Black Orchestra Second Edition Board Game Strategy and Gameplay Guide

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1. louis cappielli Verified Buyer – 24 May 2024

   Excellent!
   

2. Paul Verified Buyer – 29 September 2024

   While the game looks and plays fantastic, it’s a pity that I received tiles and items that are in Spanish language, although my entire board set is in English (as I ordered it).
   

3. Shane Kroll Verified Buyer – 1 October 2024

   Great game. Always fun to kill Hitler.
   

4. Alisha O. Verified Buyer – 11 February 2025

   We really enjoy playing this game and like the historic elements of it. It’s definitely a challenging game to win, but really satisfying when you do. Really enjoy that it’s a cooperative game too and it’s not a “one and done” game – you can play again. Full game usually takes a couple of hours to play. Does take some time to learn up front. There’s some good YouTube videos online. I think the one I watched was 20-30 mins, but then I understood it and just used to written instructions to confirm when needed. If you’re getting ready to play it or including others, it might be worth sending them a video in advance so you don’t spend a ton of time reading instructions when you get together. Excellent game all around though.
   

5. GeneT Verified Buyer – 8 March 2025

   A thematic game that delivers fun, tension and all the highs and lows you want in a historical board game! Not overly complex but winning is certainly not a given! Quality is fantastic! Id recommend getting the conspirator card expansions (if available) as it adds some extra capabilities. The seller was quick and I’d purchase from them again.
   

6. Cody Carlson Verified Buyer – 15 March 2025

   Black Orchestra, from Starling Games, is a wonderful historically themed board game in which one to five players take on the roles of various real-life conspirators in the plot to take down Adolf Hitler. Players each receive a player card on which they track their commitment and suspicion levels. The game board is a map of Germany (with several spaces in Berlin) and Europe. At the beginning of the game players can only access Germany, but as the game goes on WWII expands and more spaces in Europe become accessible to the players. Tokens represent Hitler and his deputies as they move around Europe, making the Fuhrer a moving target. This is a cooperative game, so the players work together. On a player’s tun he has three action points to spend, and can do so by moving form city to city, revealing packages at various locations, picking up a revealed item that might be useful in the plot, or drawing a card from the conspirator deck. Conspirator deck cards usually contain useful abilities, but it also contains the various plots that the conspirators need to take down Hitler- things like a brief case bomb, derailing his train, a sniper attack, and more. Players can also attempt to conspire, rolling a number of dice per action point spent. If players roll targets they can add them to the dissent track, which can be used to raise player’s commitment, or to lower Hitler’s military support (crucial if you want to enact a plot). If you roll numbers you add them together for a new number of actions (you cannot conspire again, however), and if you roll a suspicion symbol you must increase your suspicion level. At the end of your turn you draw an event card (these decks also act as a timer- opening up new sections of Europe) and resolve its text. Usually this involves moving Hitler and his deputies around the board. Sometimes you may draw a Gestapo Raid card, and if you are holding an illegal card you must discard it or raise your suspicion level, and if you are already at extreme suspicion you will be arrested and thrown in jail. If you are in jail on your turn you must resolve an interrogation card, which can have pretty stiff consequences for you and your fellow conspirators. Finally, when you’ve met the basic requirements for a plot, and hopefully picked up some items along the way that will help , you can roll to see if your plot succeeds. You must roll greater than Hitler’s military support, but also not so great as to attract suspicion for it to succeed. If you can do that, then you and your friends have killed Hitler! I played the first edition of Black Orchestra about a year or so ago and really enjoyed it. This new edition features some relatively minor changes. There are a few graphic changes to the board and text changes to the player cards. There are also wood components. The biggest changes are the rules for the interrogation deck and the prison turn- subtle but important. The game is tense, you feel like you are indeed one of the conspirators as you bide your time, try to collect items to help you, and hope the Gestapo doesn’t catch on to your plot. I’m currently working on my PhD in WWII history, and I did my master’s work on Nazi Germany, even studying in Berlin. So I appreciate that this game is oozing with theme. The mechanics serve the them well, and the game as a whole creates a wonderfully, tense experience that is very engaging and a whole lot of fun! This is somewhere in my top five cooperative games of all time- maybe even my #1. I highly recommend it to every gamer, but I think history buffs will have a particular field day! The Discriminating Gamer.

   

7. Aaron Verified Buyer – 23 March 2025

   I love this game. It’s heavily thematic, and I love that it includes real historical events and people. It’s a roller-coaster of emotions as your chances of pulling off a plot go up and down. Rules and setup are intuitive. There’s almost no confusing or unclear rules (there were a couple of quite minor issues*). Yes there is a luck factor and some people may be turned off by that, but others like me who enjoy gambling and push-your-luck mechanics will like it. It is quite challenging. I have yet to win a game even on Easy (I came close one game).

   * 1) whether conspire itself is an action such that you would only have two dice to roll if you conspire as your first decision of a turn; I decided it is not an action itself so you get three dice, but the rules don’t explicitly state this; 2) whether Berlin counts as a “stage” before stage 1 starts; I decided on a strict reading of a rules that it does act like an implicit stage, such that you cannot move to stage 1 spaces on the very first turn
   

8. Kevin Lavigne Bourque Verified Buyer – 26 March 2025

   An awesome board game, pretty similar to Eldritch Horror in a way : collect items on a big map, take actions every turn, teamwork to defeat a great evil…

   The only thing is: control freak players that love euro board games, like Agricola, will get triggered by the randomness aspect of the game. You’ll need some sort of therapy sessions for them.
   

9. McKennan Dalton Verified Buyer – 23 April 2025

   The mechanisms are fairly easy to learn and play. The game was a little slow to start, but got more exciting as we progressed. In the beginning it almost felt like there wasn’t much you could actually do, but as you improve each character the game gets more complex. We played with 4 people and it worked well. Everyone had their own role and ability to do what they wanted, no one person was really able to control the game. It mimics history with its functionality and characters as well, which we enjoyed!