This afternoon, we finally got around to playing the Bionicle game that we bought back in 2022.
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| The Bionicle Game. |
The rulebook is not particularly well laid out, and our initial attempt to play didn't really work. I takes quite a while to set up because of all the little counters you have to set out. Now 4 years older and wiser, Number One Son decided he wanted to give it another try. The rules say that you begin with only the start tile, and draw a new tile to put out every time you get to a "portal" marker on a tile edge. Number One Son decided he wanted to build the whole of the island of Mata Nui before we started. Note that if you play by putting out tiles as you explore, the initial set-up time will be much shorter!
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| Mata Nui. |
The game is for 2-6 players, each of whom takes on the role of one of the Toa, the saviours and protectors of Mata Nui.
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| The Toa. |
I took the part of Onua, Toa of Earth. All the Toa play identically, there are no special abilities for any of them. Each Toa has a character card, on which you place counters that you collect as you explore the island. Each Toa can have up to 4 Kanohi masks (which give extra powers/abilities), 2 Turaga village chiefs and 3 keys.
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| Character card. |
Movement is by rolling a D6 and moving that number of spaces around the board. The hex tiles have various paths to follow, and as you explore, you have to confront Rahi - fierce creatures that roam the island. You roll a D6 and add any bonuses from Kanohi masks and/or Turaga that you have collected. Turaga give you a bonus of +10 to your die roll if they are your tribe (i.e. the colours match), or +5 if a different tribe. The counters aren't hugely clear, it's assumed that you know which Turaga is which tribe, but a coloured background would make it more obvious how they match.
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| The Turaga. |
Rahi come in 3 varieties, when you turn the counter over, you find out the strength of the creature. Roll a D6, add your bonuses and beat the strength score of the Rahi. Draw and you are pushed back 1 space. Lose, and not only are you pushed back 1 space, but you lose one of the masks, keys or Turaga that you have collected.
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| Rahi counters |
The game hex tiles come with Rahi marked onto them, where you place the counters. These give you an idea of the rough strength of the foe, so you know how much of a risk the attack will be.
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| Rahi |
It's a shame that the rulebook doesn't have any additional pictures of the Rahi. Again, it just assumes that you know what they are. You don't need to know what they look like to play the game, it's just that it would have been a nice feature to add.
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| Nui-Rama |
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| Nui-Jaga |
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| Muaka |
As well as collecting Turaga as you explore, you can pick up Kanohi masks.
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| Some of the Kanohi mask powers. |
These give you various powers, such as being able to roll a D8 or D12 instead of a D6 for movement, a bonus of +5 or +10 when fighting, the ability to steal a counter from another player, the ability to travel to any other point on the map. The latter 2 abilities are single use, after which the mask disappears and re-appears on the starting space, from which it can be collected for (re-)use.
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| Character board in play. |
The final items you can collect whilst exploring are keys. These are required to open the temple to confront the evil Makuta. Laura was the first to gather the necessary keys. There are 9 lock counters, 6 are selected at random and placed on the 6 portals around the sides. Moving onto the portal allows you to flip the counter over to discover what 3 keys are required to open it. Some of the keys are wildcards, which makes the task easier. Once the portal is opened, a D6 is rolled, and the temple rotated that number of sides. The colour of the strip round the base of the temple tells you how strong Makuta is - so you can never be sure how much you need to beat him until the battle occurs. Fortunately, Laura had more than enough power to defeat him and save Mata Nui.
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| Tahu enters the temple and defeats Makuta. |
We decided to keep playing - I was next to finish, thanks to my masks and Turaga, and having 2 wildcard keys to help open the portal.
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| My finishing character card. |
The rulebook isn't very well written or laid out. I don't know whether the original game was written in English, perhaps it's a problem with translation? Some of the mechanisms could be improved, I think. Fighting the Rahi becomes an automatic success later in the game - collecting the right Turaga and masks could give a combined bonus of more than 20, which is the maximum strength of the Rahi Muaka. Rather than the masks adding +5 or +10 to your score, it might be better to do the same as movement - roll a D8 or D12 in battle instead of the usual D6. This would keep the element of risk when fighting Rahi, but significantly increase your chances of success, especially against the smaller ones. Without this risk, it just becomes a bit of a slog around the board hunting down keys.
Counters and playing pieces are good quality, thick cardstock, but could be much clearer. As mentioned earlier, the game assumes that you know a lot about Bionicle, and more pictures/information is needed for casual players. It's not very easy to distinguish between the Toa, the pictures are quite small and the colours not all that obvious. You'd think they could have produced some sort of small 3D model instead of just a picture in a plastic stand, even just a microfigure of the appropriate colour would have helped. There are a few 3D models of Toa floating around the internet, so I might try printing some replacement pieces. I have found some nice ones, they're the upgraded Toa Nuva versions, but they will probably work OK, especially when painted appropriately. Some sort of key for each player would also help, showing which Turaga is linked to which Toa and what the different masks do. Having to look up "Kanohi Pakari" and "Kanohi Miru" in the rulebook every turn to work out which does what is a pain. Having a simple "+10 Strength" note on a quick reference card or even printed on the mask counter would be a big time-saver.
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| Nope, no actual Lego included. |
There are some problems if you run into too powerful an enemy early in the game. Your route can be blocked by something that you don't have the power to defeat. We had this issue, with a very strong Nui-Rama that took the mask from the first Toa to fight it due to a very bad die roll. It took a very long time to fight our way through!
We will play again, but may well tweak the rules a bit to see if it makes the game more interesting.
