Components: Good components with some nice touches like the “glass” cubes for power and suspicion, and the jail cells on the tile holder. Good, fitting art.
Game Setup: Setup was easy – 5 minutes.
Mechanics: Resource management, hand management, area control, hidden auction, bidding, variable player powers, set collections, bluffing.
Game Play: Bid for control for areas that give rewards. Some bids are hidden and some are not. Use resources to craft items for points. Variable end-game scoring. Be careful not to attract too much attention when bidding or lose points.
Last Word: A clever bidding game with a fantasy RPG theme. Everything works well with this design and we found it to be very fun – so much that we wonder why there isn’t a bigger buzz around this game. Its probably too much for a gateway game but for any hobby gamer this is a easy play that returns a lot of fun if you like player interaction. For us this peaks out the gaming ROI meter and we’re keeping our copy in easy reach for when we have a quick hour to play something that hums along nicely but is still big fun. Also good any any player count – its hard to get a 2 player auction/bidding/bluffing game to work this well. Thunderworks has a solid title on their hands with this one!
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