Red Rising: Rise to the Top

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hello everyone!

Today I want to take you into the futuristic universe created by Pierce Brown in his Red Rising saga. The board game adaptation is a real pleasure, let’s dive into it together!

Game Overview

Red Rising is a 2021 release for 1 to 6 players, ages 14+, with a playtime of 45 to 60 minutes. It was designed by Alexander Schmidt (II) and Jamey Stegmaier, illustrated by Miles Bensky, Jacqui Davis, and Justin Wong, and published by Stonemaier Games. The solo automa was designed by Morten Monrad Pedersen.

Red Rising box

Theme

In the world of Red Rising, society is divided into 14 castes, each with its own role, privileges, and identity. You represent one of six houses, all vying for supremacy in this brutal hierarchy. Your goal? Gather the most powerful followers to your side, build alliances, and rise above all others. Will you break the chains of the Society, or embrace the dominance of the Golds?

Back of the main board

How to Win

The player with the most points at the end of the game wins. Your final score combines several elements: the base point values printed on your cards, bonus points triggered by each card when specific conditions are met, your progression on the fleet track, the helium tokens in your hand, your influence in the Institute, and finally a penalty for holding more than 7 cards (a clever balance mechanic, since the more cards you have, the easier it is to build powerful combos).

Gameplay

Red Rising is a hand management and combo-building game at heart. You start with a hand of 5 cards, and each turn you do two things: deploy one card from your hand to a location on the board, activating that card’s deploy benefit; then gain the top card from another location (face up) or from the deck (face down), collecting that location’s benefit along the way.

Alternatively, if you are happy with your hand, you can use your turn to reveal a card from the top of the deck and place it on a location to gain that location’s benefit, a useful option when the board doesn’t offer what you need.

The board in action, cards spread across locations

Setup & Components

Opening the box is already a treat. Inside you’ll find a board, a large deck of cards, and my favourite detail: a beautiful box shaped like a wolf’s head, filled with red crystals representing helium tokens. It’s a lovely piece.

Wolf’s head insert

Setup is quick. Shuffle all the cards together to create the deck, place two face-up cards on each location, and set out the fleet tokens and each player’s influence cubes. Each player is then assigned their house randomly and takes the matching cubes. You’ll be ready to play in just a few minutes.

All set and ready to go

Solo Mode

The solo mode pits you against an automa opponent called Tull Au Toma, designed by Morten Monrad Pedersen (the specialist behind the automa systems in Wingspan, Viticulture, and many others). To set up, you shuffle a small deck of automa cards and place four priority cards (A through D) at the back of each board location as an extra reference.

How does Tull score? At the start of the game, the automa picks a scoring preference, odd or even, based on whichever type appears most among the face-up cards on the board. It then plays very similarly to a human opponent: each turn it draws two automa cards, deploys the top card of the deck to the location shown on the first card, and takes one card from the location shown on the second. If a star appears on the card, the location effect activates; if you see a crossed square, the top card of the deck is discarded instead.

The automa is easy to manage but hard to beat, and that’s exactly what makes it fun. I loved how quickly I could set up a game and get started, and how Tull would sometimes swoop in and take the exact card I had been planning for. Infuriating in the best possible way!

Replayability

No two games of Red Rising play out the same. The card pool is rich enough that different strategies emerge naturally every time. In one game you might chase a gold-card engine; in the next you find yourself leaning into low-point cards whose combo bonuses more than make up for it. The random house assignment and the ever-changing card landscape on the board keep things fresh.

My Experience

I have played Red Rising four times solo so far, and my journey has been quite the ride.

My first game was something special, the kind of game you talk about for a while after. I got the chance of my life: a perfect construction of Gold cards that comboed beautifully together, with several cards played in a row that kept growing my hand size turn after turn. Combos like “5 points for each Gold card” were firing left and right, and everything clicked into place. I scored 364, my personal best, even with the excess-card penalty kicking in for going over 7 cards. I won against Tull comfortably (247).

The second game humbled me. Tull scored 245 and I only managed 228. My first loss. A good reminder that this game punishes overconfidence!

The third game I clawed back a narrow win, 234 to 231. It was close enough to keep me on the edge of my seat until the very last card.

The fourth game brought my second best score, and it came from a strategy that might look strange on paper. I leaned into Red cards and cards with 10 or fewer base points, which sounds underwhelming until the combo bonuses start firing. A condition like “40 points if all your cards have 10 or less base points” or “15 points if all your cards start with a different letter” suddenly makes a modest hand feel absolutely devastating. I scored 332, beating Tull (276, a personal best for the automa, which made the win feel even sweeter) and crossing the 300+ threshold the rulebook considers a great score. So I’ll take that!

End of game, cards played, scores tallied

I will admit I was a little intimidated at first by the volume of text on the cards, as each one has unique powers and conditions. But after a couple of plays the patterns start to click. My play time dropped noticeably as I began to spot combos faster, and my confidence in exploring different strategies grew. The rulebook has some readability issues (the dark background makes the text harder than it should be to read), but honestly you rarely need to go back to it once you’ve played a game or two. The solo rulebook shares the same quirks but is equally easy to grasp.

My Rating

Note: 8.5/10

Red Rising is a wonderfully satisfying combo-building game with a generous amount of depth hiding under a fast and accessible surface. The theme is beautifully woven into the cards, the components are a delight (that wolf’s head box!), and the solo mode is a genuine highlight: challenging, quick to run, and genuinely tricky to beat. The only real friction is the card text density, which asks for patience in the first few plays. But once it clicks, it really clicks.

Final Thoughts

If you enjoy hand management games where building the perfect combination feels like solving a puzzle, Red Rising deserves a spot on your shelf. It plays fast, looks gorgeous on the table, and offers a surprisingly deep solo experience for a game of its size. Whether you’ve read the books or not, the dystopian universe comes through in every card. I’m looking forward to many more plays, I haven’t come close to exploring all the strategies this game has to offer!

Your Turn

Have you played Red Rising? I’d love to know which house is your favourite and what combos you’ve managed to pull off. And if you’re a fan of the books, does the game do the universe justice for you? Come share your thoughts on Mastodon

Videos

RED RISING - Un de mes premiers jeux solo et JE L’AIME toujours autant ! - Partie SOLO & AVIS - Une excellente partie en solo par Zeugma en Solo
Red Rising in about 3 minutes - Great overview of the game by 3 Minute Board Games. If you want to know if the game is for you, start with this video
Red Rising Board Game - Teach & Playthrough - Great 2 player playthrough by two reviewers that I really enjoy watching: Before You Play
Red Rising | Solo Playthrough | with Jason - Solo playthrough by One Stop Co-op Shop
Red Rising Board Game - Teach and Solo Playthrough - Solo playthrough by Tabletop For One

Alexander Schmidt (II) on Marta's BG Corner