: Green
• Speed: Purple
• Endurance Pink

Now, the way we played is that if there was an empty space either to the side, ahead or behind a character, you could move them there. No diagonal moves though. As for bringing new warriors into play on the board, we kept it to the back row only leaving the middle 6 as anyone’s territory. We also limited moving to 1 character per turn (Except bringing in new warriors. As long as you had the spots available at the back you could bring in as many as the 3 on a turn). Now, when head to head with an opposing force, you had the choice of fighting, retreating back a place (if empty) or remaining inactive. If you chose to fight you’d draw a Battle Card and go with the colour accordingly. Then the defender fighter chooses their card. Whoever lands the higher value, wins (i.e. If attacker chooses Blue Diamond and their Courage (blue bar) is 8 and the defender chooses Yellow Diamond and their Intelligence (yellow bar) is 7 then the attacker wins and vice-versa. In the event of a tie, both draw again. When you defeat a warrior, you move into their space.

When I played, games typically lasted about 15-20 minutes. I had a game last an hour one time; as we both played it like a chess format choosing to employ a lot of caution into our every move.

So in my opinion, I would rate Beast Wars as a 7 on the Zippy Scale as it was a rather simple game. It was still a lot of fun to play and was a great addition to the Transformers line of kid toys and games.

The Game Board

First off is the board and its ups and downs for players. Right off the bat there’s a shortcut IF you can puff your ball over the side that is which brings up the point that there is a line going around the board where you puff along with a few splits where you can try a shortcut to scale the ‘mountain’ quicker. Along with these shortcuts, there are also the many difficult terrains you’ll need to go through if those shortcuts don’t work out for you. These include such colourful names as: Creaky Corner, Pile Up Point, Trouble Bubble Bridge and others. The ‘puddle’ type sections aren’t too hard to get through, but ‘Creaky Corner’ can be rather frustrating as it’s sunk in requiring a good puff to make it up the hill. From here if you miss the shortcut comes a

Game Pieces

crater section where a ball can get snugly caught in and then the opposite after of bubbly lava (the 2 hardest sections for me). Another hazard, and possibly the worse one in terms of affect would be blowing your ball over the edge causing you to need to make up lost ground (Sometimes as much as an entire board). Now, when you roll the die you’ll get either 1-5 puffs to move you’re a ball. Instead of a ‘6’ you get a ‘blaster’ symbol which allows you the chance to blow your opponent off or backwards with 1 puff only, better make it count.

So, if you’re looking for a fun way to kill 30-60 minutes, or more in some cases, and have access to this game I suggest trying it out. It’ll BLOW YOU AWAY!