Game Night II

Our second formal game night took place yesterday evening. Turnout was lower than the first go round as a number of people had to cancel last minute for various (nefarious?) reasons. The six of us have been crazy about Shadows Over Camelot of late so that was our clear first choice of game. I've been very high on Shadows thus far, but this session struck me as rather flat. This may, of course, been partially due to my lack of effectiveness as traitor, leading to my almost embarrassing defeat.

Is Shadows Over Camelot getting too easy?

I'll admit, my enthusiasm for the game has been dampened slightly after last night's session. As the traitor I felt I never had a great opportunity to crash the knights' party--largely because they were completely kicking evil ass the entire time! Not sure if our group is getting better at the game, it is altogether too easy with six players, or if the loyalists simply had an unfortunately (for me!) uninspiring mix of black cards during the game. Of course, it's altogether possible that I do simply suck as the traitor, but even if that wasn't the case I don't think I had a realistic shot of victory.

Quote from the game:

"I don't think there is a traitor. If there is, they really suck!"

Ouch.

Perhaps we need to ratchet up the difficulty by using squire rules (each player needs to win a quest before activating their special power) when we have 6 or 7 players. Or, we may still be communicating too directly and need to restrict strategy talk much more than we have thus far.

A Sliver of Hope?

There was one point late in the game where the siege engine total reached nine, only three away from an evil win. Looking back, this was clearly the best opportunity for me to reveal myself and make a play for the victory. I considered this move at the time but I felt it was a long shot at best as the knights were not being pressed anywhere on the board and had at their disposal almost limitless resources for fighting siege engines. As it turns out this long shot was probably my best chance to turn the tide during the game but I am almost certain it would not have been successful, and at the time it seemed a better strategy to bide my time and hope that a better opportunity would present itself.

Probably revealing myself immediately upon starting the session and placing a siege engine every turn would have focused more pressure on the loyal knights, but that strategy seems much less interesting than keeping hidden waiting to pounce at a moment of weakness. Ah well, perhaps I'll try that next time--it would make for an interesting and vastly different game experience to have that traitor vs. loyalist direct confrontation over the course of an entire play.

Anyway, our tendency to make Shadows into a three hour game meant that it was our only play of the night, so some smaller strategy games will have to wait until next time.