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Cinque Terre is a simple pick up and deliver game in which you take on the role of a fruit and veg trader in Italy.

So how do you play?

The Cinque Terre board shows a map of 3 farms and 5 coastal villages in Italy, with a circular route passing through all 8 destinations. Each of the farms has either 2 or 3 fields containing a paricular colour of wooden cube, representing one of the eight types of fruit and veg in the game. Each of the villages has a set of four, three or two dice next to it (which you set up at the beginning of the game). Each die matches a colour of the wooden cubes.

On your turn you perform 3 actions. A single action can be any of the following:

Take a card: Each card represents one of the 8 types of fruit and veg. There are four face-up cards available which gets replaced when it is taken, or you can take a lucky-dip and grab one from the top of the face-down deck of cards.
Pick up some produce: If you are at a farm you can pick up produce (i.e. cubes) from the fields adjoining the farm. You either have to trade in a matching card from your hand for the type of produce you pick up or two matching cards of a different type of produce. You can carry up to 4 cubes at any time, and as long as you don’t exceed this limit you can pick up as many cubes as you like from a single farm in a single action.
Move location: You can move up to 4 locations in a clockwise direction around the board.
Sell produce: If you are at a village you can sell some or all of the produce you are carrying for Lire (Italian currency before the euro).

So where do these dice come into it?

Selling produce in different places can get you different amounts of Lire. As a minimum, you can sell any produce at any village for one Lire. However, if there is a die next to a village you can sell produce of the matching colour there for the value shown on the die. So if the village you are at has a yellow die next to it showing the value 3, you can sell yellow cubes (lemons) there for 3 lire each instead of 1.

So I just need to sell stuff where it’s most expensive then!

Not so fast, there are other ways to earn lire! If you are the first player to sell 8 items of produce to a particular village you become the “most popular vendor” there, and bag yourself some bonus cash!

So I just need to sell stuff where it’s most expensive and always try to sell stuff in the same place?

Again, not so fast! There is another way to earn yourself some lire – by fulfilling orders. Next to the board there will be a few face-up order cards, showing the five villages with a particular type of produce next to two or three of them and a value. If at the end of your turn you have sold at least one of that type of produce at each of the villages, you can claim that order and claim the lire. You don’t have to sell all this produce this turn, it can have been at any point throughout the game (your player board keeps track of what you’re sold where). Then you have an extra decision to make – take a look at the next order from the top of the face-down deck. You can decide to keep this order as a secret order – if you do this only you can complete it and it remains secret until the end of the game, but you’ll lose points if you don’t. If you keep it you fill the empty order space on the table with the next order card from the deck. If you don’t keep it you place that order down in the empty space and choose if you want to take the next card off the deck as a secret order – but be warned, you have to choose to take it without looking at it and you can’t throw it away if you don’t want it. You will also start the game with a “starting order” which is a secret order and requires something to be delivered to each village.

Wow! That’s lots of ways to make some money, so when does it all end?

The game ends either when the supply of 2 of the 8 types of produce runs out or when one player has at least five fulfilled orders and MPV cards combined (this doesn’t include secret orders). At the end of the game lire is earned or payed out for compeleted and uncompleted secret orders and the player with the most lire wins.

So what’s so good about this game?

The great thing about this game is that it has very simple rules and is easy to teach, but there is a lot of strategy involved. How best to use your three actions, are you going to stop at several villages to get the best prices using up lots of actions or are you going to make one stop and sell everything in the same place? Should you sell where the prices are low to get a most popular vendor card? Is it worth fulfilling an order if the selling prices are low? Is it worth picking up and hoarding cards of high-value produce, letting everyone else fulfill the orders? Lots of decisions, and far more fun than moving little cubes around has a right to be. Also, the fact that the die rolls and colours are random means that the selling prices are different every game, one time everyone might be trying to sell everything at a single village or two, other times it might be more evenly distributed. This and all the different order cards gives this game a great replay value. If you love the accessibility, simplicity and fun of Ticket to Ride then I think you’ll love this too.

What’s the worst thing about this game?

The playing tokens are little trucks, which is great… but why oh why did they make them just slightly too small to put 4 cubes on the back? Every time I sit down with this game with somebody new they always try to put the cubes on the back of the truck, and I have to explain that they’ll fall off!

And that’s the worst thing?

Pretty much! So if you and your family/group play a lot of Ticket to Ride try giving this one a go, you won’t be disappointed!

In Small World, you are controlling a fantasy race trying to dominate a world which is just not big enough for everybody. Eventually your race will become overstretched, but don’t worry, you can abandon your race and select another one!

So I keep changing races? How weird is that! How would that work? And why would I even want to?

Let’s go back to the beginning. The board for Small World is a map divided up into regions. There is a different board depending on the number of players. Why? Because it is designed to be just too small! Next to the board you will place a pile of race tiles, and next to that a pile of race modifier tiles. For example, the top race might be Orcs and the top modifier might be “rampaging”, so that makes Rampaging Orcs! Each race and each modifier has a special ability, meaning that when they’re combined you’ll get two special abilities. You take the top 5 combos and place them in a column below the stack, so you’ll have 6 combinations visible.

Each player is given some coins and the game begins. On your turn you’ll need to start by picking up one of the six visible race combos. You can take the first one (furthest from the stack) for free, but you’ll need to pay one coin for every race you skip. If you do that, put one coin on the race tiles that you pass over, because another player will get those coins if they choose that race later.

Your race tile will have a number on it, and so will the modifier tile that goes with it. Add these two numbers together, and that is the number of units you’ll be getting to go forth and populate the world with, so take that number of tokens (the tokens are specific to your race). Starting from a region at the edge of the board you capture regions by placing two tokens in the region, plus another token for any other tokens that are in the region (these could be tokens from other races, or mountain or lost tribe tokens that are placed on the board in certain regions at the beginning of the game). If you end up with too few tokens to capture your last region then you can roll the reinforcement die, which can add to the strength of your last tiles, so depending on that roll you may or may not get your last region.

After you have finished conquering you can redistribute your tokens around the board, then finally give yourself one coin for each region you occupy. Play then moves to the next player.

Where I might get attacked myself, right?

It’s not really a case of might, more will, remember it’s a Small World after all.

You had to get that in there, didn’t you?

Surely it’s obligatory! Anyway, if another player conquers a region you occupy, you lose one race tile, but any others are returned to your hand for you to use on your next turn.

Well that all seems straight forward!

Yes it is, but don’t forget that your special abilities might bend these rules, you might get extra coins for certain things, you might have to use less units to conquer, you might not lose tiles when you’re conquered, etc.

OK, but we just keep going at it until the game ends?

Not quite, remember you have limited tiles to use and these get more limited as the turns pass. Eventually your race will become more trouble than it’s worth, and you will choose to put your race into decline. Leave just one tile in each region you occupy and flip them over. You’ll still get a coin for each region that race occupies, but you won’t be able to conquer anything with them and you’ll lose that races special abilities. However on your next turn you’ll be able to select another race and start conquering at full strength! After 10 rounds the player with the most coins is the winner!

I get it now! So what makes this game great to play?

A number of things. The special abilities of each race make playing with each one unique, and the modifiers ensure that each race is slightly different than in the last game. The variety of special abilities is great, and they can bend just about every rule in the game, but never in a way that is confusing. There are many great decisions you’ll need to make during the game, such as balancing your desire for a particular race combo with how much it will cost to get it, or should you take a cheaper combo which may give you coins straight away if other players have skipped it? The major decisions you’ll have to make is picking the perfect time to put your race into decline – too soon and you’ll spend too many turns waiting around (remember if you put your race into decline you don’t get your new race until the next turn), too long and you’ll be stuck with an ineffective race who cant conquer enough. The only drawback is that when you start playing the game you’ll have to keep checking the player aid for what each race and modifier does, and you’ve got six combos to choose from so that can take a while, but you’ll quickly learn to read the symbology on the tiles and only have to check occasionally. In short this is a great game with loads of replayability and you should definitely give it a go!

Ticket to Ride: Europe is a great game that is simple enough for anybody to learn with a great train theme.

But I don’t like trains! Should I give this a miss?

Absolutely not, you don’t have to be a train fanatic to enjoy this game.

OK, talk me through it.

The Ticket to Ride: Europe game board is a map of Europe with major cities marked on it. There are also coloured blocks on the map linking these cities together. These are the train routes that you will claim during the game. At the start of the game you will be given 4 tickets, each of which have two cities on. At the end of the game, if you have a continuous route between these two cities you get the number of points shown on the card, but if you don’t you will lose that many points. From your 4 tickets you must keep 2 of them, but you can throw the rest away if you want to.

So I’ve got my tickets, how to I join them up?

On your turn you can do one of 4 things on your turn – take train cards, claim a route, take more tickets or build a station.

There is a big deck of train cards, most of which has a colour corresponding to the coloured blocks on the map, and there are also some wildcards that can represent any colour. You will have five of these cards face up and the rest in a pile face down. You can choose to take two of these cards on your turn, either from the cards that are face up or from the face down deck. The only exception to this is if you choose to take a wildcard that is face up you may only take that one card on your turn.

The next option you have for your turn is to claim a route. To do this you need to lay down the same number of cards in the same colour as the blocks on the board that connect two cities (you can of course use wildcards to represent any colour). If the route on the board is grey then you can use any colour of card, as long as they are all the same. If the grey block has the train symbol on it then you must use a wildcard for that block, and if there is a thick border on the block then that represents a tunnel. When you try to claim a tunnel you turn over the top three cards from the train deck (discarding them), and if any of those cards match the colour that you are using to claim the tunnel, you have to discard an additional card of that colour to claim the tunnel. After claiming a route you place some of your plastic trains on the board and get some points, with longer routes earning more points.

You can also choose to take new tickets on your turn. You draw 3 new tickets, and you must keep at least 1.

Finally you can choose to place a station. This lets you use an opponents route as your own when deciding if the two cities on your tickets are connected at the end of the game.

And that’s it.

Sounds simple enough!

It is simple. Really simple. Basically your collecting sets of coloured cards and spending them to get points. It doesn’t get much simpler, and that means that anyone can play this. And although it is simple there is strategy to it due to the limited routes available, so you can join the cities on your tickets but you can also cause havoc for other players by blocking them. Should you claim the route you really need early in the game, or will you alert other players to your plans? Or should you ignore your tickets entirely and just claim the long routes worth the most points? There will be cursing. There will be cheering. There will be sighs of relief. There will be fun had by all.

First class!

Er, quite…

Lords of Waterdeep is a worker placement game set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons? Isn’t that when you sit around with bits of paper and rolling 20 sided dice? That doesn’t sound like my kind of thing!

Fear not! Although this game is set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, giving it a great theme, this is not your typical Dungeons and Dragons game.

OK, so what do you do?

At the start of the game, every player gets a character card (a lord of waterdeep), some agents, some quests some intrigue cards and some coins. Each quest has a cost and a reward. The cost will be a selection of coloured cubes and possibly some coins as well. White cubes represent clerics, orange cubes represent fighters, black cubes represent rogues and purple cubes represent wizards. On your turn you can pay the cost of a quest to complete it, and collect the reward which will be some victory points and possibly some coins and/or cubes as well.

So how do I get these cubes?

Players take it in turns to place their agents at various locations on the board. Each location allows you to do something, such as take cubes, coins, new quests or play an intrigue card. Each location can (usually) only take one agent, so once a location has an agent no other agents can use it. There is also a location which lets you build a building in exchange for coins, which adds a new location to the board, and gives you a benefit every time another player uses it. This continues until all the players have placed all their agents, then all agents are returned to players and a new round starts.

What are intrigue cards?

Intrigue cards are special actions that often involve interaction with other players. They may let you allow you to use a location that already has another player’s agent on it, take cubes from another player or give them a “mandatory quest” – a quest with a high cost compared to the reward which that player must complete before they can complete any other quests. They allow you to spring a suprise on the other players!

And when does the game end?

After 8 rounds the game finishes. Players reveal their lord of waterdeep card. Each lord will then collect bonus victory points, usually based on the number of quests you completed of a certain type (each quest is either a warface, skullduggery, piety, arcana or commerce quest). Add these to your score and whoever has the most points is the winner!

So what makes this game so good?

It has an amazing theme and encourages a lot of interaction between the players. You have to keep your eye on what everyone else is doing, but also make sure you are completing your own quests as well. It has a good balance of knowing what other players are doing (you can see everyones quest cards) and not (you keep your intrigue and lord of waterdeep cards secret). You have an idea of how well you’re doing during the game from victory points scored but there’s also the bonus victory points at the end to keep it exciting. It also works well with any number of players (between 2 and 5 in the base game, the expansion adds a 6th). As soon as you finish a game, you’ll want to play another!

Sounds great! Anything else?

I feel duty-bound to mention the box, which is absolutely amazing. Everything is of very high quality and every piece has its own place in the box. Putting a game away has never been so much fun!

So to sum up, good game?

I think good game is a bit unfair, this is a great game. Give it a go!

Breaking news! The world has been infected by not 1, not 2, but 4 deadly diseases, all over the world!

Well that’s bad news! I’m glad it’s not up to me to cure them!

Ah, didn’t I mention you’re an honorary disease control expert charged with saving the world?

No. You didn’t.

Welcome to Pandemic. Pandemic is a cooperative game in which you must cure the world of 4 diseases. Diseases are represented by little cubes in cities round the world represented on the board.

So how do I go about it then?

On your turn, you take 4 actions to help rid the world of disease. Then, you draw two cards from the player deck (nearly all of which will help you). Then the infections spread!

Ok, back up! What actions can I take?

The two simplest actions available to you are to move to an adjacent city on the board or to remove a cube of disease from the city you are in (or all cubes if the disease has been cured). You also have a hand of cards, most of which will show a colour-coded city, and these give you other actions you can take. If you discard a city card you can move directly to that city for an action. If you’ve got the city card and you’re already there, you can give that city card to any other player who is also in the city, or you could discard that card to either move to any other city you choose, or you can build a research station at the city you are in. If you have 5 cards of the same colour and you are in a city with a research station, you can discard them all to discover the cure for the disease of that colour.

And then I get more cards?

Yes, you take two cards from the player deck, and these will nearly always help you. Most of the cards are city cards. There are a few event cards, giving you one-off abilities that don’t count as actions. Finally there are a few, just a few epidemic cards to make your life a living ****. I’ll tell you about the epidemic card in a moment after I’ve told you about the infection phase, so you can fully appreciate how bad it is!

Why am I getting a sinking feeling?

So for the infection phase you draw cards from the infection deck (the exact number depends on how many epidemic cards you’ve drawn so far – the more epidemic cards, the more infections). For each city, add an infection cube to the city. If the city already has three cubes on it – outbreak! Infect all of the cities neighbours instead. If one of those cities also has three cubes – chain outbreak! The only exception here is if a disease has been cured and eradicated from the board, then you don’t have to infect those cities.

So what do these epidemic cards do?

When you draw an epidemic card you take the bottom city from the infection deck and give it 3 disease cubes. This is bad, because this will be a city you’ve not been concerning yourself with before is suddenly full of disease! Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, you take the discard pile for the infections deck, shuffle the cards and place them back on the top of the infection deck. That means the cities you’ve had before, the ones that are already infected, are all about to get infected again. That’s really bad.

OK I’ve got it, but surely I just keep going until I win?

If you run out of cards in the playing deck, you lose. If you have too many outbreaks, you lose. If you run out of disease cubes for any disease, you lose. More than likely, you will lose.

So why would I want to play?

Because it’s such a blast. It’s great working together towards a common win instead of trying to beat your opponents. It’s really tense, and involves the ritual chanting of “please don’t be an epidemic card, please don’t be an epidemic card” every turn of the player deck. And you will probably find that when you lose you’ll only just lose, and you’ll want to play again. And again. And again.

So, saving the world huh? It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it…

Yes, but thank goodness you’ve got some help!

So what’s the game all about?

The game of life attempts to reduce the human life, from leaving school to retirement, into a board game. Along the way you’ll have a career, get married, buy a house and maybe even have kids.

That sounds like it could be great! I suppose all these experiences and events end up having a profound effect on the game?

You’d think wouldn’t you…

So they do?

No. But more on that later, let’s take this from the top. First you need to set up the game by putting white plastic buildings on the board for no discernible reason whatsoever. Everyone gets a little cash to start with, and you’re straight in with your first big decision – should you go to university or not. If you go to university you have to take out a loan, but you’ll have a choice of careers and salaries. Skip university and it’s Hobson’s choice, but no debt for you and a shorter route to the finish.

Now it’s time to progress round the board. Spin the spinner and move that number of spaces, do what it says on that space. Often you’ll land on a “life” space representing significant moments in your life, whereby you take a life token, first unclaimed tokens, then tokens off other people. You’ll also be forced to get married and buy a house, randomly chosen from some cards.

So how do I win? How do we decide who has had the best life?

Here’s the major problem with the game – it’s all down to who’s got the most money. Did you get a nice big house? That’ll have cost you a pretty penny, you’d have been better off with the caravan. Did you get kids? They’ll have cost you money. And all those life tokens you collected? Flip them over and, that’s right, they’re all converted into money.

And that’s it?

There’s a few other things thrown in to try and make it exciting, like stocks and house insurance, but they contribute to the games problems rather than fix them, so I won’t bore you with the details.

So would you recommend this game to anyone?

Oh yes, If you’re the kind of person who enjoys spending an hour in near-constant tedium, then this game is for you. Go knock yourself out.

I love playing board games but I can’t find any cool board game websites!

Well you’ve found your way to the right place. Welcome to boardgaming.com!

How is it better than other board gaming sites?

Put simply, user experience. There are other board game sites out there with plenty of content, indeed more content than this site, but actually using them is not intuitive and you don’t want to spend any longer on them than you have to (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about!). Boardgaming.com is the only site I’ve found that I want to visit, want to use and want to contribute to. The quest/XP system is a great way to encourage contributions.

So it’s completely perfect?

Nothing’s perfect! I’d like to see even more social features such as private messaging between users, and it would be great to have an image gallery for the games, either provided by the site or the users (or both) as I think seeing the game can be just as useful as reading reviews.

Also, why not put a link to each game on a site such as Amazon? I know there is a link to a U.S. site selling games, but we’re not all in the U.S., so an international site like Amazon would be great. And while we’re talking about it, why not give gamers a little XP or gold for buying through a link from the site? I’m sure boardgaming.com gets small contribution from the seller and it would be a great way to encourage us to use these links and help you make a little bit more money! Win-win!

So you’ll be using it again then?

Certainly will. The art style, the accessibility, the user friendliness and the social aspect of this site means that it is now my go-to site for board games. I am sure that it will go from strength to strength.

Although not without its flaws, Risk is a solid take-over-the-world strategy game that is widely available and not too difficult to play.

So how do I take over the world?

The Risk board is a map of the world which is divided up into continents, and each continent is divided up into regions (commonly a country or small group of countries). Each player has an army. At the beginning of the game players take it in turns to claim regions by putting a member of their army into it. Once all the regions are occupied the players can then add to their armies in each region.

And then we fight, right?

Each turn is divided up into three “phases”, a reinforcement phase, an attacking phase and a redeployment phase. During the reinforcement phase you will get to add to your army size by a certain amount. This is based on the number of regions you occupy, but you also get a bonus if you control all the regions in a continent or if you have an appropriate combination of ca. You can increase the size of your army in any regions you choose.

Fine, do we get to fight now?

Yes, now it’s time to fight. You can attack from any of your regions into any enemy region adjacent to it. You can attack with up to 3 members of your army, but you must make sure you leave at least one member behind in the territory you are attacking from. The player defending their territory can choose to defend with up to two of their army members.

So how do we decide who wins? Arm wrestle or something?

You could I suppose, but it’s better to use the dice. Each player rolls one die for each member of their army are in the fight. The highest die from each player is then compared. If the attackers die is higher than the defenders die, then one member of the defending army is removed. If not, the attacker loses a member of their army. If there are two defenders then the process is repeated with the two second-highest dice. If the defending army is completely removed from the region the attacker moves the members of their army into the region and claim it as theirs.

Yeah, take that!

Quite. To end the turn you can move your army around from one region to any other region that is connected through regions the player controls. Finally, if the player gained control of a new region, they get a card which they can put towards making a set to use in a later reinforcement stage. Keep taking turns until someone controls the whole board!

So are there any drawbacks to this game?

There are two drawbacks to this game. The first is it can become apparent quite early in the game who is going to win, at which point the game becomes less fun as one player gradually takes over the board. Even worse is that when playing in a group some members can be out of the game a long time before it is finished, leaving them with nothing to do but watch. However, the game can produce some surprises and close games can be good fun, particularly after an unlikely dice roll or a sudden reinforcement card set!

So there’s pros and cons?

Exactly.

I think I’ll take the Risk…

I see what you did there.

There is nothing complicated about this expansion to the excellent Carcassonne as it only has 2 new rules, but it adds a lot to the original game.

OK, so I’ve played Carcassonne, why do I need this?

Because it makes Carcassonne better!

But Carcassonne is already a great game, surely this is just going to make things needlessly complicated?

How little you know my friend. Carcassonne: Inns and Cathedrals adds a few extra tiles to the game. Some are simply variations of the existing tiles, but some have one of two new features.

What are they?

Err… inns and cathedrals?

Oh, I see. Clever. I suppose you’re going to tell me that they have some new rules as well?

Yes. Basically Inns and Cathedrals are like “double or quits” tiles. If you complete a road and it has an inn next to it, you score two points for each tile it contains instead of just one. However, if an incomplete road has an inn next to it at the end of the game, that road doesn’t score anything. Similarly, if you complete a city and it has a cathedral in it, you score three points for each tile (plus three points for each shield), but if that city is incomplete at the end of the game is scores nothing.

So what does this do to the gameplay?

If you pick up a tile with an inn or a cathedral you can take a chance and try and gain yourself some extra points if you think you can complete a feature, or you can try and scupper an opponent if you think they’re not going to finish a feature. Either way it will focus gameplay on those features as players either try to finish them for their own benefit or stop someone else completing it.

Sounds interesting!

It is. The best thing about it is that the new rules are simple enough that even new players who’ve never played Carcassonne can jump right in and play with inns and cathedrals as well, you don’t need to get the hang of the base game on its own first. It really does make an already fun game even better.

Carcassonne is a great game. It is extremely simple to understand, very quick to set up and has great replay value.

So what is Carcassonne?

Really? You’ve never heard of it?

Nope.

Well then you’re in for a treat. Take my word for it, go and get this game and play it.

I’m going to need more convincing than that. How do you play it?

In Carcassonne there are lots of square tiles. On the tile there is a small segment of a map. At the start of the game there is only one tile down (the starting tile), and all the other tiles are turned face down so none of the players can see them (in fact I would recommend you go all-out and get yourself a bag to put them in). In turn each player chooses a tile at random, reveals the tile and adds it to the other tiles, building the map as you go along.

I’m guessing there’s some kind of scoring to this?

Yes there is! Each player has a set of small wooden people, which are called “meeples”. The map that you build up with the tiles has fields, cities, roads and cloisters. On your turn, the features on the tile you place have to align with the tiles already in play (i.e. a field has to align with a field, a road has to align with a road and so on). After placing your tile down you have the option of putting one of your meeples on one of these features if it is unoccupied. If a feature is completed you pick up your meeple and gain a score based on the size and type of the feature.

– A road is complete when it is continuous with a start point and end point (for example a crossroads or it enters a city). It scores one point per tile.
– A city is complete when it has a continuous boundary and no tiles are missing inside it. It scores two points per tile, plus an extra two points for every shield it contains (some of the city segments have a shield on).
– A cloister is complete when it is surrounded by tiles (including diagonals, i.e. it is at the centre of a 3×3 square). It scores 9 points (one for the cloister tile and 1 for each tile surrounding it).
– A field is never completed during the game.

At the end of the game any meeples still in play are scored.

– Any uncompleted roads score one point per tile.
– Any uncompleted city scores one point per tile, plus one point per shield.
– Any uncompleted cloister scores on point for the cloister tile plus one point for any tile surrounding it (including diagonals).
– Fields score 3 points for each complete city it touches.

The highest score wins!

So what makes this game fun?

Many things. First there’s the strategy element, placing a tile can be advantageous to you or disadvantageous to your opponents (or both). I think it’s best to show everyone each tile as it is chosen, and everyone can talk and argue about where it should be placed (of course, it is up to the player who picked up the tile to decide). Also, although you can’t put a meeple on a feature where another player already has a meeple, it is possible to have features “join up” and share or steal points from an opponent. Finally, bear in mind you only have a limited number of meeples, so there’s always the decision to be made if you want to use one up because you might not get it back until the end of the game.

OK, I’m sold.

I knew you would be.

Citadels is a card game that’s easy to pick up and understand and plenty of fun.

So what’s the aim of the game?

Each card in citadels represents a building. Each building has a type and a cost. The game finishes when one person has 8 buildings and the player with the “best” citadel wins.

What makes a citadel “the best”?

There is a simple scoring system. You get points for having a large citadel (8 buildings), a diverse citadel (one building of each type) and expensive buildings in your citadel.

OK, so how do I build my citadel?

Each turn you have the option of picking up a new card or two gold pieces. Then you can spend your gold pieces to play a building in your hand.

Simple. Is that all there is to it?

No! At the beginning of each round each player chooses a character card. Each character gives you a special ability for your turn, and determines the order in which you take your turns for that round. For example, the Bishop can receive extra gold for your religious buildings, the Assassin can make a player miss a turn, and the Architect receives extra cards and can build extra buildings. I won’t go into every character here, but that should give you a flavour.

Sounds good!

It is! The characters add plenty of strategy to the game, and there is fun to be had trying to guess who has chosen which character before it is revealed.

Shouldn’t the review title say “Build YOUR citadel”?

I was hoping nobody would notice.

Resistance is a great social game best played in a large group and is easy to pick up.

What happens in the game?

During the game you will play five “missions”, in which a team of players can choose to either pass or fail.

But why would I want to fail a mission?

At the beginning of the game, each player will receive a character card. Most players will be a member of the resistance, and their goal is to pass at least three of the five missions and would never choose to fail a mission.

The other players will be spies, and their goal is to fail at least three of the five missions. The spies get to know who the other spies are, but the resistance don’t get to know who the spies are.

So what happens on a “mission”?

During each mission a team will be selected by a leader. The team is small for the first mission and grows in size on subsequent missions. All the players get to vote to accept or reject the team. Once a team has been accepted, each member of the team gets a pass and a fail card. They hand in one of the cards face down and they are shuffled and revealed. If there is one fail card, the mission is failed (except on mission 4, which requires 2 fail cards to fail).

Is that it?

In a nutshell, yes it is.

Sounds kinda dull!

But it’s not! The fun in this game comes from the social interaction of the players. The resistance need to figure out who the the spies are, and the spies need the throw the resistance off but still fail most of the missions. The spies will try to throw the resistance off, and some spies will decide to pass a mission to avoid suspicion. You’ll have accusations thrown round the table all game and it’s great fun.

Is there any strategy to it?

Mainly in trying to discover if your mates are lying or trying to lie convincingly, as I said this game is more about the social interaction. It states in the rules that the spies are likely to win more often than the resistance, but you won’t care because you’ll have had such a good time.

So everyone’s a winner?

No. That would be silly.