Condottiere

As previously advised, I received a game of Condottiere for xmas.  Up until yesterday I'd had to satisfy myself with admiring the quality of the components and reading the rules a couple of times.  Sturdy box, good artwork on the cards, nice practical colourful wooden pieces that look good on the 'cute' foldboard map of renaissance Italy.  Rules are clear, crisp and comprehensive.  The possibilities for good clean dastardly deeds seemed pretty good with this.

Dirty Deeds

Yesterday we managed to try a four player game (Me, Nancy, Shaun, Sharon).  Within the hour we were close to finished, with Shaun playing for the win when he had to go to work (actually, we were all still playing for the win lol) and the game had to end.  My assessment was that the next battle wouldn't have decided it, but the one after could have - with everyone in the running.  

In the hour that we played we had one false start, and still managed to use all of the various types of card (mercenaries, heroines, courtesans, priests, scarecrows, surrenders, drummers, spring and winter), generally to their intended effect.  We had started getting the hang of hand management as well as bidding strategies and strategems.  The game flowed well, was easily learned by our relatively neophyte gamer (Sharon), and posed enough possibilitiy to tie the most devious mind up in knots. 

A tribute to Machiavelli, the Borgias and the Medicis indeed, to match the artwork by Michaelangelo.  And, most importantly, it was fun!