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Liberte
Liberte is a little like a lot of games: Web of Power and Russian Revolution (S&T) are two that spring to mind. A decent pedigree.
Winning involves laying blocks in support of the three political parties in Revolutionary France. Resolve the election, and whoever backed the winners the best gets points, whoever backed the second placed party gets a few less points. The game does feel like it has a lot of subtlety to it. Because the early pack favours the Royalists and Moderates, jumping on their bandwagon makes good sense. However, the Radicals have some nasty surprises available – terror and guillotines to name just a couple, as well as being able to spring the Radical landslide victory condition (forget your Victory Points, how well are you supporting the reds?). So building an early Radical position might be an option.
As said, this is all very subtle, but is still some way in the future. You are warned when playing the game – it is like no other you have ever played, you’ll not have a clue what you’re doing (although we have all met gamers who seem to play every game this way). Certainly the Northern Ragnars live up to this caveat.
Phil has read the rules – three times – tried the game out solo – and read some long reviews of it. Surely it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility to get all the rules right? Wrong. Post-game Phil re-reads the rules to find there have been five rules played wrongly, one important idea that has been totally missed, as well as one crucial rule that was known, was mentioned and was then forgotten. Now this is a lot. This is a much worse rate than usual.
Should you be in the same position – see how you go on. But enough for now, more of the game next week. The result after two hours of – admittedly, uncertain - play is a win for Nick by 1 point. Roger has come nowhere and blames it on a dearth of 3-block characters (he may be right).
All in all, very interesting indeed. In the words of Paul Weller , ‘beaten and bloody, but we’ll be back next week’. This time, hopefully, with the right rules.
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'Liberte' .
More Liberté
The northern Ragnars descend on Ian. Spirits are high - it is a reprise of Liberté, last week's dramatic success story. Roger is exultant - not only has he discovered it takes 45 minutes to download a scanned image of Titan: the Arena, but that the experiment was totally unnecessary (he has found the entire set of rules to Liberté on the boardgamesgeeks website). And he has read them. So much so that Roger is the man to talk through the rules with Ian.
Ian missed last week's extravaganza owing to a migraine. His face still has the look of a man treading the knife-edge of ill-health, as Roger launches enthusiastically into a resumé. Phil grits his teeth and tries not to add his two-pennyworth - there's more than enough flotsam floating around. Phil is still very put out that as a supposedly competent writer of rules, he managed to misunderstand a total of five rules. Sitting and listening to Roger on the subject of said Liberté Phil is struck by the number of 'small but very important' rules that are flying around. A tricky game to take in.
Nevertheless, after ten minutes, Ian feels just about ready to pitch in. He is 'encouraged' by an assortment of 'helpful' remarks: "I didn't have a clue what I was doing", "you just need to pile in and see what happens", and - of course - "it's a learning curve."
And away we go, and, true to form, the game does live up to its all-singing, all-dancing billing. Early on it's blue stacks across the map, and it all seems plain sailing for the moderates. A late rally by the royalists sees various parts of France going white, but the flow is with the moderates. Turn 2 sees more of the same, with blues and whites going toe to toe.
Phil has built up a huge lead, with a little bit of being with the right faction in the right place at the right time. Turn 3 has drama, however, as Phil and Roger (still staunchly blue) desperately fight off a Royalist counter-revoution (just) but lose hopelessly in a very early election. Napoleon doesn't even get anywhere near to defending France. Phil's early lead begins to dwindle, but an odd Victory point here and there are enough to see off the chasing pack.
Two hours of fast, enjoyable, knockabout fun. ("I laughed my head off" - Louis XVI.)
The verdict? Put it this way, the northern Ragnars tend to give most games a couple of outings, before something else is tried. Liberté will be returning by popular demand for a third consecutive week. Phil and Roger are particularly impressed with its subtlety. To quote - it has layers.
Phil's note: There are one or two slight wrinkles (purple, grey and brown markers that seem horribly similar, and a dark pink region that doesn't match up terribly well with its purple card), but these are minor irritations, no more, in what at the moment is looking like a truly superb game.
One rather more serious weakness (and this is only a suspicion based on two plays) is that I suspect this game is getting a lot of outings as a six-player game. As a four-player game it does have one strange quirk. This is to do with the rate at which cards are used up. For those who are new to the game, there are two halves to the deck of cards: the A pack which is played through first (favouring the moderates) and the B pack (favouring the radicals).
Now in the six-player game, after the initial cards are dealt, there are only 12 of the A pack left, which will get used fairly quickly. This means the B cards (radicals) will be making their presence felt by the second turn, and so a radical government will become a distinct possibility for Turn 4.
In the four player game, however, there are 26 cards to draw before the B pack comes into the game. This is a lot of cards. Certainly, it will be Turn 3 before the radicals begin to appear - far too late to create a radical government at the end of Turn 3. This means that there will never be a turn when the radicals are in power, which in turn means the six Terror cards (which can only be played during a radical government) become completely useless.
In both games to date, the radicals have failed to win an election until the very end of Turn 4, so that Terror cards become the equivalent of a Blister in 'Backpacks'. If you pick one up - it's useless. Just get rid of it.
The rate at which France has not gone radical is probably not an accident.
Hmmmm. More to follow....
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