Video Games have made the jump to our tabletops quite a few times with varying degrees of success. Games like Gears of War, XCOM: The BoardGame, and Civilization have all been considered successes, while others like Portal: The Uncooperative Board Game and Assassin’s Creed: Arena have mostly been left to collect dust in your local game store’s bargain bin.

Orcs Must Die: The Board Game

Thankfully, our newest Game of the Week falls into the former category as it actually does a great job of making the jump from digital bits to cardboard pieces. Published by Peteresen Games (known for their hit game Cthulhu Wars), Orcs Must Die: The Board Game is the latest offering from a tabletop publisher that clearly knows how to make a miniatures game.

What is the Game?

Orcs Must Die: The Board Game is a cooperative, tower defense style board game where players control up to four heroes who take on increasingly larger waves of invading enemies.

There are actually two different versions of the game, The Order edition has players controlling humanoid heroes (good guys) with orcs taking on the role of invaders. The Unchained edition swaps the rolls, with players getting to control the green skinned orcs and other monsters.

Why Should You Play It?

As far as tower defense board games, there really haven’t been too many successfully ones to grace our tabletops. B-Sieged and The King’s Armory are the most notable ones, however neither really blew me away. But now we have Orcs Must Die: The Board Game, which succeed in creating a easy-to-play, streamed system that does a great job of capturing the essence of the video game.

What’s more, you can combine the two editions and turn this cooperative board game into a competitive one. This is great for players that would much rather face a real live player than an AI system. I should note though, when you play the competitive variant, this game definitely turns into a table hog.

Petersen Games is definitely proving that they know how to make a miniatures game. Even though Orcs Must Die: The Board Game is still relatively new, it has already made it’s way to my tabletop quite often.

1-4 PLAYERS • AGES 10+ • 60-120 MINUTES • $75