Page 45 - Spielbox_2_2020

c
e e
n n
s s
s s
h
c
u
t
ho- h
o
o
o o
e e
t t
” ”
e e
e e
T
h
three dead members of a specific class. The current host determines the class a patient comes from, and the purpose of his treat- ment by the plague doctor. Before revealing their votes, all players, in turn, may still use one of their scarce privileges in order to manipulate
the voting result. And one needs to consider that the patients them-
selves can also influence the events in different ways.
In the same year, Black Forest Studio published Infected, by Bryan Sloan, an unmasking game in the tradition of The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow. Here also, the five or six players take on secret roles with the objective of uncovering the plague doctor who shamefully intends to spread the plague among the villagers. However, unlike in the well-known refer- ence game, players may not communi- cate verbally, but only by means of cards, played face down. Depending on the character, these cards can focus on infec- tion, vaccination or a roll with a special die to determine fate. A silent or infected villager cannot guess who the doctor is; and if a safe villager makes an incorrect guess, he is out of the game.
With two copies of the game, the vil- lage community can be doubled. In this case, two plague doctors can participate, even (in a variant) without knowing each other and thus risking the inadvertent infecting of his colleague. An expansion called The Carrier provides new char- acters and effects, plus ravens carrying
plague germs that have to be passed on in the case of an infection, thus expe- diting the spread of the
T
m
m
h
he
b
h
p
p
e
p
a
a
p
n
n
y
W
y
W
i
r
r
o
o
g
d
du
h
l
uc
h
h
y
“
c
i
i
t
tl
t
G
t
G
c
l
o
i
i
n
n
n
a
e
e
o
o
o
b
b
t
first infestation in 2010 by Rattus, an impressive number of expansions and derivatives have been added, all of which were invented by Åse and Henrik Berg. In the basic game, players try to have the largest part of the population in Europe at the end of the period of widespread death, which, to a large extent, can be achieved only at the cost to all the others. To do so, you need permanent reproduc- tion, plus the use of the special abilities of the available classes.
h
gen spread to the medium of cards. Here,
b
h
i
g
h
l
y
“
c
o
n
a
l
l
of
i
G
i
G
m
m
f
t
i
i
n
n
t
a
a
h
h
a
a
t
t
e
e
D
m
m
e
e
d
d
Du
e
t
e
t
.
S
.
S
ut
t
c
ch
u
u
i
i
n
n
r
r
n
o
n
o
c
t
c
t
u
h
h
t
p
tW
t
W
R
r r
a
t
t
i
i
t
t
u
C
h
s s
death strikes only once: In the final round, players use the abilities of their current cards. A player whose rat tokens have a higher total value than the number of nuns shown on the now-revealed popula- tion cards loses automatically, no matter how many victory points he has collected. The striving for point-potent influence and a so-called premium action often makes it inevitable to use members of an inconvenient class and consequently blindly draw the applicable number of rat tokens. Things are nasty, but not overly nasty as they are on the board - and this not constantly but only occasionally, e.g., when a sword strikes you and forces you to give up half of your hand cards.
The players of Shi Chen’s Vita Mors (Play With Us Design, 2017) are con- stantly struggling for life or death. Nobody knows who belongs to his team, and one participant is even out to pre- vent both teams from accomplishing their goals. One party might try to save three lives within four rounds, whereas the other party has the mission of achieving
R
s
a
t
t
u
C
a
t
a
t
u
u
s
, ,
h
t
e e
p
a
a
t
t
Once the total number of population cubes in a plague region reaches the critical mass of the rat tokens revealed there, players check according to the symbols on these tokens which classes are affected. For each given class symbol, the players currently owning those class cards have to remove one population cube of the corresponding color. Not only the Grim Reaper but also Lady Luck have some say when it comes to the distribu- tion of new rat tokens and the order in which they are revealed – but this doesn’t take away from the pleasure of the maca- bre goings-on; actually, it averts deadly seriousness.
43
spielbox