Warrior Robot Game
The Transformers Warrior Robot Game is a board game that was produced by Waddingtons and released in the United Kingdom in 1985. A variation on Snakes & Ladders (or Chutes & Ladders in the US), each player assumes control of two unnamed Transformers and tries to make it from their start position to the end of the grid.
What it lacks in snakes, chutes or ladders, it makes up for in Slag being fired into the air out of an Autobot symbol.
Ages: 6 to Adult
Number of Players: 2-4
Playing Time: Interminably long
Equipment: 8 Plastic Transformers (2x red, 2x blue, 2x yellow and 2x green), Playing Area, 2 Dice, Instructions.
Game play
[edit]
Players select a colour and place both of their Transformers (in car form) in the two matching spaces on a corner of the board. Each player throws a die and whoever gets the highest score goes first. Both dice are thrown to determine how many positions forward one can progress; at this stage in the game, while everyone is in car form, the player can choose to split the number of moves according to the two dice and move both of their Transformers, or combine this number and move only one Transformer. All the players take turns doing this and moving around the outer edge of the board. Landing on certain points on the outside track will also allow the player to punish his enemies and send them back a number of places, determined by a roll of a single die.
Once either of the player's Transformers has completed a full rotation of the outer board and returned to their own corner, they can move onto the inner board, and it's at this point the similarities to Snakes & Ladders really kick in. This section of the board is split into 80 spaces, the final marked "WIN". To reach this point and win the game one must get both their Transformers onto this inner grid and up to the finish point. Autobot symbols serve the same purpose as ladders, allowing participants to jump one of their Transformers several rows up. Conversely, landing on a Decepticon symbol is akin to a snake or chute in the traditional game, and can send a Transformer three, four or even five rows back down the grid. Faction symbols also add a further twist to gameplay, however: cars which land on these spots become robots by standing the pieces on their ends. A robot will only progress around the board with the throw of a single die, so a player who has both a robot and a car must decide whether to throw a single die to move his robot, or double dice to move his car.
Reaching the goal is trickier than it may seem. Two of the Decepticon symbols are located at the top of the inner grid, near this end point, waiting to send players back down several rows. The player is also required to throw the exact number of moves required to progress into the goal space; if they roll a higher number they must move into the goal and then "reverse" back out of it for the number of spaces remaining. Given that those two Decepticon symbols are placed so close to the end point, frequently you can find yourself on the verge of winning only to be hurled back down to the middle of the board. This torture continues until a chance roll of the dice wins the game.
Although the game is largely one of chance, it could be argued there is a somewhat greater element of strategy than in traditional Snakes & Ladders. As each participant has two game pieces, success can be dependent on using one's turn strategically to make sure the correct piece is moved, landing in the correct spaces and avoiding traps.
Gameboard
[edit]The "outer track" is a square set of 32 spaces, with two per corner allocated to one player's pair of Transformers, and these coloured points lead into the yellow inner section of the board. These 80 yellow spaces run from left to right and back again over nine rows. There are nine Autobot symbols on the board, which grant a player the opportunity to jump up the board. These are mostly distributed across the bottom and middle of the board. Throughout the middle and top of the board are six Decepticon symbols, to send unlucky players back down the grid. Because of this distribution the difficulty of the game becomes greater as the player progresses.
Each Decepticon symbol leads down a smoky path to an illustration of an explosion. Autobot symbols depict a character being fired from the emblem up the grid:
- Grimlock (dinosaur mode)
- Bumblebee
- Slag (dinosaur mode)
- Prowl
- Sideswipe
- Optimus Prime
- Jetfire (jet mode)
- Jazz
- Sunstreaker
Notes
[edit]
- The colour of robot you select affects where you begin on the inner grid once you have performed a full rotation around the outside of the board. Green robots must enter through the bottom left-hand corner of the board and work their way up from space 1. Red cars enter at space 9 from the lower right-hand corner. In the upper left-hand corner, blue players make their way in from the 72nd space. Yellow cars enter at point 80 - yes, the last spot on the board, from the upper right-hand corner. This means that in theory, with the correct roll of the dice a yellow car can end up in winning position and bypass the inner board completely, although since two Transformers must reach the goal to win and rolling a high number will send you back down the board, bypassing the inner grid with both yellow cars would be tricky.
- The box art depicts a battle above the Earth between Autobots and Decepticons, with Smokescreen firing upon Bombshell. Other characters in the background include Shrapnel, Laserbeak, Sideswipe, Jazz and a tiny moonwalking Sunstreaker. All of the designs are heavily based upon their original package art, while the characters on the game board itself are original depictions based on the toys themselves.
- The "Warrior Robot Game" title is a hold-over from the first year or two of the life of the Generation 1 Franchise in the United Kingdom, when they were promoted under the tagline "Warrior Robots In Disguise". Once the premise had been firmly established and everyone understood the Transformers were gun-toting warmongering (or defending) types, this was shortened to "Robots in Disguise".
- A packaging variant of the game replaces the "Waddingtons" branding with that of Milton Bradley, although Waddingtons is still mentioned in the copyright notice.