A Traitor in our midst

This week I took Shadows over Camelot to Iain's, not without some hesitation, my previous experience had been poor. I consoled myself with the view that there had only been 3 players, and the game had been unfamiliar.

In the end there were 5 knights this time attempting to stem the inexorable advance of the darkness. 3 of us combined to gain Excalibur, while Iain went after Lancelot's armour, and Tully got squashed by the Black Knight. Excalibur was won but Iain tied on his quest and 3 black swords were added to the table, to join the 10 siege engines. The outlook was bleak, and Iain was convinced that there was a traitor at work. He looked at Peter, whose conduct had been somewhat ambiguous and suggested that he might indeed be a traitor. There followed an impassioned debate, as Peter defended his conduct and character with great spirit. His defense raised more than reasonable doubt, and the spotlight turned to Tully who had been strangely quiet during the debate, and who had certainly performed several questionable acts. Iain was not at all satisfied with his responses and was about to accuse Tully. Ness, the quiet voice of reason, pointed out that he was less of a menace as a hidden traitor, but hotter heads prevailed and Tully was unmasked.

A few turns later it was all over, but the final stages had been hugely enjoyable. The personal interactions lifted the game above the mediocre and restored my interest in it. The theme is very thin, and the actions abstract, but it hangs together with the right people.

We also had time for a 3 player game of Domaine, which was the most savage and confrontational Klaus Teuber (of Settlers fame) game I have played. I really liked this game, even though an early mistake in enclosing two of the same sort of mine (I didn't look closely enough at the board) meant I was critically short of income and had to use my turn selling cards more often than was good for me. Even so, I was in the running at the end but was powerless to prevent Tully enclosing one of my villages in the last round to sneak ahead for his second triumph of the night. It played quickly, has difficult choices, and is definitely worth playing again.

Earlier in the week I had a chance to try out the final Blue Moon deck, the Aqua, that has just been released. They seem very powerful, especially against tricky decks like the Khind. In this case the Protected Icon that many Aqua cards have will be very useful. There does seem to be one absurdly over powerful card in the Aqua deck that lets you shuffle your discard deck into your draw deck. Anytime after the middle of the game this is hugely beneficial. Now that I have all the decks, it is obviously time to create “pure” decks and see how well they work. There are also the two “expansion” decks (Emissaries and Blessings) to experiment with.