Shadows Over Camelot

I have to say, with Christmas over, and my wife and I finally getting to go to our local game store for board gaming every week, and me having Saturdays off is nice! This means I get to bring to you more reviews.

So last night we got the the game store, and no one was ready for a new game. We pulled out Scrabble, and one of the guys, Drew, who works at Blue Highway Games was playing Cribbage with his wife until another friend showed up. They pulled out Shadows over Camelot, and called over, “Hey, you really deeply involved in your Scrabble game?” ”No” says I, and we joined. Now I’ve been wanting to play Shadows Over Camelot for several months now, and I am glad to say, I have just played my first of many games.

What a great game! Basically, is a co-op game in which you choose a Knight of the Round Table. One of you may or may not be the Traitor, who job is to see you all fail.  There are three ways to lose. The Round Table is filled with majority Black Swords by the time it is full, you are all dead, or Camelot is completely under siege. How do you win? Survive to see the majority of the Round Table is filled with white swords when it is filled.This is not as easy as it sounds, for what you can do every turn is limited. 

there are a number of quests you can each go on, but it takes a turn to travel there. You could go after the Grail, or Excaliber, or the armour of Lancelot. Each of them will give you bonuses later. However,if you accomplish them to son, it speeds up the chance of the siege of Camelot to occur. However, each player has to choose before they go to either draw a card of darkness, which raised the escalation level of all the conflicts, take a wound, or add another catapult. Thing is, if you leave any one of the 6 Quests unattended, they will draw closer to your losing the quest, and thus adding more black swords. Accomplishing quests adds white swords. The Grail almost slipped out of our grasp, we never got Excaliber, and we lost the Armour of Lancelot forever. Right before we got the Grail, one of the players died, and all of us were down to 1 life. We got the grail, and I sacrificed myself to die, drink the cup,and be boosted back to nearly full life. Then, I drew a card that forced us to lose one more quest, thus ending the game, with us in the majority. 

This is a great game. Everything is stacked against you in a life or death defying poker/yahtzee game. And what a game is was. If you get a chance, please play this game. Very good co-op with high replayability.

-Game Gorilla Out