Being children of the 70s & 80s and cult film fans in general, we here at Pop Goes the Culture are huge fans of the 1979 film The Warriors. When Funko Games announced that their tabletop division was publishing a new game based on the film, we knew that we were going to have to try this one out. How well does The Warriors: Come Out To Play tabletop game immerse you in that one bad night in New York?
The Warriors: Come Out To Play is for 2 to 4 players ages 13+. Included in the box are 1 Game Board, 7 Gang Leader Miniatures, 8 Warrior Movers and their Bases, 5 Dice, 20 Tiles (Gang Tiles and Location Tiles), 100 Cards (War Cards, Weapon Cards, and Bopper Cards), 21 Tokens, and the Instructions. Average gameplay is listed at 45 minutes, but during our initial gameplay the session went slightly longer (around an hour and fifteen minutes) while feeling like it took less than half an hour. Time flies when you’re having fun.
Players begin by setting up the board and selecting their character. Each comes with a weapon, a pair of unique ability cards, and a number of War Cards. Unselected characters are removed from the game. The Warriors gang leader miniature is placed on the game board with a starting reputation of 4. The remaining 6 gang leader miniatures are randomly placed on the remaining reputation spots — 3 higher in reputation and 3 lower in reputation than The Warriors. Movers for the chosen characters are placed together at the starting point in The Bronx. The object of the game is to get The Warriors characters across the game board to Coney Island while climbing as high as possible in reputation along the way.
Moving across the game board presents the players with opportunities to gain additional Weapon Cards and War Cards to customize their deck to match their play style. However, movement also comes with the unveiling of Bopper Cards, which range from “All Clear” (no impact on the game that turn) to building up threat and instigating fights.
Fighting is the name of the game in The Warriors: Come Out To Play. Players must work together and coordinate their trek in order to determine when to run (resulting in a loss of reputation) and when to stand their ground and fight. At the start of a fight, players reveal the gang they’re up against and the location where the fight takes place. Players must cover the two spots on the Gang Tile and a variable number of spots on the Location Tile, based on the number of players. Some spots can be covered by a player having a weapon in-hand that matches the weapon spot on either tile. Numbered spots are covered by rolling anywhere from 1 to 5 dice, depending on the War Cards in the player’s hand. When a player rolls, the number of the highest die rolled is considered. Players can cover a spot on either tile that number or lower. If a player fails to roll a number high enough to cover a spot on either tile, they are knocked out for the duration of the fight.
The fight phase ends either when both the Gang Tile and Location Tile are covered or all players are knocked out. Winning the fight drops the defeated gang’s leader miniature all the way down to the lowest reputation, moving all others up one spot to fill that space. Losing the fight drops The Warriors gang leader back a spot in reputation, as does running from the fight altogether. Regardless of the outcome, the city phase of moving across the board begins again after the fight phase is resolved.
Once all of the characters reach Coney Island on the game board, the final fight begins. Players search for the Gang Tile of the highest reputation gang that’s not The Warriors and the Coney Island Location Tile, where the final battle takes place. Players must cover both spots on the Gang Tile, a variable number of spots on the Location Tile (based on the number of players) AND reputation spots on the Location Tile equal to the number of gangs that have a higher reputation than The Warriors. For example, if 4 players are playing and The Warriors enter the Coney Island fight in the #3 reputation spot, then players find the Gang Tile of the gang in the #1 spot and must cover 4 spots on the Coney Island Location Tile (1 per player) and 2 Reputation spots on the Location Tile (1 for every gang with higher reputation).
We had an absolute blast playing The Warriors: Come Out To Play. You can view the video of our very first gameplay session (yes, we made a couple of mistakes our first time through). The gameplay was fast and fun. As mentioned above and at the end of the video, it felt like we had been playing for less than half an hour when in fact our session lasted over an hour. The game feels daunting and complicated at first glance, but once you get into it and establish a rhythm, it’s not complicated at all. We were lucky in that a couple of our characters had complimentary unique abilities, which made the fights easier for us to handle. Check out the video below and pick up The Warriors: Come Out To Play online or in a game store near you.
Dislaimer: A copy of The Warriors: Come Out To Play was provided for review purposes. All opinions are our own. Purchasing through the link in the article supports Pop Goes the Culture.
