Stats:
No. of players: 2
Amount of time to play: 45 min
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: 5-10 minutes

Claustrophobia Rules Description:

Claustrophobia takes place in hell. You either play as the humans or demons to accomplish scenario-specific goals.

Once you have decided on which scenario you will play you must set up the game. Different scenarios will have different humans and demons for each player to use.

The human player goes first and takes their initiative phase. For this phase you roll one six-sided die for each character you have. You must then assign one die to each character. That die will determine that character’s stats for the round.

Characters have movement, combat, and defense stats. Movement tells how many tiles a character can move. Combat determines the number of dice you roll when that character attacks. Defense is the number your opponent must roll to hit that character.

When human characters take damage you must cancel a line of stats. So if your Human Brute is hit for one damage you must remove one of his six stat lines. That means the next initiative phase you will not be able to give him a roll of three if you canceled that stat line. It also means after six hits the human characters die.

If you must give a character an initiative roll in a line that you have canceled the character is considered exhausted. Exhausted characters have a stat line of 0 mvt, 0 cbt, 3 def. That means they aren’t moving or fighting and are pretty easy to hit.

Once the human player has determined their character’s stats those characters may act. An action is a move and attack or an attack then move.

The demon player then rolls three dice and places them on the destiny board. This board enables them to gain Threat Points, beef up their troglodytes’ stats and even directly damage the human characters. But which of these actions they are able to perform will depend on what they roll.

During the threat phase the demon player can spawn new troglodytes or demons. Troglodytes cost one Threat Point to spawn and demons cost five. Which type of demon you may place is limited by the scenario. As is the number you can use during a specific scenario.

For movement and spawning you may only have three units from each faction on a tile. You may only spawn on a tile with an unexplored edge and no human units (unless you use certain abilities on the destiny board).

You can only move off a tile if you have the same number of units or more than your opponent. Human characters have talents that allow certain units to break this rule.

Lastly human players start with advantage cards and the demon player can gain event cards (again via the destiny board). These cards will further help each faction defeat the other.

A Quick Review of Claustrophobia:

Claustrophobia is a tense, mid-weight skirmish game. The art and components are fantastic too. The rules are well-written, easy to pick up on and the playing time isn’t too long.

I love the way each side plays so differently. As the human player it is fun to roll and try to optimally assign character stats. Cancelling stat lines as you are hit is such an excellent way to track and show damage. You must balance which lines you cancel across all characters to avoid being exhausted. I just love that mechanic.

For the demon player you have a basic knowledge of what you want to accomplish, but each round is different because you must rely on the destiny roll. Again this mechanic is fresh and really fun.

The miniatures are beautiful and they way the system plays really appeals to me. If you hate dice and don’t like knowing exactly what you will be able to do each turn of a game, then Claustrophobia may not be for you.

As I said above the rules are full of examples and very clear. One thing from the FAQ really needs to be noted before you play. Certain abilities on the destiny board are written in red. In the rules it says these abilities may only be used once per scenario. While the FAQ says they may be used once per turn. This will change the game for the demon player a lot as they are not as limited by the correction.

I really like this game and look forward to playing through all the scenarios. Claustrophobia is supported by its own web site that contains even more scenarios and an expansion is set to come out later this year.

This is a great game and will definitely add to any gamer’s collection. I even think the rules and gameplay is straight forward enough that your non-gamer friends will enjoy this one.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6