This Meetup-based
boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.
I was curious about
Villainous,
and we played that first. Each player is a Disney villain, trying to
play cards and achieve their particular goal based on the film in which they
appeared; they are impeded by "Fate", which mostly takes the form of
heroes from their deck.
Each set of cards and Fate is specific to a villain, and they never
leave that villain's play area: you can make an individual story come
out differently, but you can't mix elements from different stories.
Being fair, it's clear that the villainous powers and enemies are
quite closely balanced in terms of game play; to be able to use other
villains' cards might well make things too easy, and of course would
introduce a combinatorial explosions in playtesting expansion packs.
But it does feel a bit like multiplayer solo with quite long downtime
between turns, with occasional "take that" moments; all you'd need to
turn it into a true solo game is some means of automatically
generating Fate effects, and a turn limit.
I was also slightly disappointed to see that the only game mode is
conventionally competitive, with each player trying to complete their
objective first, rather than having any option for a cooperative
league of villains trying for a joint victory.
Still, the real problem with this game for me is that there's no
designer credit. Not on the box cover, not in the manual; on the back
of the box there's a small mention of "Prospero Hall", but it turns
out that this is just a house name at "Forrest-Pruzan Creative". I
wouldn't buy a book without an author credit (and yes, they have been
published), and I wouldn't buy a game without one either.
We went on with
The Resistance,
where I managed an effective game as the False Commander, picking my
rebel victim and making sure nobody trusted them. (It helped this this
was a person who, like me, is usually regarded as untrustworthy in
this sort of game.) Straight spy win, no need for assassination.
Finally,
Codenames,
where I was spymaster for the first time in quite a long while. Some
of my clues were too obscure, but they didn't lead to any false
guesses, and we ended up winning.
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