Guards! Guards!

Before I start reviewing this game I have to say few words. This review is based on one game and that is because I think that I might not play another game in a while. I think not sooner than a year. This is not because this game is that bad, but rather because my friend might have screwed a rules a bit, and that led to a total disaster. This might be because some rules are not explained properly in the rulebook, but you rather have to search the internet for the answers.

What players have to understand is that this game was made because of the Discworld and not because it has great mechanics. For those that are not familiar, Discworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett. Therefore, this game is more for people who like these books and not looking for entirely new gaming experience.

Guards! Guards! is quite easy to learn and play. Everything is based on your dice roll so that is generally how you will know whether you have succeeded or not. This game is for up to six players, but it can take a while for everyone to finish their turn if there are so many players. Each player has one player marker in his own color that he moves over the board. Your goal is to collect five different spells and return them to your starting position before others do so. On your journey throughout the city you will collect volunteers that will help you in your quest. In fact you can’t do anything without them. Each of these volunteers is a character from a different book, and Discworld fans will really enjoy it.

While you try to move across the city there will always be something that can hunt you down and send you to a hospital. One of the things that you have to take care of is a Luggage that is moving across a city and wipes everything it catches. This idea of something chasing you and making you hide is probably the highlight of this game for me. You have always to be aware not to stay on its path. Even if you are on its path, you never know how many spaces it will move, as it moves only when someone hires a volunteer, and even then it can still be sill.

Another very interesting idea of this game is how you are stopping other players from successfully returning their gathered spells to their homes or starting positions. After each turn a player can roll a dice and on 5+ dedicate one of his volunteers to be a saboteur. Map is divided into four regions and you can have one saboteur in each region. No one knows what volunteer is where as you have markers that are placed face down on your volunteer cards. Saboteurs can fight other player when trying to move across the city while carrying the spell. As this might seem very aggressive and almost impossible to move a spell form one point to the other, with everyone having saboteurs in every part of city, it generally is not. In every city district only one volunteer can fight you, so players have to agree which one it will be. After the player moves through every district to his starting point and after he has been attacked in maximum three times, he may attempt a spell test, in order to return it properly. Different spells ask for different tests, and different guilds have different tests they have to pass. I believe that only at the last spell someone managed to fail and had to try again, other spells are quite easy to return.

There are four guilds in this game and everyone is different. There are Fools, Alchemists, Thieves and Assassins. They differ in colors of the spells they have to return and in special abilities that they can do to other players. These abilities are tested on 6+ roll, and can be casted if someone is passing in two spaces from you. I might have forgotten to mention that in this game players roll a D8 dice. In general these abilities will only slower you in a way of killing you volunteer or by applying some effect that will come into play later, when all the conditions are met.

Every player gets his guild board where he or she can keep track of how many spells has been collected, guild ability and bonuses on different rolls. These bonuses are what made us suffer our last game. Apparently when you receive a volunteer which gives you some kind of bonus, after you lose that volunteer you don’t lose that bonus. However, as I played this game with three out of five totally inexperienced players and one of those players was explaining the rules, we played a bit differently and had hard time returning the last spell as no one could manage to roll a 9 on D8 dice.

Now comes a part where I tell you what I actually think about this game. It is too random for my taste. As a matter of fact, this game is way too random. I managed to lose six turns because of my bad rolls and I was unable to do anything. Except for moving, everything else you wish to do you have to roll a dice. In general, it is not that hard to roll what you need, but in my case as being a terrible at rolling dice, it was a real nightmare.

There is another factor that made me hate this game. Maybe hate is too strong, but after six hours of playing and it was supposed to take only two, I think you can understand me. It was our fault that we played by our own rules, without knowing it. Although, we changed only one rule it turned out to be the most important rule. As I explained earlier, your bonuses stack and stay when you lose that volunteer. So it is easier to roll 9+ and finish a game in no time. Being a hard core gamers, two of us argued how that is totally possible for you to lose all your bonuses and have hard time returning them. Even now that I know all these rules and how it should be played properly, I believe that six hours of game time showed me everything I need to know about this game. If you enjoy to roll dice, this is definitely a game for you.

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