As a kid, did you ever imagine running you own theme park? You thought you could ride all the rides, eat all the fried food you wanted, stay up every night to watch the firework show. Well reality just gave you a slap in the face. Running a theme park is an immense amount of work. You have to build the rides, hire staff, open up amenities, improve and upgrade your equipment to outshine the competing parks, and be on the defense of any “unfair” corporate schemes or espionage from the other players. Who will have the grandest theme park at the end of 8 rounds? Fingers crossed and good luck! Number of Players: 2-5 Play Time: 50 - 125 minutes -Setup- To setup the game, each player choices one theme that they want to have incorporated in the game. Then you take all the chosen theme cards, separate them by type (Event, Park, Showcase, etc.) and shuffle them all together. Each player is given a main gate card, a loan card, 20 coins, and 5 cards off the top of the park deck. Once everyone has their hand of cards you are ready to begin Round 1. -Gameplay- Unfair is played over 8 rounds. In each round, starting with the first player you will play through 4 phases. In phase 1, the event phase, each player will draw an event card and then have the chance to play as many event cards from their hand that they want to. Phase 2, the park phase, is where you will actually be taking your main actions. You have a few options on your turn: you can buy a card from you hand or market on main board to add it to your park, or you can draw some more cards from the park, event, or blueprint deck, or you can demolish an attraction in your park, or you can find loose change (which is the weakest action in my opinion but can get you a few more dollars, instead of you taking a loan). After the action packed (get it?) park phase, you get to rake in all the money from ticket sales in the Guests phase. Finally you have the cleanup phase, which just involves round maintenance. I know what you are thinking. That’s it? The fun to be had here is how everything is thematically tied. If you play with the vampire theme, there is a staff member to be hired that can mesmerize other players staff to give you their abilities. If you play the pirate theme, a lot of the cards will be focused on getting all that booty. Your park can only hold up to 5 attractions so you must also be mindful of getting the most out of your limited space. At the end of the round, you must also discard down to 5 cards. You can carry event cards that you draw from round to round but they count against your hand limit. You will always be trying to weigh if any card is worth clogging a spot in your hand. Unfair can be mean-spirited because your actions and event cards can interfere with other players parks, but it is just a game and the game is literally called unfair so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Depending on the themes you choose (Base game includes: Vampire, Ninja, Pirate, Gangster, Robot, and Jungle), the cards also allow for plenty of way to redirect or defend against any attack or event that could do damage to your park. If you ever get tired of the 6 base sets there is an expansion that has 4 more themes. Each game also comes with some “Game Changer” cards that you can add at the beginning of play to add even more variability. -Components- In the box there are: 86 coins (in denominations of 1, 5, 25, 125), 6 theme packs of 57 cards each, a roller coaster cart shaped round tracker, a game board, and a score pad with pencil. The components in this game a excellent in my opinion. The board is nice quality, the tokens are thick, and the cards are nice quality. A round of applause is needed for artist Mr. Cuddington (David Forest and Lina Cossette) as everything from the cover art to the board to the cards are covered in some of the most vibrant work I have ever seen in a board game. The cards are really nice with unique illustrations that are just dripping with theme. -Final Thoughts- I love unfair, it’s that plain and simple. I feel like a kid every time we open the box. It just transports me to a simpler time and theme without losing any of the strategy that a medium game should have. There can be quite a lot of “take that” but one of the included game changers is a world peace card that eliminates all interactive cards. Mixing up different themes makes you adjust your strategy every game so I am always surprised how my park ends up. It works good at all player counts but may be a little long at 5. If I had to find any con, it would be that when the final round starts I feel like I have already accomplished all that I wanted to. We will always play with the game changer that cuts the game down to 6 rounds. Its faster to play and creates tension because you know you can’t get everything done in time. I would give Unfair 5 roller coaster loops out of 5 Board or Bust Scale: 1- I would never play this again. I would not give this away as a gift. 2- I would play this game if someone else had a copy but I would not buy it for myself. 3- I would ask to play this game on occasion. Would be happy to receive as a gift or in a trade. 4- I would purchase this game for myself. I can see this getting to the table a few times a year. Always enjoy myself when playing. 5- This is exactly what I want out of a board game. Would never turn down a game and would ask to play regularly. Hard to imagine ever getting rid of this game.
