For my birthday this year M. gave me Shadows Over Camelot, a card based board game produced by Days Of Wonder, and I’ve been totally thrilled with it. A review over at Board Game Geeks will give you an explanation of the game play, but let me add my experiences for good measure.

Things I liked:

This game is hard, I’ve played three times and haven’t come close to beating it. Even with such a slim chance of winning I find it incredibly fun. The cooperative game play element is refreshing, keeping everyone playing invested in the game, while the element of a traitor keeps you on your toes. The turns are quick and everybody’s luck is the same - because it’s cooperative nobody ‘wins’ while everyone else loses.

Things I don’t like:

The first time set up takes a long, long time. This is balanced by the quick game play, but when you’re introducing a new player (or worse, a group of them) it can be a task to explain the rules and get everybody up and running. I would like explanation to take less than ten minutes. Also, with only one positive action per turn I feel its hard to get things done. This might be a problem in the strategy we’ve been using, but it seems that it is too easy to lose quests. But maybe thats what keeps it fun, I’m still debating this point. My last complaint is the figurines and their somewhat low quality. I’ve got a couple who don’t stand up straight or feel a little delicate, but this is a minor complaint.

Overall I think the game is quite a bit of fun, challenging, well made and its certainly going to provide many more enjoyable hours of game play.

To help speed up the re-familiarization process with the rules I’ve compiled an abbreviated list, the quick play set of rules (see below the cut)

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When I was 10 I had two best friends, Mikael and Alex, and we would spend all of our time together. One of our favorite activities was playing role playing games. (D&D, TMNT, Ninja’s and Superspies are the three I can remember of the top of my head) . Before we learned about girls we would spend our recesses hunched over a desk rolling die for initiative and combing through the Dungeon Masters Guide.

I’ve grown up some since then, but I still haven’t given up the nerd in me. I channeled that nerd towards technology and put aside the role playing for many years, but a couple of years ago Mary gave me Settlers of Catan for my birthday and I fell in love instantly. How could there be a whole realm of interesting, challenging, fun boardgames that I had never heard of?!? A way to exercise my love of fantasy/sci-fi and role playing without losing friends, personal hygiene and self respect! I was thrilled.

Since then I’ve picked up a number of other titles and have enjoyed them all. My friend Charlotte has organized a gaming group and we get together every couple of weeks, have dinner and play games. This has been a great experience and wonderful way of learning of (and playing) new games. Zombies, Apples to Apples, Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride, 5 Crowns to name a few.

Long story short, I’ve added a new category for games. In future you can look forward to hearing more about my game playing experiences. Let me know if you’ve got any questions/thoughts about the games I talk about.