Our regular session at CarcaSean last Saturday was a pre-arranged game of Fury of Dracula. This was our first experience of a mostly cooperative game with one player assuming the role of the antagonist. In this game, most of the players take on the role of hunters who must track down and destroy Dracula who is controlled by a single player. The action takes place on a board that represents all of Europe. Dracula can win through a variety of ways including maturing enough young vampires or simply eluding the hunters long enough. The hunters are forced to destroy Dracula before he has earned enough points to win.
In retrospect, getting the most experienced and skilled player in our group to be Dracula was probably a bad idea. Our first game went disastrously for the hunters as we muddled around the coastlines of Europe being confused about why we hadn’t picked up Dracula’s trail when we were sure that we must have disembarked at a port. We simply forgot that a port location had been cleared out of the trail earlier. That first game went by so quickly that we decided to do another game.
This one went a little better in that we managed to actually have a confrontation with Dracula this time. However, he managed to play an Evasion card just as all of the hunters were close to surrounding him and we learned that even if we won every fight, we’d still have to successfully confront him multiple times to whittle down his blood supply. So either our Dracula was very, very good, or we were very, very bad vampire hunters.
My thoughts on this game is that while at first glance it seems that deductively working out Dracula’s hiding place is important, in practice, it comes to using event cards to locate him and perhaps judicious use of the Sense of Emergency ability to pin him down. The good thing about this is that a session doesn’t take very long at long, but it doesn’t strike me as having enough replayability to consider buying. It strikes me that many of these American games have a strong luck factor. It’s been a while since my wife and I had a chance to play a Euro game. I think we’re going to try to do that for our next session. I’ve been meaning to try out Mr. Jack which should be a game of almost purely logical deduction. We’ll see how that pans out.
I disagree, the Dracula player should the most experienced player for game with mostly beginners; if u let a newbie be Dracula, he will either get caught fairly quickly or else make mistakes (like playing illegitimate cards) without realising it. Secondly, i don’t get to play an “Evasion” card; it’s a “play immdeiately” card. As Dracula, i don’t get any cards (barring 1 matured encounter) unless hunters draw cards.
Picking the trails are fairly easy but the real game is the chase to contian and confront Dracula. You should try being the Dracula, it’s a totally different experience and filled with dread and trepidation; resources for the Dracula is extremely limited …. this game should not be called “Fury” of Dracula unless he’s angry that he is always running from the Hunters (but underestimate him at your own peril). As for whether AT game are too random or too dependent on luck, while diferrent strokes for different folks …. i can only say that don’t judge a game after only 1-2 plays; truly great game has more to offer when you understand the subtle implication and deeper strategy ….
Hi there and welcome to my humble blog!
I only meant that another player should have played Dracula the second time around just to give some encouragement to the human players. It’s kind of a drag to have the game be so one-sided twice in a row, you know? But I only have myself to blame for not being man enough to step up for the job. Sigh.
I assume by AT, you mean Ameritrash? Sorry, I’m still learning the jargon. Heh. No worries, I’m a natural target market for this stuff, what being a heavy PC-based gamer and all. Admittedly, I still haven’t played enough boardgames to form a really solid opinion, but generally speaking I’ve never felt that I’ve wasted my time playing any one of them. I might enjoy different games for different reasons, but I do enjoy every one of them.
In the context this particular post, I mention randomness because I feel that this game does have a fair amount of luck involved, but I would never say that luck has no place in games. In our games of Battlelore, we’ve felt that luck has been a huge factor, but that hasn’t detracted from our enjoyment of the game and as an “armchair designer”, I can appreciate the drama and excitement that some randomness can add to a game.
The one exception to my enjoyment of boardgames so far is Arkham Horror, which if you’ve read that relevant post, you’d know has been excruciating on us. But I’d dearly like to organize a session of it with multiple players to see how it plays like that. It’s a game that I don’t really like so far, but one that I want to like. I’ll bring my copy to CarcaSean since Sean hasn’t opened his yet. Any interest?
Just in case it isn’t obvious to other readers, Han is the guy who played Dracula during our session, Thanks for the game!
Sure, i’m always ok for a game of Arkham Horror. Do you like to try some heavier 2-players game such as “Twilight Struggle” or “War of the Ring”?
I think we’re pretty much game for anything, well except maybe simulationist wargames with thousands of counters. Still, we’re generally not going to play more than once a week or so, so it might take some time to work up to them. And I do like Eurogames too in between bouts of the American stuff. So many games, so little time!