Up Front
May 17th, 2006Last night I went over to Chris’s house to play Up Front. Chris has written a nice session report.
A while ago, I tried to read the rules to Up Front, without any of the components to hand, so I could PBEM. I gave up in disgust after about ten minutes, so it is amazing that the gameplay was so simple and fluid in comparison. Basically, the game system is very elegant, but it is surrounded by a lot of fiddly detail. You can see it is a product of the 1980’s. This detail gives a really authentic feel to the game, so I am torn about condemning it out of hand. It is just a pity the cards are so covered with obscure glyphs and acronyms.
The latest Point2Point podcast mentioned that Multiman Publishing will reprint Up Front in the autumn. It will be interesting to see which way they go with it. They could either streamline it a little or slavishly reproduce the original with no alterations. I hope they do the former, but I doubt it. It would be risky to disappoint the faithful. I suppose the best solution might be to have a simplified “UF:Starter Kit” version as the base game, but include all the original chrome for those who want it.
It is definitely a good game. I played Blue Moon with Chris when I first met him and enjoyed it very much, but if you asked me how to play it now I would have no idea. On the other hand, I could probably teach a bastardised version of Up Front in six months time, so it is clearly more intuitive. I would certainly rather play Up Front than Blue Moon, which is high praise. Buying it at current eBay prices is another question.
8/10