Fire Brigade: The Real Heroes

The game was developed in cooperation with professional firefighters and it includes realistic situations and educational content.

Fire Brigade is a cooperative game. Players are members of the fire brigade. Their goal is to save citizens by rescuing and transporting them from endangered areas to the hospital. At the same time, they want to prevent buildings from burning down and keep the fire contained by preventing the spread of a raging inferno. This game can be played in two modes. In Normal Mode players try to save as many citizens as they can, while in Expert Mode they must save all of the citizens or they lose the game.

The board consists of hexes with different areas (grass, forest, wetlands etc.) with drier areas having more chances to catch on fire. Buildings, Citizens and Fire Tokens are placed on the board according to the chosen scenario. There are nine scenarios for different number of players and difficulties.

Each player gets a Squad Card along with the matching Fire Truck Miniature and Starting Hex and is assigned one random Firefighting Ability Card and one random Utility Ability Card. That gives each Squad unique abilities to achieve the given goals easier.

The game has multiple rounds, each following the same procedure. Each round is divided into three phases: Fire-spreading Phase, Event Phase and Players’ Actions Phase.

In the Fire-spreading Phase the first player rolls the two Fire Dice. The sum of both numbers determines which hexes will be additionally affected by fire this turn. The fire intensifies and spreads according to the dice roll. If the fire intensifies too much, the Fire Tokens are replaced with an Inferno Token. Buildings on those hexes have burned to the ground and the Citizens are lost.

Then comes the Event Phase which changes the situation on the board. Events can be positive, negative or both. There is an interesting fact about firemen and fire at the bottom of each event card.

The last phase is the Players’ Actions Phase. When it is their turn, each player can perform any combination of three basic actions (i.e. has three action points) and any number of free actions. The basic actions are: move Fire truck, extinguish fire, use Firefighting ability, use Utility ability, repair the Fire Truck, and evacuate Citizens. The free actions are: drop off Citizens in the Hospital and get Motivation Card, use Motivation card, drop off Citizens temporarily and pick them up after being dropped off. Players can pass at any point of their turn.

At the End of the game, players can check how well they did. Points are awarded based on how well the fire was contained and how many buildings were burned down. The score is then compared to the Score table which places players in categories from one to five stars, with stars being lost for every lost Citizen. By calculating their score, the players see how well they did and take a scenario with higher or lower difficulty, or try to beat their score in the same scenario next time.