Illuminati
May. 19th, 2008 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOn Saturday, I joined sonic, mobbsy, martin and pseudomonas for board games, and Mobbsy introduced us to Illuminati. This was something I'd heard about, and always felt I should play at some point, and it turns out it is pretty fun.
I've got a feeling there wasn't quite the full experience; we took a little while to get used to the mechanics, and so there wasn't as much cut-throat action as is possibly normal, but it's funny, and fairly easy to get into: the rules are somewhat complicated, but less so than many games and quite intuitive. And it took quite a while to get through a game.
But it didn't feel like a long time, it never dragged, and was definitely fun.
Thanks to Mobbsy for explaining the rules to us all, that's always a little uphill (especially if you feel constrained in your ability to play evilly and make backstabbing deals by having to compromise with the need to explain to people what's going on and what might be fair and what might not.)
Description
The game is played with cards representing some power group (eg. oil companies, goldfish fanciers, hackers, etc). The cards have an incoming arrow ("is secretly controlled by") on one edge of the card, and outgoing arrows ("secretly control") on 0-3 other edges.
Each player starts with a card representing one of the illuminati groups, which has only outgoing arrows, and must build a power structure by adding cards to their structure so their arrows join up, ending up with a vast power network :)
Each card gives you a certain amount of money each turn, has a power and a resistance. To add another card to your empire, choose the card you want to attach it to and attack-to-control the new card, and make a dice roll based on the power of the attacker and the resistance of the attacked, modified by each megabuck any player wants to spend for or against.
You can attack-to-control groups lying about in the centre of the table or already in someone else's power structure (in which case you also get them and the groups they controlled as a block). You can also attack-to-destroy or attack-to-neutralise (neutralise a group in someone else's power structure and it goes back to the middle of the table, destroy it and it's gone for good, although all cards it controlled go into the middle of the table in either case.)
There are details (turn order; to win, acquire ten groups, or a special winning condition given by your illuminati group; groups have affiliations listed, eg. a conservative group gets a +4 bonus to destroy and a -4 bonus to control a liberal group, and the same for other opposing pairs; many cards have a special power, giving you a bonus to attack to control/destroy certain other cards) but it's fairly intuitive, most things you only have to know if they're spelled out on the cards.
I've got a feeling there wasn't quite the full experience; we took a little while to get used to the mechanics, and so there wasn't as much cut-throat action as is possibly normal, but it's funny, and fairly easy to get into: the rules are somewhat complicated, but less so than many games and quite intuitive. And it took quite a while to get through a game.
But it didn't feel like a long time, it never dragged, and was definitely fun.
Thanks to Mobbsy for explaining the rules to us all, that's always a little uphill (especially if you feel constrained in your ability to play evilly and make backstabbing deals by having to compromise with the need to explain to people what's going on and what might be fair and what might not.)
Description
The game is played with cards representing some power group (eg. oil companies, goldfish fanciers, hackers, etc). The cards have an incoming arrow ("is secretly controlled by") on one edge of the card, and outgoing arrows ("secretly control") on 0-3 other edges.
Each player starts with a card representing one of the illuminati groups, which has only outgoing arrows, and must build a power structure by adding cards to their structure so their arrows join up, ending up with a vast power network :)
Each card gives you a certain amount of money each turn, has a power and a resistance. To add another card to your empire, choose the card you want to attach it to and attack-to-control the new card, and make a dice roll based on the power of the attacker and the resistance of the attacked, modified by each megabuck any player wants to spend for or against.
You can attack-to-control groups lying about in the centre of the table or already in someone else's power structure (in which case you also get them and the groups they controlled as a block). You can also attack-to-destroy or attack-to-neutralise (neutralise a group in someone else's power structure and it goes back to the middle of the table, destroy it and it's gone for good, although all cards it controlled go into the middle of the table in either case.)
There are details (turn order; to win, acquire ten groups, or a special winning condition given by your illuminati group; groups have affiliations listed, eg. a conservative group gets a +4 bonus to destroy and a -4 bonus to control a liberal group, and the same for other opposing pairs; many cards have a special power, giving you a bonus to attack to control/destroy certain other cards) but it's fairly intuitive, most things you only have to know if they're spelled out on the cards.