Cyberpunk 2077 also exists as a board game with The Gangs of Night City

What is a board game? Cyberpunk 2077?

You play the role of a ruthless gang leader and are ready to do anything to dominate the underworld of Night City. Confront other groups, with your weapons or on the Internet, to take power.

Accessible from 14 years old, for 1 to 4 players and games lasting between 90 and 120 minutes, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game of confrontation, majority and territory control. Obviously inspired by the eponymous video game, you don’t need to have played the latter to play the tabletop version.

Published by CMON, Cyberpunk 2077 – The gangs of Night City is a game by Andrea Chiarvesio, Eric M. Lang, Alexio Schneeberger and Francesco Rugerfred Sedda, illustrated by lots of people, and sold at the price of €99.95 at Philibert.

How do you play the Cyberpunk 2077 board game?

In Cyberpunk 2077, each player embodies one of the four gangs offered in the box. The rules are the same for everyone, but each gang comes with its own little particularities that can influence your playing style.

The enormous central board represents the different districts of Night City. Each district has one or two points of interest that are interesting to control, and allow you to gain one or other of the game’s resources.

On your turn, you have the choice between two possibilities: take two actions or recover.

You have five different actions (plus a joker allowing you to repeat any of the others). You can thus activate one of the three groups of characters in your gang. Solos are brawlers who are used to attack other gangs and take control of territories. Netrunners help navigate the depths of the dark web. The deeper you go into the matrix, the more you are rewarded, but the more you risk losing feathers. Techies finally make it possible to deploy drones, recruit new members (stronger, specialized… but for a fee), and seize opportunities to gain resources and reputation points.

You can also build new hideouts in other areas of the city, to later deploy new units there, or improve your weapons. These are used during confrontations, which are governed by a very simple system, in which each participant plays a single card, although ultimately very effective.

But be careful, you can only perform each action once. When your stock of actions is exhausted, or simply whenever you want, you can decide to pass your turn to recover. You then replenish your stock of available actions, gain different resources depending on the districts you control or are present, and recruit new units.

The players’ turns follow each other in this way, until the end of the game. The latter occurs either when a player reaches enough reputation points, or when we reach the end of the scenario chosen at the start of the game. There are four offered in the box (including an introductory one), and they allow you to pace the game, by offering different storyline branches depending on the actions and choices of the players.

Why play Cyberpunk 2077 ?

We are always a little reluctant to try a board game from a video game license. Even if this is less the case in recent years, the adaptations are often disappointing and the sole purpose of the license is to bait the customer to extract a few euros.

Good pick in the end, since Cyberpunk 2077 – The gangs of Night City is a completely enjoyable game. Even if, like our group of players, you have never played the original material. Obviously, if you have already played the video game, you will find obvious references. But not having played it is not penalizing and should certainly not constitute a hindrance.

The size of the box, the profusion of small tokens, the size of the rulebook, and in particular the price displayed, can be a little frightening at first glance. Of course, we do not recommend it to newbies who would most certainly be lost. But if you’re already a little used to playing, the rules aren’t very complex after all. The size of the booklet is easily explained: it is very detailed, airy, and full of examples.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a mix of genres that works quite well. There we find, of course, confrontation, and also control of territories, the majority, opportunity, negotiation (alliances are made and broken, promises are kept… or not, etc. .).

The laps are fluid, fast. The different actions are logical and instinctive. The combat phases are certainly simplified to the extreme, but have the merit of being resolved quickly and still allow for some surprises and twists of the situation.

The atmosphere around the table and the direction given to the games depend entirely on the choices of the players. Some games are settled with guns, while in others, it almost feels like a pacifist management game.

We still recommend playing it with three or four players to increase the interaction. Two-player games are a little flatter and potentially one-sided if one of the two players quickly gains the upper hand.

The material is of good quality (although a little dark, but that’s in keeping with the theme), even if we once again regret this profusion of plastic. However, be careful to distinguish between the different characters: even if the bases are different, it is still easy to confuse them, and this can distort the game a little.

If you are looking for a confrontation game, but not only (and really not only), with fairly simple rules, rhythmic and tense games, and if in addition, you are a fan of the license, Cyberpunk 2077is a really good idea to buy. All the richness of the game is found in the constant dilemma between the different actions and the need to recover. In any case, it was a real good surprise for us and everyone we played with.

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