We read the rules and set up the game, and started playing it reasonably conventionally, with Stuart surprising everyone by resisting the temptation to turn terrorist from the outset. James was first to become an Evil Empire, thanks to his own unlucky spinning of the Axis of Evil, but soon passed the Evil balaclava to Kieron, and shortly thereafter to Stuart. David ended up with it not long afterwards and then kept it for the next two and a half hours. Although we wouldn't let him take it off, we did allow him to show his face before heat exhaustion took him out.
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All players start as Empires but can become Terrorists by being wiped out, bankrupted or voluntarily if they think they can no longer win as Empires. Stuart grew quite quickly which brought swift nuclear retribution in Europe from Adrian, who paid for it in North America later. Deej almost got a conventional victory towards the end of the evening but just fell short, and then everyone fell on him.
Adrian switched first to Terrorism which cleared Antarctica and most of North America of Empires. After defeating the last Empire counter in North America, David followed suit taking Asia and Australia with him, cunningly converting Stuart into a Terrorist too, and the Terrorists then controlled enough to claim their victory.
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James was left to consider what might have been because he would have won the following turn had David not gone over to the Dark Side. Kieron regretted not going Terrorist when he had the chance, and Andy inspected his small but honourable forces in South America.
So Stuart, Adrian and David share the 10+6+4 points (rounded up to 7 each) and James picked up 2 points, worrying that our scoring system may turn folks away from going for the glory of an outright win!
One of the highlights of the game is the exchange of Secret Messages. Some excerpts give a flavour of the Rivals backstabbing tendencies...
James to Adrian: Can we freak people out by exchanging the first secret message?
Reply: Absolutely old chum.
Reply: Not sure that worked!
Reply: No, we'll have to be more blatant.
Adrian to Kieron & James: As fellow nuclear powers, what say you to wiping out all of Stu's cities? Alas, Scandinavia would die. But I never liked pickled fish anyway...
Stu to Kieron: Take out Adrian.
Reply: Yeah - I'm worried about him.Andy to Kieron: Never again shall you do this, for I will wipe you off the board.
Reply: Truce?! James has the most points this year...Kieron to James: Let's fund Stu to get Deej!
Reply: I'll attack Deej anyway...
A really fun game that played even better than we hoped.
3 comments:
It looks like a publicity stunt but plays like a really well designed game. Shame no-one actually became a terrorist until the final round as it would have been interesting to see how that worked.
Nice write-up James - and excellent Evil photos. Yes, opting for terrorism earlier would have been interesting; it may give the whole game a different feel. I think that this one is set to be a favourite game. By my reckoning, the running Rival average scores are: James 6, Deej 5, Adrian 5, Stu 5, Kieron 2.66, Andy 0.66
Oh and I wouldn't worry about the "outright win". If I could have won on my own I would have. However my choice was to let James (or someone else) have an outright win or to engineer a shared victory. I don't think any different scoring system would have changed what I did.
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