ERA Medieval

The old Monday evening RPG group has become a board games group. We found that as our schedules became busier it was harder to guarantee the time required for an RPG campaign, but a series of 'pick up and play' games is just right.  A while back we worked our way through Mantic Games' Star Saga (and we may go back to do the expansions at some point), but for now, we are trying a variety of different games.

To be honest, we gather to chat and enjoy each other's company, but it helps to have a good game; recently we've been playing some great games.  Here's a few you might want to look out for.

We played the old GW Judge Dredd board game (long out of print).  Fun and it does a good job of capturing the feel of the old Judge Dredd comics.

Ravensburger's Alien game is another IP based board game. In this co-op game the players are the crew of the Nostromo, trying to fulfil various missions and avoid the Alien. The use of randomly drawn objectives (with the final one being hidden until the others are achieved), means that each game is different, and there's a Fear track to beat as well. Perhaps the only oddity is that the Alien never kills (unless the Fear track reaches zero, in which case Game Over Man*), it just ticks that Fear track down and forces the crew to run away.

My current favourite is ERA Medieval Age; two games in and I'm hooked.  The aim of the game is to build the most successful Medieval style city.  Each player has a peg board on which to build, and a small number of buildings (1 farm, 3 longhouses, 1 keep and 3 wall sections.  Certain buildings grant resource dice (peasant, burgher, clergy or noble), others give bonuses, e.g. a farm grants one extra food resource each turn.  Rolling the dice means you're never sure quite what resources you have to build with, and you can lose resources to other players in the Extortion phase.

The game has a built in limit, either two full rounds or when five building types have been used up, so games last around one to two hours.  Points are then calculated for different buildings (with a nice bonus if they are enclosed by a city wall) to determine the winner.

We are still finding our way with the various strategies, and we now have access to the expansion which introduces more new buildings and roads and rivers.  I suspect we'll be playing more of this over the weeks.

My winning city from our second game

As an indicator to how popular the game is, I'm the only one of the four of us who hasn't got their own copy.  There is a solo option, and I suspect that some of the others are practicing strategies.

The game was published by Plan B Games, but they seem to be merging with Asmodee.  You can find details of where to buy the game here.

*Yes, I know.  Wrong film, but I couldn't resist.