One of my favorite parts about any superhero story is seeing how these characters use their powers in everyday life. We’ve seen Wolverine take advantage of his healing factor to win bar fights and the Human Torch prepare popcorn in his bare hand. Ant-Man has family movie nights while shrunken down so his smartphone is like a theater screen. And when it comes to practicality, what I wouldn’t give for Elastigirl’s stretchiness with taking care of the kids. In Spider-Man 2 (from Sam Raimi’s trilogy of movies) we see Peter Parker delivering pizza using his spider powers. How might other heroes use their powers in the restaurant industry? Hmm…
Born to Serve
Publisher: Shoot Again Games
Designers: Diane and Nick Sauer
Gameplay:
This is an asymmetric worker placement and action selection game. Players each take on the role of a superhero with unique powers, now trying to get a job as a server, trying to earn the most tip money by the end of the game. The game is played over a series of rounds as players utilize their own superpowers and other restaurant staff to make the most money in a single day through lunch and dinner.
After all players have selected their superhero, and first player is determined, player will take turns placing one of their 5 service markers at a table or on a card for other restaurant staff. Once there is a service marker for each place at the table, that table has been completely served. At the end of the round, the player with the most service markers earns the complete tip. Other players at that table can earn partial tips.
If your character earned the full tip at a table, those service markers go to The Phantom Realm… or simply out of play. Sometimes it is beneficial to merely get part of the tip but not win the whole table, so your service markers are returned to you while still making a bit of money.
Each player starts with 13 service markers, and gets to use up to 5 each turn. If you don’t have 5 service markers at the start of your turn, you’re out of luck. You only get to use what you can. Finding ways to retain service markers or get them back from the Phantom Realm is vital to making sure you can serve more than the other players each turn.
Each player has two superhero powers. You may use one of your superpowers, once per round. Once you use it, you will flip your character card over to indicate that you’ve already used it this round. Superpowers will be used during your own turn, unless the power indicates that it is used at another time.
So you take turns, each player placing a service marker on a table to jockey for position, on a worker card to activate their ability, or utilize your own superpower for a special effect. That’s it.
You will shuffle up all of the Lunch tip cards (removing some depending on player count), and do the same with the Dinner tip cards. Place the lunch cards on top of the dinner cards making a single deck. The green tip cards represent regular customers whose tips are visible. They are regulars, so you know what kind of tip to expect. The yellow tip cards are face down when they are placed at the table. These represent new customers and their tip amounts are more variable.
At the end of each round, each table is scored, one at a time, and move markers along the menu/scoring track. Tables that are fully served are cleared with one player earning the full amount of the tip. Tip cards on tables with some service markers remain, as those tables are still waiting for everyone to get their food. Tip cards on tables with no service markers are removed. Those guests have left because their food was taking too long. New tip cards are placed for the start of the next round. Rotate the first player marker, and begin placing service markers again.
The game continues until all of the tip cards have been earned by completing tables or discarded because of the lack of service. The player who has earned the most money wins the game.
Theme:
Oh my goodness. This is fantastic. It’s just the right amount of silly, superhero fun on top of good game mechanics. Asymmetric games can be very challenging and seem unbalanced at times. Born to Serve does a great job of making each character feel unique and play differently, while not letting anyone seem overpowered. It also avoids making the characters merely parodies of other famous superheroes, with the only exception being Whoosh. Some heroes do have some visual inspirations, like The Mighty Mertyl as an homage to Thor and Ms Twister with the X-Men’s Storm. That said it does a much better job of making these characters their own, opposed to some other games that keep almost every detail about popular heroes the same except for the name. (I’m looking at you, Sentinels of the Multiverse.)
A superhero theme may not excite people. Let’s be real, there are a LOT of superhero games out there. But this is such a fresh take on that theme, putting them in a restaurant in the role of serving food. Because of that new spin on something familiar, the theme does not feel overdone.
The components are all on point with the theme as well. The cover of the rule book looks like the cover to a comic book. The score tracker is a menu for the Hero City Diner, complete with coffee stain. The backside of each character card that give details of their superpowers look like a waiter’s order pad. Everything about this game’s visual design just screams “fun”. The art style and colors contribute to this.
Big props to the crew that made this game look beautiful: Ryan Browne, Jennifer Williams, and Matthias Bonnici.
For Parents:
There are lots of small tokens. Might be best to make sure that the service tokens are all away from the edge of the table if little ones are running around.
From a strategy standpoint, the box says ages 13 and up. I think that’s accurate. Maybe kids around 10 years old could handle it, but I think there’s just too much going on with the character superpowers, other staff abilities, and maintaining the order of the tables. My oldest is 8 and I don’t feel like we’re anywhere near ready for a game this complex yet.
The set up time with this one could be better. There’s just a lot of preparation with shuffling tip cards, removing some based on the player count. Selecting the extra restaurant staff and characters you will use doesn’t take a long time. But even if you are randomizing them, it’s just another couple things that have to be done. Having small baggies that can contain all tokens and indicators for each player is nice, and cuts down on a lot of searching through tokens.
The theme is absolutely family friendly. I would have no problems with kids sitting at the table while this is being played.
Final Thoughts:
Born to Serve is a very fun, very complete feeling game. There are some games I play, especially ones from Kickstarter made by new designers, that can feel incomplete. A phrase a like to use a lot is, “this is ‘blank’ percent of a great game.” So if something is 90% of a great game, there are things I really enjoyed and I will more than likely be very excited to play it again, but there are just some mechanics or features that don’t fit well with how the rest of the game plays. That is not the case with this one. Born to Serve is 100% of a very fun game, with the details of asymmetric actions fully realized and balanced.
It doesn’t take itself too seriously with the theme. It embraces the silly nature of superheroes using their powers to be waiters and waitresses. This humorous theme and bright visuals have been laid on top a very mechanically tight game. This was a lot of fun to play. I am looking forward to the next local board game meetup so I can show this one off.
In one 4-player game we played, the scores were very tight all game long. When all was said and done, 3 of us players all finished with sequential scores, 164, 165, 166. That is the sign of a well-balanced game.
My compliments to the chef, Born to Serve was superb. And here’s my tip… get out and play this one the next chance you get.
Thanks for the excellent review and it was great meeting you at Origins.