Archive for the 'Liberté' Category

Below are links to reviews of games that will be released in shops this week (in the UK):

Note that my Liberté review is of the original release and not the new Valley Games version; however, the only difference is that the new version has better board colouration (which was an issue with the original game).  The Valley Games’ board can be seen here.

Liberté was released in 2001 and Valley Games are publishing a new version of the game in 2010.   This review is of the 2001 version by Warfrog Games and not of the new version by Valley Games – I’m not sure what differences there may be (if any) but I know the boards look very similar.  I bought Liberté about 8 years ago and had never played it until a week of two ago.  When I bought it, it seemed too complex for the main gaming group I had at that time and other games always took priority.  However, the news of its re-release made me re-visit the game and it wasn’t seem as complex to me now having played so many other games.

Set during the French Revolution, players play cards to place blocks on a map of France.  The coloured blocks represent the support for the three political groups in the area where they are located – the nicely-thematic red, white and blue blocks represent the radicals, the royalists and the moderates respectively.  The map is divided into 6 coloured regions each containing several areas.

Each turn, a player can either play a card from their hand, or take a card from the 3 face-up or a face-down card from the draw pile.  Players don’t represent any one party – instead, the card played determines which colour block(s) can be placed into which region’s areas.  When a player places blocks, they put a  marker on the top of the stack showing they added them.  Read the rest of this entry »