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Since playing the Great fire of London on thursday the fourth of november I have been thinking of writing a review. It's a game that has been very high on my wishlist and after going through the rules I wasn't so sure anymore why it was so high on my wishlist.
Players are houseowners who try to save as many houses of their colour to win the game. Everyhouse is worth two points.
You also have three secret areas where you have a hidden interest in. Those closest to the fire will score 6 points , those that are far away will score two points. These districts have a red label. And it is possible that you share some districts with other players.
You also get points for putting out fires. One for each fire. and the person who puts out the most fires scores an additional two points. and there are some discs you can pickup that will score 1 VP
Setup
The game has five regions (Pudding lane and four other regions and everyone will 5 houses in each of the four regions. there are a total of 6 colours (it plays 6)
Since it is a random setup this will take some time but if you work together this goes rather quickly.
20 black discs are placed face down on the districts with yellow labels. Black discs that allow you to either spread the fire twice using one card or give you explosive charges or give one VP
You prepare the deck of firecards as there is an intensify the fire action. After a stack has been depleted.
Every player gets five firecards with directions to where the fire will spread.
The Fantastic looking map.
Gameplay
Expand the fire
The fire will through other areas and the last direction of movement has to be that of the card. Since the fire originally spread to the North west there are more cards for the direction North or west.
Actions
Then you have four action points to spend on bands (that can contain the fire) or when a landowner is ther put out the fire.
You can move the landowner or a band for 1 Action Point.
Put out a fire for 1 action Point (when there is a landowner and a band in that district). the fire also has to be contained in that district.
Or use explosive charges (for no AP)
Draw a fire card.
Draw a fire card. If the deck is depleted after you took the fire card you will also intensify the fire. That means you have to place an additional three fire cones on the map.
There is one more round after the last intensify fire action and that is it.
Scoring
In our game the winner had 29 points. the person in last place had 26 points
Winner : 14 from the houses + 8 from secret locations + 5 from putting out fires and 2 for putting out the most fires
2nd place : 12 from houses (two got destroyed in the last turn)+12 from secret locations (maximum) + 4 fires extinguished.
2nd place : 20 from houses + 2 from secret locations+ 4 from fires + 2 from discs (we counted the natural ones as his because he thought he was them)
4th place : 20 from houses +2 from secret locations + 4 from fires
So what do I think of it?
I consider this a gateway game. Our game took close to two hours with setup and rulesexplanation. But this will drop for certain.
I liked the map a lot. And thought it was a lot fun for such a light game.
However during scoring we encountered some problems.
We played with hidden colours and the person that got the white houses thought he was the natural coloured houses. He was right.
another player however was orange and he thought he was the natural colour as well (instead of the red ones)
I think playing with hidden colours is a must.
The fire cones were replaced with bullets . I liked the look of the cones but this will be clearer on the map. After you get accustomed to the map however I certainly would prefer the cones.
Richard Denning has uploaded the rules and I printed three of them out with bookssetting. Every player had a nice copy of the rules. I think that allowed me to explain the game quicker without going to much in detail. I loved that.
red houses should have been orange ones and natural houses should haven been white.
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- Last edited Mon Nov 15, 2010 4:46 pm (Total Number of Edits: 1)
Posted Mon Nov 8, 2010 12:41 pm
