With the welcome return of Stuart to games night, we finally got round to trying a couple of the games I bought at the Bring-and-Buy at Birmingham's Games Expo earlier this year.
The first was Verrat!, a four player palace intrigue game, meaning "Betrayal" in English. Uniquely in all our games nights, here was a game where the reading of the rules lasted longer than the game itself. As we stepped through the rules, we were increasingly excited about the clever game mechanisms but as we played, we very quickly realised that if everyone clubbed together and thought about it, they could make it impossible for the leading player to complete their objectives and win (and so the game would last forever). Alternatively, they might not spot one option, and that leading player could quickly and easily (but unsatisfyingly) achieve victory. So a win for David but a new eBay item for me.
The second game was Ulysses, a 3-5 player exploration/influencing game. Sadly the influencing turned out to be very limited and victory was assured by collecting enough cards to crush your opponents. Again not a very fun game to play - a view shared by the others even though they didn't do as dismally as I did. A win for Stuart and yet another eBay item for me.
Still, it was a much more fun evening than the games reports might suggest!
1 comment:
I admit it - I let myself feel a little smug about my speedy 3-turn victory, although the game itself wasn't that fun. It was interesting listening to the 3 of you having to plan how to stop me openly. The problem was that to be sure of blocking me you'd have needed to sacrifice maybe 6 viziers between you leading to a very slow drawn out end-game.
Ulysses looked to have more potential, but was ultimately let down by the game mechanics. Perhaps if we could steal some ideas from a different game, then we could make it better - but even then I doubt it would be great.
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