Another Week, Another Game Night

Last night was game night and I played only one half of a game the entire night. That's right, only one half!

I was interested in trying out the new Fantasy Flight release of Britannia. I'd heard good things and reading through the rules peaked my interest. So Oren, Daryl and Birch joined me for a four player game. This game can be played with three or five players but it really is intended for exactly four players so that's how we played it. Going through the rules took quite a bit of time. They aren't all that difficult but there are enough special cases and exceptions that it can take a while. This is definitely a good game to play with someone who has already played it once. The next time I play it we'll be able to get started MUCH faster. As it was, it took us about an hour to get through the rules, get everything set up and start playing. The first few turns were slow and by about ten we had gone through exactly half of the sixteen turns in the game. The later turns went quite a bit faster than the earlier ones but that's still about three hours to go through half the game (if you discount the hour spent going over the rules). Daryl wasn't feeling well and it was getting late so we decided to quit for the night.

So what did I think? Well I liked it! But it is very long. I especially like the subject matter: British history spanning roughly ten centuries from about 50AD to 1050AD (give or take a few decades). This would work as an educational game because it does a good job of giving a very high level sense of what happened during that period of British history. The game encourages players to stick to the real time line. I'll try and find time to play it all the way through soon. I imagine that I could potentially play it all the way through in under five hours now that I know what's going on.

Other games played last night:

Pickomino

New England

Puerto Rico

and Star Fleet Battles.