Guards Guards

 

Another family boardgame night and this time it's Guards Guards, one of the Terry Pratchett themed games that came out a few years ago.  These are out of print and can be found for silly money on eBay (or at least people are asking for silly money...I assume no-one actually pays it!).  I managed to source this one on BGG for a very reasonable price.  The seller had even kindly printed out and bound all the FAQs and errata and included a Moist Von Lipwig miniature.

We have already played the Discworld: Ankh Morpork game which is a popular one in our house.  Guards Guards  appears a bit more complicated at first glance but was actually quite simple.

The premise is that spells have escaped from the Unseen University and need to be rounded up and returned.  Each player represents one of four Guilds (Alchemists, Assassins, Thieves and Fools) and recruits a band of volunteers to help catch the spells and make it back to the University on a "spell run".  These volunteers can also be placed as sabatoeurs to spoil other players Spell Runs and generally interfere.

To add to the confusion dragons can sometimes be summoned (if you've read Guards Guards this will make sense)...we didn't get round to this.  Other hazards include The Luggage (which runs around the city as each new volunteer is recruited, trampling players) and The Pox which is caught by touching a card marked with the Pox or getting too close to an infected player.  Both of these can be fixed (for a price) at a hospital.

Each Guild also has a specific ability which can be used if another player gets too close but we never risked getting near each other.

The runaway Luggage

The game was quick to pick up and really good fun...lots of opportunities to trip up your opponents and spoil their plans.  It came down to the wire with all 3 of us within touching distance of a win but my son was able to complete his final run first and, despite our best efforts to stop him, won the game.

As you'd expect the components are lovely with some really nicely illustrated cards for a host of Discworld characters (with a reference to which book they're from), all presented in a suitable Pratchett style.

A few of the character cards