Fantasy Flight GamesFantasy Flight Games Peaky Blinders Under New Management Board Game | Strategy Board Game for Adults and Teens Based on The Hit TV Series | Ages 12 and up | 2-4 Players | Average Playtime 90 Minutes

Packaged well! Hopefully the game is awesome!

I'm an avid modern board gamer. If "Twilight Struggle", "Tzolkin", "Brass Birmingham" or "BGG" mean anything to you then you know I love my board games.This being said I saw this game on a shelf at one of the local big brick and mortar book stores. BGG didn't have any real information on it. The box looked nice. The rules seemed viable. I bought it.The game is close to being a good game, but falls fatally short. No amount of house-ruling can save this hot mess.The game is a worker placement game at it's core. But the mechanisms for how this happens is clunky and counter intuitive. None of it makes much sense. The game looks like it should work, but in playing the game it's just a big question mark. There's no synergy. Each of the different action paces feels like a different game, not a component of the game itself. The horse racing element is some tacked-on sub-game that again leaves one wondering why. I suppose it's added in because it's in the show itself, but it's shoe-horned into the game. Forced to be a component of the game that again feels sluggish.Ultimately the game comes to a halt as it ends. It doesn't have any sense of tension or even any kind of game play arc. You play. Move stuff around on boards. Collect resources - and suddenly someone wins.The component quality is an enigma as well. Some of the components - such as the player pieces and even the board, are fantastic quality. The player pieces are sculpted miniatures of the items they represent. Pocket Watch, gun, whiskey glass, etc. The board is nicely organized and the graphic design choices are pleasing on the eye. On the negative side? There are a number of resources in the game. None of these are actual physical resources. One would have expected them to be nice 3d wooden or resin resources like you find in most modern board games. And if they were just wooden cubes like other games that would have been nice too. But the publishers made the perplexing choice to use cards in place of the resources. 4 resources. So a ton of cards in each resource for 1s and another card representing 5s. Instead of small and large cubes you now have 2 decks of cards for each resource (1s and 5s). This makes clean up and take down a pain in the butt (relatively speaking).I really wanted to like this game. The box, and the description on the back of the box seemed like ti had so much potential. At the end of the day it's a 4X4 Corvette with a 6 cylinder engine. ...Neat to look at, but leaves one simply asking, "What? Why?"Your mileage may vary. For me this was a 2/10 on BGG. And I don't typically rate things below a 6 if they have any redeeming value.