Red Rising on Marta's BG Corner

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

April 2026 Plays

Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hello everyone!

What a month April was! I played a lot, I laughed a lot, and I discovered some real gems along the way. 32 plays over 17 different games, more than double my March count of 15. That says it all, really. 😊

April 2026 stats

All games played in April 2026

April 2026 by the Numbers

32 plays (vs. 15 in March, more than double!)
17 different games
10 new-to-me games
Most played: Onirim (6 plays)

Onirim

Onirim is not new to me. I’ve owned it for a few years now and I keep coming back to it. It’s part of the Oniverse, a collection of small-box games designed for solo or two players, all set in the same dream world. Eight games in the series so far, and while they all share the same universe, each one feels genuinely different from the others. Onirim was my entry point into the Oniverse and it holds a special place in my heart. It reminds me of the solitaire card games I used to play as a kid. The goal is to escape the labyrinth by finding the eight exit doors, using only cards, but be careful not to cross paths with a nightmare! It’s quick, tense in the best possible way, and an absolute must-have for solo players. I’ll dedicate a full review to it one day. It deserves one.

Onirim: escaping the labyrinth one card at a time

Red Rising

Red Rising was technically already in my collection, but this month was the first time I actually sat down to play it, and it won me over quickly. I lost only once out of four plays, but the win/loss count almost misses the point: what kept me coming back was how differently each game played out. The combo mechanics between the different castes are the heart of this game, and there are so many ways to build a hand that each play genuinely felt like a different puzzle to solve. The solo mode is quick to set up and easy to run, but don’t let that fool you. It’s genuinely hard to beat. I already have a full review written and ready to post, so I won’t say too much more here. Keep an eye out. It deserves its own spotlight!

Red Rising: so many strategies to explore

It’s a Wonderful World

I honestly can’t fully explain the pull this game has on me. With more than 25 plays under my belt, solo and at two players, you’d think the magic would wear off. It hasn’t. This month I came back to it in solo mode and, well, I lost. But even losing felt satisfying.

The balance between building an efficient production engine and building a scoring engine is just perfect. You can have a smooth game where resources flow freely and cards go down easily, and still lose because none of them actually scored you points. It’s that tension that keeps me coming back. The theme doesn’t hit you over the head, but the artwork is lovely. More plays incoming for sure.

It’s a Wonderful World: the engine runs beautifully, winning is another matter

Last Will

Last Will is a game I really love, but since it’s a multiplayer-only experience, I hadn’t had the chance to play it in a while. That changed this month, thanks to a wonderful new development: I’ve started joining the monthly and weekly meetings of Legiao dos Jogos. What an amazing group of people! It’s been such a joy to bring some of my favourite games to the table, and to discover new ones alongside them.

So, Last Will finally hit the table again, and at four players no less. The premise is wonderfully absurd: instead of trying to become the richest player, you have to spend all your money. Sounds easy? It really isn’t. The game is beautifully designed for its theme, the artwork is spot on, and playing it at four created exactly the kind of chaos and laughter I was hoping for. If spending money is your thing, this game is absolutely for you. 😄

Other Notable Games

Multiplayer discoveries with Legião dos Jogos

Being part of the group also meant discovering, or rediscovering, some great lighter games. I got to play The Gang, The Game, Codenames, Take 5, and Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and they all delivered fun in their own way.

Escape: The Curse of the Temple was my favourite of the bunch. At four players it’s pure glorious chaos: everyone rolling dice at the same time, shouting across the table to coordinate. It’s genuinely one of those experiences where you’re nearly screaming just to be heard, and somehow that makes it even better. If you enjoy real-time games where the table turns into beautiful pandemonium, this one is for you.

Escape: The Curse of the Temple: beautiful pandemonium at four players

Codenames we played at eight, which in my opinion was a bit too many. I’ve played Codenames Harry Potter at two players before, and I think the sweet spot is around six. That gives you two people giving clues, one per team, and two players on each team discussing the hints and making guesses together. At three per team, some people inevitably get less involved, maybe out of shyness or just because the discussion gets harder to follow. At eight it felt a little crowded for me. Fun either way, but six feels like the right balance.

Solo new-to-me games

On the solo front, I explored five new games this month: Era of Kingdoms, Outlive, Side Quest: 7th Sea, Fromage, and Paper Tales.

Era of Kingdoms was a genuine surprise. I had never heard of it before, and it turned out to be a really enjoyable tableau building, deck building, and hand management game. The atmosphere is a bit dark, which suits the theme well. My only small complaint is that some of the symbols could be a bit bigger. For a game that came completely out of nowhere for me, I would absolutely recommend it.

Era of Kingdoms: a very pleasant surprise

Outlive was a game I had been wanting to play for a long time. I almost got to it last year, but then I realised I needed the Underwater expansion to unlock the solo mode, so the experience had to wait. It was worth it. I love the survival theme, and the worker placement twist is clever: you never retrieve your workers from the board, you can only move them. It forces you to think carefully about placement at every step. The automa is pleasant to manage, and as a collector’s edition owner, I can confirm the components are just stunning.

Outlive: worth the wait

SideQuest: 7th Sea is an escape room game from the SideQuest series by Board & Dice. The puzzles in the first part of the game were well-balanced and satisfying. The second part was trickier. I struggled at times to figure out what I was supposed to do. I own two more games from the series, so it’ll be interesting to see if that difficulty curve feels the same across them.

Side Quest: 7th Sea: smooth start, trickier finish

Fromage immediately charmed me. The theme is exactly what it sounds like: you’re making cheese. The worker placement mechanic is wonderfully on theme too. The more elaborate the cheese you’re making, the longer your workers are tied up in the affinage process. It’s clever, it’s thematic, and the components are just delightful, including that cheese board-shaped board! I only played solo this time, but I’m already curious to try it at two or three players.

Fromage: the most thematic worker placement you’ll find

Paper Tales left me with mixed feelings, though I suspect that’s partly on me. I think I made some resource management mistakes on my first play. The core idea is interesting: you have limited tableau space, and you’ll place your workers and fighters to defeat the solo king. What I found particularly charming is the ageing mechanic. Your characters grow old and eventually die, which adds a lovely layer of bittersweet planning. I need a few more plays before I can say anything definitive, but the concept is good and I want to give it a fair chance.

Paper Tales: mixed first impressions, but the concept is good

Games I Keep Coming Back To

Dice Throne Adventure

I’ve mentioned this one in previous monthly reviews, and here I am again. I’m still working my way through the campaign in solo, and I’m now into the fourth scenario. The pattern has become something of a ritual: I almost always lose the first attempt at each new scenario, except for the third one, which I beat on my very first try. Very proud of that! The fourth scenario has already beaten me once, so I’ll be going back in for another try. The campaign is funny, addictive, and just the right amount of punishing.

Dice Throne Adventure: scenario 3, the one I actually won first try!

Dice Throne Adventure: scenario 4, the campaign continues

Ancient Knowledge

Ancient Knowledge is another game that requires the expansion to play solo, in this case the Heritage expansion. I’ve played it before but April reminded me that I still haven’t cracked the winning formula. I lost again, and I have a feeling I’m simply forgetting the recipe between plays! Fair warning: the cards carry a lot of text, so if that puts you off, this one probably isn’t for you. I do like the game though, and one of these days I’ll figure out how to actually win it. 😅

Ancient Knowledge: still searching for that winning recipe

Viticulture

Have I mentioned that I love Viticulture? Because I really love Viticulture. Solo, every single point counts. One wrong decision and the win slips away. I’m genuinely curious to explore the Tuscany and Bordeaux expansions at some point. Something to look forward to.

Viticulture: every point counts

Looking Ahead

May is looking exciting! My main goal is to finally finish the Dice Throne Adventure campaign. The fifth scenario still owes me a win. Beyond that, I’m feeling the pull of Minos, Unconscious Mind, and Luthier. I don’t know which one will make it to the table first, but I have a feeling at least one of them won’t wait much longer.

What About You?

What a month it’s been! New groups, new games, old favourites. April had it all. Are any of these games on your radar? Have you played any of them? Come share your thoughts on Mastodon.