Fireball Island

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

Fireball Island is an old game first published in 1986. A new edition was recently published via Kickstarter. To many people this is probably a nostalgia game, bringing back childhood memories. I had not played this nor had I heard of it when I was young, so there is no nostalgia factor for me.

You are tourists visiting Fireball Island, an island rich with legends and artifacts, and has an active volcano. You are not exactly honest tourists, because you will be stealing artifacts from the island. They are worth victory points. You still do touristy stuff - visiting famous landmarks and taking photos. These snapshots are worth points too. The game can end in two ways. It ends after one player visits all three types of landmarks. It also ends when the volcano erupts. Once game end is triggered, you have two turns to return to the helicopter pickup point. If you don't make it on time, you don't score your snapshots. You have to swim to escape the island, and your camera is not waterproof. Whoever has the most points at game end wins.

The volcano at the centre of the island is carved into a statue of a local deity. Lava flows from the mouth of the statue, and can go in three different directions. The statue can be rotated, so you can somewhat control where lava flows. Lava is represented by marbles in the game. When marbles roll down the slopes, they may knock over your pawns. Sometimes you drop marbles at the statue. Sometimes you push marbles from their perches on the island. All these are done to try to knock over your opponents. This is the greatest joy in the game. When you knock them over, you get to steal their treasures.

This is the full view of the island. It is made of 3 big pieces. The general shape is a roof shape, with two slopes going left and right. When the marbles roll, they will eventually roll down to the bottom of one of the slopes. That H in the foreground is the helipad.

Once the board is fully set up, there will be treasures (round tokens) all over the place, and ember marbles (partially transparent). There are two types of marbles in the game, red fireball marbles and ember marbles. Ember marbles have perches scattered around the island, and they are pushed off their perches to attack your opponents. Fireball marbles are normally kept in a pit (not shown in this photo). When you need to use them, they are dropped into the statue and from there they roll down the slopes. Right beside the volcano (statue) you can see the giant red ruby. That's the most valuable treasure.

The card on the right is a reference card. The card on the left is a souvenir card. Souvenirs are single-use tools. This particular souvenir lets me steal an extra treasure from whomever I knock over.

These are action cards. You have a hand size of two. On your turn you must play one card then draw one card. When playing a card, you must move the number of steps as specified on the card. Coincidentally both of these are a special type of action card - Cataclysm cards. These cards cause the volcano to progress towards eruption.

Player pawns.

This mini board tracks the progress of the volcano towards eruption. It is a countdown board. It starts with three fireball marbles. Whenever a Cataclysm card is played by anyone, it is placed in a slot below this board. Upon the third Cataclysm card being played, one fireball marble is moved to the island. The cards are removed and shuffled with both the draw deck and discard pile to form a new draw deck. Once all three fireball marbles are moved to the board, you enter the game end phase.

The deck on the left is the action cards, and on the right the souvenir cards (tools).

This is a snapshot card. You collect these by visiting landmarks on the island. There are six landmarks in three different colours. If anyone collects all three colours, the game end is triggered.

The Play

I did a four-player game with Allen, Peter and Max. This is the highest player count, and I believe the best too.

Max (yellow) was the ambitious one, and aimed for the ruby right from the get-go. To get to the ruby you need to cross bridges, and bridges are unstable structures. Whenever you enter such a structure, you must stop. Going for the ruby means you'll pause once when heading in, and you'll pause again when heading out. It takes at least 2 turns. The first person to steal the ruby angers the local deity. A fireball marble is immediately moved from the countdown board to the island, speeding up the volcanic eruption.

Seeing that Max was going for the juiciest treasure, Allen decided to stop him. He played a card which would allow him to target Max with an ember marble, which was just 2 inches away from Max. To everyone's surprise, the marble not only missed Max, it bounced to the other side of the island, and knocked over Allen himself. Oops... that didn't quite go as planned.

The first two action cards I drew were Cataclysm cards, so I could not avoid speeding up the game. Max stole the ruby very early in the game, and that added a fireball marble to the island. With ruby in hand, Max was the obvious leader. The ruby was worth 7VP. The rest of us would need to catch up on points before time ran out. I went for landmarks and tried to collect as many treasures as I could along the way. Then something unexpected happened. Peter played a Cataclysm card, which would further speed up the countdown. At the time he was behind in points, and I had thought it not beneficial for him to speed up the game. I was amassing a respectable number of points, but I was far from the helipad.

We had one big misunderstanding when we played. We thought that anyone who didn't make it back to the helipad automatically lost, i.e. you die on the island and score nothing. The actual rule is if you don't get to the helipad, you don't score your snapshots. You still score for other things so you are still in contention. The way we played was incorrect, but I thought it was rather logical.

If Peter managed to get the leaders stranded (and thus killed) on the island, he just might win. The game end came rather soon, and everyone had to scramble to get back to the helipad within two turns. I was very far from the helipad, and my only hope was the caves. There are many caves on the island, all connected by underground tunnels. Whenever you enter one, you exit from another, but which one you exit from is determined by a die roll. I had to gamble that I would exit at a cave near the helipad, but unfortunately I didn't roll the right number.

The cave I exited was near Max. I ran past him, and in the process stole his ruby. Whenever you walk past anyone carrying the ruby, you get to steal it. I did it just because I could. There wasn't much point actually, since I was doomed to die on the island (based on our incorrect interpretation of the rules). It was a pity, because I had many snapshots and treasures. In this photo there is yet another mistake. You are not supposed to collect two snapshots of the same colour.

This was just after I (green) ran past Max (yellow). Both of us needed to get to the helipad on the right, but we were both still very far. I had a high movement card on hand, but unfortunately I was just one space short. At this point Peter played a card which let him launch an ember marble. I was the obvious leader, due to the many treasures and snapshots, and also that ruby I had robbed from Max. So he targeted me. I was secretly happy. From where he was going to launch the ember marble, if he hit me, I would likely be knocked one step down the slope where I was standing. Later on my turn when I was to stand up, I would be standing up on that space. This process would effectively give me one free move, and that was enough to get me to the helipad! From the depths of despair, I saw a silver lining. Peter launched the ember marble. It flew right off the island. It didn't even touch anyone. He himself was penalised for sending the ember marble off the island - one treasure surrendered. My flicker of hope was gone.

Max's turn came again. He ran past me and took back his ruby. It actually didn't really matter, because he couldn't make it back to the helipad anyway. I guess at least he felt good after taking back what was his. Then suddenly I saw new hope. In Fireball Island, if another player is in your way, you can move past him, skipping the space he is on, and saving one movement point. This was the one crucial movement point I needed! I made it back to the helipad, and on my way I stole Max's ruby again! We played the game quite casually, and didn't really think deeply. Had we been playing more seriously, Max would have gone the other direction to avoid the risk of helping me. He didn't have enough moves to get to the helipad anyway. Getting nearer did him no good. He inadvertently saved my neck.

We didn't bother tallying up the scores. I had obviously many more items than the rest. I even took the lucky penny, because I was first to get back to the helipad.

Allen and Peter managed to get back to the helipad too. Max was the only one stranded on the island.

The Thoughts

We messed up quite a few rules, but in the end it didn't really affect our enjoyment. This is not a serious strategy game. It is a children's game, a family game. The selling point is you get to shoot marbles at your friends to rob them of treasures. There is the excitement of seeing how the marbles roll and the anxiety of seeing whether you and your opponents will be knocked over. In some ways Fireball Island is more toy than game. It's not deep. It's simple and it's rowdy fun. It comes with quite many expansions, but I have not looked into what they contain.