Commissioned

Before I get started, I'm just going to do a list of quick bullet points in a pros and cons list, beginning with the cons, and then after that, I'm going to give you a brief personal history, and then I'm going to go into more depth about the game:Cons-the spaces on the board aren't very clearly illustrated, which gets slightly frustrating later in the game when you have to keep track of dozens of different pieces that are placed on the board-the cards aren't very visually interesting-some of the apostle's starter decks are slightly more useful than others-the character pawns aren't very visually interesting-typos in the rule book, some of the rules aren't entirely clear, and the rule book isn't particularly well organizedAll of these cons, of course, are very minor and can easily be fixed in a second edition, or even a reprint. Because my only complaints have to do with aesthetic, or minor design flaws. The core gameplay is solid, which brings me to the pros:Pros-as it says in the rules, "you don't need to know anything about Christianity to play"-downright brilliant use of its theme. Absolutely every single gameplay mechanic is specifically tailored around the history and characters of this theme, which is the mark of a truly great game-extremely clever implementations of the theme into the gameplay mechanics are all over the place-provides historical context, and historically based reasoning, for all of its gameplay mechanics-simple, clever and accessible deck building-clever character movement mechanics-clever interpersonal communication mechanics-double sided board adds to replay value-five different scenarios add to replay value-the enemy variant adds to replay value-clear visual contrasts between "apostle," "missionary," and "Christian" pawns make controlling up to 86 different pieces on the board so much more manageable-clear visual contrasts between the pawns and the board itself also aids manageability-challenging-very little is left up to chance based dice rolls-even though the perimeters, and moving spaces aren't very clear, the board is still visually gorgeous, with a great color palate-the historic appendix is comprehensive and interesting-historically, not theologically, based.-and just one more time, I need to mention how clever the implementations of the theme are into the game, because they really are that good. Too many religiously based games paste an out-of-place Christian theme onto badly rendered, broken mechanics taken from other games, but this game has a developer that truly built his game around the theme, and not the theme around the game, which is what makes it so brilliantAlright, now that I've given you the bullet points, and by now you get the point that I very excitedly and enthusiastically recommend this to any Christian tabletop gamer, as well as very strongly toward any non-Christian tabletop gamer, it's time to add some more thorough explanation for my strong recommendation, beginning with a little personal context:I was born and raised in a Christian home. I grew up on typical Christian childhood staples, like Veggie Tales and Awanas. I grew up in a Christian church going to Sunday school. I watched Christian movies growing up. And I played Christian themed board games and video games growing up. But after my early adolescence ended, and my parents took less care to shelter me from "secular society," because I was old enough to think for myself, and they allowed me the breadth in my preteen and teenage years to expand my horizons, and start reading secular books and watching secular movies and playing secular games.Very soon after that shelter I was raised under had lifted, and I had begun to explore film and literature and games outside of what my early years had consisted of, I realized one thing: the Christian media and entertainment community is severely depraved.Most modern Christian movies are exceedingly poor imitations based on the models of other, generic Hollywoodized inspirational movies, meant to proselytize, with a weak message. A lot of modern Christian literature is composed of poorly written, weak, proselytizing messages. And almost every Christian themed board game is a cheap, weakly themed imitation of other, better board games, based on broken, uneven gameplay mechanics, that do an exceedingly poor job of implementing its Christian thematics into its core gameplay, causing the theme to feel woefully out of place in a game that was obviously designed long before the theme was even considered.Now before anybody misunderstands me, I am by no means bashing Christianity. I am a Christian, and I proudly admit it. But, as a Christian, I feel as though it is my duty to demand something better from the Christian media and entertainment that I consume. I'm sick of devouring lazy, exploitative garbage, because somebody decided to poorly replicate another artist's work, and slap Jesus's name on it for a quick buck from a Christian community that has been depraved of quality media. And all of that is exactly what makes Commissioned so refreshing, and so special.I love tabletop gaming, and as an avid tabletop gamer, I'd just like to make it extremely clear that Commissioned is a fantastic game regardless of your religious affiliation. The gameplay mechanics are tight, unique, accessible, and well balanced. Each of the five scenarios are very challenging, but manageable.The game commits its players to the task of expanding and maturing the early church during a period of time when the Christian church was under severe persecution. It's good to think of Commissioned like Pandemic, but in reverse. In Pandemic, you have outbreaks of disease happening across the globe, and it's up to your team to contain, hinder, and prevent the disease from becoming a global epidemic. Commissioned takes that idea, and expands upon it in numerous ways, beginning with its idea to reverse the idea of containing something, and instead working to disperse and spread it against attempts to contain it.As great an idea as this is, Commissioned goes a lot further than just reversing the idea of Pandemic, but it brilliantly spins a wide number of other ideas, such as deck building. To elaborate, throughout each scenario, the player turns are broken up into three phases; the three phases are entitled "Arm," "Live," and "Mature." During the "Arm" phase, players draw six cards from their faith decks in order to prepare them the trials ahead. After which, comes the "Live" phase, a phase that is broken up into action sub-phases that you repeat twice, with actions entitled "Trials," "Pray," "Share," "Move," and "Grow." The players repeat each of these actions either two, three, or four times, depending on the amount of players, and each of these action phases simultaneously advance the agenda of those attempted to stifle your growing church, and allow players to respond to the advancing persecution. Then there's the "Mature" phase, which begins after the "Live" phase is resolved, which is the phase where the deck building comes in. During this phase, players are allowed to purchase and exchange new cards to upgrade and optimize their faith decks, allowing their effectiveness in growing the church to increase over time. And as your churches mature, more and more trials set in order to prevent you completing your tasks. The faith decks in this game take deck building mechanics from other games, except it accelerates the deck building mechanics to a aster pace than you'll see in other deck building games, which creates a much more fun and engaging experience for players who are working out ways to battle the oncoming trials. Also, the deck building is simplified, making it accessible, and extremely effective.Another incredibly clever thematic implementation is how this game takes basic movement strategies in other cooperative board games, and adds a twist. You're not allowed to move freely between cities that do not contain a planted church. Instead, you must have an elder present, along with three other generic pieces, in any combination of "Christians" (represented by white cubes) and "Missionaries" (represented by grey meeples). So, in other words, you need to be accompanied by at least four "people" on the board in order to move into new cities and plant a church, a rule that sounds a bit odd at first, but it seriously forces you to think hard about your placement strategies and your movement phases, and the boundless opportunities for strategy the movement rules add are enormous. Further complicating matters would be the extinguishment of churches. If you voluntarily remove the last "Christian" from a city (which you'll probably have to do at one point or another if you're desperate to move into other territories for any reason), the church in that city becomes extinguished, forcing you to regroup your "Christians" and "Missionaries" in order to regain access to that city and move about freely within it. These movement mechanics are just brilliant.And another one of my favorite roadblocks, would be the twist this game adds on interpersonal communication, where certain rules dictate that players are no longer able to freely communicate with one another for the duration of that phase due to the infiltration of "spies" intercepting messages between the apostles. Silencing conditions are dictated by die rolls that have varying effects. The silencing conditions, at first, sound like they may hinder social interaction and teamwork, but it in fact, in my experience, they have done the opposite, as it forces players to plan ahead of time and very clearly communicate exactly their strategies in given situations, just in case there may come a point when they won't be able to communicate for a short period of time, which seriously accentuates the need for clear communication between players, and it works brilliantly.But, as clever as many of these (and more) gameplay mechanics are, by far my favorite element of the game is how much excellent use it gets out of the theme. Everything from the aesthetic, to the apostle starter decks, to the basic gameplay mechanics, is built around its theme, and it's very apparent that the guys over at Chara Games took great pains, putting a lot of work in, to balance everything around the theme.Beginning with the aesthetic, I love the "old mappy" look of the board. Everything is beautifully illustrated, colored, and printed, using lots of earthy, grainy tones and visual textures that coalesce with with many of the other game components, such as the player boards, the mission and growth stops, and the tops of the faith and trial decks. Almost everything included within the game box looks like it belongs there, with a lot of care put into the graphics and designs.Now, as I mentioned earlier, I do have a few cons as far as the design of the board and components go. The first three are very minor and don't affect gameplay, but the last one is an actual criticism on the design of the board. -First off, the cards are fairly plain. I love the design on the back part of the trial deck, but when you reveal the front part of a trial card, it's boring to look at, as are the backs and fronts of the faith deck cards. This is a very minor complaint, and doesn't affect enjoyment of the game, though it's always nice when components outside of the game board can both look like they belong with the game and be visually interesting. I think my best frame of reference would be the cards that accompany Ticket to Ride, or Shadows Over Camelot, which are both gorgeously illustrated games that have gorgeous cards with great texture, that aren't overly decorated, yet visually interesting, and also look like they belong with their respective games, while drawing very distinct visual contrasts to help players recognize immediately which cards belong in which decks. -Second, the apostle pawns look kind've out of place on the board, and aren't very visually interesting, though I'm not exactly sure how to fix that, considering miniature figurines for the apostles would probably also be out of place, as figurines are typically garnished and decorated, which works really well in games like Shadows Over Camelot (which has a very garnished and decorated board), but it would definitely clash in a game like Commissioned, which goes for a much more simple, "old map" aesthetic. So while it's also by no means a deciding factor, finding a way to create visually interesting character pawns that look like they belong on the board would be great. But, I would also like to say that I think the designers brilliantly chose to create distinct, clear visual contrasts between each of types of pawns in the game. You can immediately tell, at a glance, the difference between your apostle pawns, the generic "missionaries," and the generic "Christians," which makes managing approximately fifty different pieces on the board later in the game easy and manageable. -Third, is another very minor design complaint regarding the interior of the box, which doesn't really offer much to keep all of the game components organized. There's little bags for the smaller pieces, but nothing to keep the cards secure, so they will get everywhere if you don't provide your own little card bags. But again, that isn't at all very important and shouldn't influence your decision to purchase the game. -And lastly, the only significant criticism I have, would be the lack of clear spaces on the board. Your "apostles," "missionaries," and "Christians," move about between geographically accurate cities in Roman provinces (on side A), and cities in Asian Minor (on side B), and each city location is a board space. The only problem is that even just one of your pawns is already bigger than the city space, and in the very beginning of the game (depending on your scenario), you can have up to six different pieces starting on a single space. So, right off the bat, you've got more pieces than can fit onto a single space, which causes keeping track of where up to 80 different pieces on the board are all located can get frustrating. I love the aesthetic of the maps, and I love the color contrasts between each of the regions, which is also very helpful, and I love how the developers put in great care to make the cities geographically accurate, but the spaces themselves are way too small, and visually, they don't look like the game pieces belong on them. The only two ways I can think to fix this, while maintaining the large amount of spaces that there are on the map, would be to create a larger board (which could be problematic), or, by distorting the geographic accuracy slightly, in order to create clearer spaces on the board that you can keep all of your pawns on. It pains me to suggest distorting the geographic accuracy, because the accuracy creates a great sense of atmosphere, and I'm sure there's a better way of creating clearer spaces, just none that I've currently thought of. But again, that is not at all a hindrance to the game's enjoyment, and should not influence your decision to buy the game, it's just a minor design flaw.All of that aside, overall I love the aesthetic choices made for the game, it's all so visually striking, and it looks unique.Now that I've said everything I've needed to say regarding aesthetic, I'd like continue talking more about the mileage this game gets out of its theme, which is only enhanced by visual aesthetics. Other great thematic choices would include the trial deck, utilizing various different real scenarios, such as Roman persecution, natural disasters, and even disagreements amongst members of the church, which creates an array of different negative effects for your current region that you must work together to overcome. All of the "trials" are very thematic.But one of my favorite uses of theme, comes from the apostle starter decks, which very cleverly implements the roles that each of these characters took on in the Bible, and uses that to inspire their special "apostle" actions found in their faith decks. For example, James allows for characters to take extra movement actions, Andrew adds extra members to local churches, John optimizes purchase power during the "mature" phase when upgrading your faith deck, Peter's cards are worth two extra faith points, which aids you during your "mature" phase, Barnabas removes "growth stops" from cities in his region, and Paul removes "mission stops" from cities in his region. If you know your characters of the Bible well enough, you can already see just how much care the developers put into making sure that the real roles that these men played in the formation of the early church, informed the roles that they play in this game. I remember getting really excited as I was reading through the rulebook, after making that connection, because it just shows how much care was put into creating gameplay mechanics that are informed by the theme.One last thing I want to stress, is that this game is historically based, not theologically based. You do not have to worry about theological interpretative discrepancies between you and the developer, or be worried about a game developer shoving their personal theological beliefs down your throat. This game is deeply rooted in history. Whether you believe the message of Christ is real or not, it is indisputable there were men that were inspired by Christ's teachings, and they took it upon their lives to devoting themselves to spreading his message, a message that many attempted to thwart, hinder, and destroy, but was eventually adopted by Rome as the official religion. And this game is based on the actions of the men who are most attributed to being responsible for spreading that message in the Christian church's earliest years. You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate the brilliant use of historical thematics implemented in this game, because it is entirely based on the history of the Church, and not upon theological proselytizing.All in all, I could keep going on about the things I love about this game, but you get the point by now. It is absolutely essential to any Christian tabletop gamer's collection, and a high recommendation for non-Christian tabletop gamers who are okay with playing a game rooted in the history of the Christian Church's development, because whether or not you believe in the message of Christ, this is a truly great game.

Commissioned is a very good co-op game basically a reverse Pandemic, as others have mentioned. We've played two different scenarios with 4 players and both times it was very challenging. The theme is very well done and implemented into the game play perfectly. You don't need to be a Christian to play but if you are, it really adds meaning to each of the actions.Each turn you have to draw a Trial card that will cause something bad to happen and most likely will disrupt your plans/move that you have mapped out. This Trial deck is also the game timer, run out of cards and you lose. We won our first game on the very last turn and in our second game, just before winning, we drew two Trials in a row that decimated us that we hadn't prepared for properly.Pros: - Theme is executed very well with bonus Biblical reference for each action and card- Rotating "Elder" role minimizes the quarterbacking of one dominant player common in co-op games. Each turn one different person gets to make the final decisions.- The probable (3 out of 8) chance that you don't get to speak to each other during the turn. This really allows the Elder to have to make all the decisions for that turn.- Double-sided game board with historical maps. We played one scenario on each side and this really does allow replaybility requiring different strategies.- Very little dice-rolling so chance moves are minimized. You only roll the die to determine if you can speak during the move, otherwise you can't communicate with each other and you may have to add other negative actions to the board.- 5 different scenarios are provided that will change the objective/strategy for each game. You can also change out several of the Trial cards that will change the challenges you must deal with.- Quality components are used with wooden pawns and cubes. Gameboard is very thick quality.- 6 different Apostle characters to play as. Each has their own power or ability that will usually help out at various points in the game.Cons: - The rulebook can be a little confusing the first time you read through it. Once you play the game, it's actually a very simple sequence of events. I found a playthrough video that really clarified what was supposed to happen and then it all clicked togther.- The Apostles and Faith cards are tiny, similar to Ticket to Ride size. It was probably done to keep the player board to a manageable size and doesn't ruin the game, but they are kinda small which can make it hard to read some of the text.- The map area and city locations are rather close together which can cause problems when a lot of cubes are required in each city. It can be easy to mix them up but for the most part if did not impact our gameplay.Overall this is a very enjoyable game. If you like games like Pandemic, then you'll like Commissioned.

game play instructions were quite clear and I did enjoy the whole concept of being part of first church attempting to build throughout the land. The game exceeded the length of time suggested but got quicker as we proceeded each round. For a co-operative type of game which I usually don't enjoy, I did enjoy this one.

Great game, shipping was fast no damage to box