The Other New Game

So, the biggest surprise I think I had at Christmas was the gift from Bernhard. Knowing that I am a huge board game fan, the big B surprised us with the gift of Shadows over Camelot. A big board game from Days of Wonder, the company that only makes big beautiful games (Battlelore, Memoir 44, Ticket to Ride, etc)

Here is the game just after opening. It is of course the German version.
Bernhard seemed almost as excited as me to check out the game, and he took a crack at reading the German rules while I loaded the English version from the publishers website. I am too much of a coward to tackle this one in German, the rule book is scary big.
This game is interesting because it is a Cooperative game for 3-7 players. That is right, you are not playing against one another, but working together against the system. Essentially, bad things and good things happen, which add either white or black swords to the round table at Camelot. When a certain number of white swords are present, the group wins. If a certain number of black swords appear, evil wins.

To make things even more tricky, it is possible that one of the players is a "traitor" and is secretly working against the others, trying to force the evil side to win. They have to be sneaky about it though, as getting discovered by dudes with swords is not good...

Here is the whole set up:

every turn, something bad happens which progresses the evil, and the players take actions to try and progress the good. It really boils down to a series of mini games, where the individual players take on tasks (quests) to try and win some white swords. There is a "main" board and a few mini boards where the various quests take place.

Each player gets to become a knight of the round table, from King Arthur to Sir Galahad. This character gives the player some special ability to help them in their questing.Sadly, we did not get a chance to try out the game yet. The fact you need at least three people (best with 7) and it takes 1.5-3 hours to play meant we had too much else going on during the holiday to squeeze in a game. I am really looking forward to trying it out for the first time though!

Here is the round table once again.

When I eventually play this, I will for sure have a more complete report of the game and the associated fun.