The Prisoner’s Dilemma Meets The Saddest Parts of a Nature Documentary: A Review of The Alpha
By Cory, Jimmy, & Benjels
Editor’s Note: You may recognize Cory & Jimmy as hosts on The Dirtbags of Holding podcast. They also love board games, and since quarantine has limited my board gaming, they were willing to help me out with this review of The Alpha, designed by Ralph Rosario and published by Games by Bicycle.
TL;DR
We’re fans of putting the TL;DR up front, so here are our pros and cons for The Alpha:
Pros:
Light strategy; easy to learn and accessible to many skill levels.
Quick game; you can play it in about 30 minutes , 60 when learning the rules
Engaging player interaction; the incorporation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma sets up risky betting situations between opponents (Editor’s Note: if you are like me and forgot what the Prisoner’s Dilemma was, read this.)
Beautiful art with a novel theme; if you put a pack of wolves running through a misty forest on the front of the box I’m gonna play that game
Cons:
Luck aspect; you need food (points) to win, but food allotments are dictated in part by die rolls. Alone, luck isn’t a dealbreaker, but it’s frustrating when paired with...
No catch-up mechanics; if you miss a few prey rolls, you’ll find yourself with few to no routes to take down larger prey. Meanwhile, the well-fed packs have mechanical advantages to keep scoring large meals.
Take-away: The Alpha is a good game for families and those who want to introduce newcomers to strategy games, but may be frustratingly simple for seasoned hobby gamers. The player interaction is interesting and leads to some exciting gambling, but a lack of catch-up mechanics can keep players with an early lead on top for the entire game.
Full Review
The Alpha is accurately described as a light strategy game with a theme we can all get behind: majestic wolves in a picturesque forest. The theme carries over quite well to the gameplay. To do well in The Alpha, you will have to combine equal parts aggression and cooperation, much like a wolf pack on the hunt. Your pack only has so many individuals, so working with other packs to bring down bigger prey is ideal, but then who gets the food? This is the balancing act you contend with, and it represents an interesting take on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The Alpha puts you in control of a small pack of 7 wolves, including an alpha pair and 5 beta members. The pack is represented by 6 wolf figures (the alpha pair is one piece) that you will be placing on different regions of the board, each with their own prey to hunt. The idea is to have collected more food than the other packs by the end of 5 rounds. It’s a simple goal, and one that brings to mind all the sad parts in nature documentaries. You know, the parts where you don’t want to see cute bunnies get mauled by wolves, who are also cute and whom you also don’t want to starve. You know what’s cute? Veganism. We’d have much different ecological problems, but I digress. This is a game review. You should at least eat less meat, though.
How to not be a vegan play
Anyway, each round of play has several phases. The first consists of each player placing their wolves in the various prey regions one at a time, until every wolf has been assigned to a particular food source. Hunting bigger prey is high risk/high reward. Big prey reside deep in the forest, so going after them will set you back one food per wolf, cutting into your point total. The biggest prey also requires teamwork with other wolves. You’ll likely need to work with other packs to bring down the mighty bison and moose, which yield the most food. The pack with the most wolves in the region gets first crack at the food, though, and so this phase of the game plays like an area control game.
There is a special livestock region in which only one wolf can hunt, but it’s risky. Hunting farm animals can net you a big food reward for minimal investment, but also carries a 50% chance of your wolf being killed by humans. Again, veganism would prevent this, but the game needs a risk balancing mechanic. Did you know Llamas are used to protect sheep flocks from wolves? It’s true, read the wiki, you won't be disappointed. Oh, and llamas have cool antibodies, give this a read too.
Cut to the Chase
Once all the wolves are placed, the chase begins. Each region has a die that is rolled by the dominant player which determines if the hunt was successful, and if so, how much food is available. Conflicts arise when there are two or more packs with an equal number of wolves in the region; this is where the Prisoner’s Dilemma comes in. Equally dominant packs have to decide if they want to fight for all of the food or share, but there’s a catch. If only one player chooses to fight, they get all of the food, leaving the sharing pack with nothing. If two or more decide to fight, nobody eats, and a wolf from each pack gets sent to Injured Reserve for the next round (Editor’s Note: I *just* now realized that the combat system in Cosmic Encounter is basically the Prisoner’s Dilemma. I’m sure some of you are going “yeah duh” at this). Knowing all of this, one might think you’d want to avoid co-dominant situations, but having multiple dominant packs in the region gives you dice re-rolls if the prey gets away. You can see how the area control phase can get somewhat complicated and strategic very quickly. Players who enjoy negotiation and adversarial semi-cooperation will love this aspect.
The player with the most food at the end of a round gets to be the titular “Alpha” for the next round. The “Alpha” gets the extra food when prey doesn’t divide evenly among sharing dominant packs, and also starts wolf placement. For the last round, this is a big advantage since the livestock region is closed once someone puts a wolf there. If you’re first and you know it doesn’t matter if you lose a wolf in the last round, it’s an obvious move. During our playthrough, the same player remained as the Alpha for nearly the entire game. There aren’t any catch up mechanics, and the player in the lead knows that others have to be aggressive to try and gain the top spot, which can be planned for. The simplicity of the gameplay hinders comeback attempts in this way. You can get lucky, sure, but that can be frustrating for seasoned strategic players.
Would I like it?
Overall, The Alpha is a good game for folx who want to dip their toes into strategy games. If you’re trying to establish a regular game night with friends who are new to hobby gaming, this is a good game to do it with. It’s compact, has a small rulebook that can be explained in about 5 minutes, and has an accessible theme. The Cones of Dunshire factor is very low; it’s probably a cube on that scale (you’d understand if you knew Cones). The player interaction is novel and intense, and the quick play time leaves room for rematches. The simplicity is double-edged though, as at times it may seem impossible to recover from a few unlucky die rolls, making replayability of this game score low in our book. Still, it’s good for sparking a good research session of the Prisoner’s Dilemma and wolves’ role in the ecosystem, and that’s something we can all get behind.