Freedom: The Underground Railroad is a co-operative game of freeing slaves in 19th Century America.  The board shows the Eastern United States with routes between cities.  Slaves (represented by cubes) start in the 3 plantation areas in the South and players try to move them across the States to freedom in Canada.  There are also 5 different coloured/shaped slave catchers on the board who move along their own paths (primarily running East-West) throughout the game.

The goal is to get enough slaves to Canada before the game ends after a fixed number of rounds; however, players can only win if they also get enough support for the abolitionist movement (by buying every support counter), plus the game immediately ends in failure if too many slaves are lost.  The numbers of freed slaves required, support tokens, tokens that move slaves and generate income, and maximum lost slaves are all based on the number of players and the difficulty level (normal or hard). Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the dust has settled following Spiel in Essen (due to work, sickness, voting on some awards, and life in general), I am finally able to start writing reviews of the games released this year.  Unlike other years, I didn’t get to play many of the big releases until after Spiel, rather than during it; however, I have played many now (and there’s still a sizeable pile still to play too) and can report there were loads of great games this year.

However, in advance of all the full reviews, I thought I’d post briefly about what I’ve played so far.  Last week, was a busy week with a chance to play a lot of games.  I’ve played Russian Railroads with 2 and 4 players now and it’s an excellent meaty eurogame with some pretty tough decisions, especially as there are lots of possible ways to make points but spreading yourself too thinly across a lot of them is not likely to turn out so well.  S0, you need to have a plan as well as a plan on what to do if progressing the first plan isn’t possible because other players get in the way. Read the rest of this entry »

Freedom is a co-operative game of freeing slaves in 19th Century America which I think is a great concept.  The board shows the Eastern United States with routes between cities and cubes to represent the slaves.

Each turn is broken into several phases.  First, the slave catchers move along their paths based on a dice roll.  Next, each player chooses which 2 tokens to take and, once all players have selected theirs, they take turns using the tokens.  Some tokens earn income based on where slave cubes are located, some tokens move slave cubes (must be purchased), and the final token type (which also must be purchased) moves the abolitionist movement ahead.  This last token type has game effects plus players must have bought all 8 by the end of the game to fulfil one of the conditions required to win. Read the rest of this entry »