I've wanted to try Fury of Dracula for some time. On Saturday I had my chance. My friends Bob & Emily had bought the game so Emily and I played Hunters while Bob played Dracula. So this review is really our first impressions.

Our first impression was that this was obviously an "earlier" FF game. Most of the artwork is great, and the board looks nice. But the character cards seem a bit flisy and the "railroad" dice seems a bit cheap. We were also surprised that Drac's counters have only artwork and no words. I suppose once you've played a few times it doesn't matter....but for a first game its frustrating to continually have to refer to the rule book.

It took us about 30 minutes or so to review all of the rules. Not too bad considering the size of the rule book. Luckily, the game play is much easier than it would appear from the size of that rule book.

Starting the game:
Emily played Godalming & Van Helsing and I played Doc Seward and Mina. We spread out across Europe in hopes of finding Dracula's trail early. Drac started out in Barcelona...which is not where we thought he would start.

We noticed right off the bat that by spreading out we were able to ascertain Draculas location fairly quickly. Thus we spent several turns trying to get the hunters close enough to intercept and fight Dracula. At the same time, Dracula had an unlucky draw of encounters, so anytime we hit upon his trail, the effects were minor. Early in the game, Mina caught Drac and got him down to 5 blood before he escaped. This was a big let-down for us as the fight was during night-time, and Dracula really seemed underpowered.

Mid-game:
By midgame it was apparent that much of Drac's success is dependent on him drawing the proper encounters. In our game Drac never got a vampire, so there was really no way for him to win. While he did pull out some tricks to evade us, we had pretty much blocked off Castle Dracula by placing consecrated ground and by placing our Hunters near the castle. We knew the only way for him to heal himself was to get back to the castle, and by blocking it, we essentially made the game drag on and on....

5 hours later:
Finally we managed to catch and kill dracula. I noticed that once we had ascertained part of his trail, we could fairly well predict other spots in the trail and avoid most of them. This prevented us from hitting too many bad encounters. Also, Dracula never drew his vampires so he was not maturing them and getting points. Still...Dracula had enought tricks that he could prolong the inevitable for a very long time.

By the ennd of the game I think we were all a bit disappointed. We had high hopes for this game and it did not seem to live up to our expectations. I really want to give the game another try. The interaction between hunters seems like it could be a high point....but for us it really didn't seem like we were hunting down "Dracula"...but just some guy. not one hunter ever got bitten, and no one lost more than 5 health counters. The hunters just seem too powerful.