Gaming in Genf - Shadows Over Camelot

As usual, our trip down to Geneva gave us the chance to enjoy some fun evenings of board games. I used this opportunity to finally bring out the Game that Bernhard had given me last Christmas. Shadows Over Camelot.

Shadows is a cooperative game where each player plays a knight of the round table. You work together to complete quests like the search for the holy grail and excalibur while fending off invading armies and evil.

It effectively works like a series of mini-games that are going on at the same time, and you just have to juggle what everyone is doing. We tried the first game on Friday knight and it resulted in a near loss to the forces of evil, but we took it as a learning experience and went for it again on Saturday.

The ladies were of course excited to try out a new game where we all worked together, it was a nice change of pace to try something where we could all win together. Claudia was Sir Gawaine and Doris Sir Galahad.
Ryan was the bold sir Tristan, a knight he liked based on his ability to get some extra free moves. Ryan likes the guys who can go fast...
I was brave King Arthur. I took him as I was the person who had read the rules and had to teach the game while playing for the first time. King Arthur was a character best suited to sit quite still and support the other knights while they are out on quests. I thought that would be easiest for me to handle. Also, King Arthur is red and I wore a red T-shit special that day.
We got off to a great start, winning the quest for Excalibur on the second turn, we made sure that Ryan finished off that one and had the sword so he could use his speedy knight to zip around the board and help out the others with fights as needed.

Next we amazingly got through the Holy Grail quest, with Claudia hanging on to the cup, we were 7 white swords (good points) up with no black swords (bad points) very early in the game. To secure victory, we just needed to get all 12 swords on the table before the evil armies represented by catapults overtook us.
Here is where we ran into trouble, it seemed very hard to get quests to move ahead for better or worse now, and the catapults were starting to add up. It was starting to look grim, but then thanks to a great move by Claudia, we managed to win the game in the last moments. With Ryan beating the Black Knight to fill up the round table with the 11h and 12th needed swords.
Happy days in Camelot, there was my rejoicing and feasting. Well, cookies and tea anyway.