Some time after the events of the eponymous novel Dracula returns, and he is furious! No longer content to lurk in London, the count spreads his evil throughout Europe, pursued by 4 hunters hot on his trail.
Fury of Dracula is an odd board game that reminds me a lot of the old Scotland Yard game familiar to anybody that grew up the the 80s. One player takes the role of Dracula – their goal is to stay alive for long enough to see their nefarious plans come to fruition. All the remaining players take the roles of one or more hunters determined to bring Dracula down for good (there are always 4 hunters so a given player may be playing more than one – we only had 2 players so one person played all 4 hunters.) Each turn the players move around a stylised map of 19th century Europe, the hunters move openly on the board but Dracula’s position is hidden from the other players.
Dracula moves by placing location cards face down on a track, leaving a trail of old locations behind, each one possibly containing a surprise that the count has prepared to harry his pursuers. If one of the hunters stumbles across the trail, the surprise is revealed – usually some sort of combat ensues (Dracula has allies) or something else bad. On the bright side, at least the hunter knows they are on the right track.
If Dracula manages to leave a long enough trail, the oldest card drops off and the encounter “matures”, often helping Dracula come closer to his goal. It is in the hunter’s interests to keep on Dracula’s coat tails once they see any sign of him.
Once the hunters have found Dracula, they can engage him in combat to weaken or hopefully kill him using any of the items they may have picked up on their journey. However Dracula has terrifying powers and combat is dangerous, 3 out of every 6 turns occur at night when Dracula is especially powerful! Timing is everything when trying to kill a vampire.
Fury of Dracula is an enjoyable romp with excellent atmosphere – Dracula is outnumbered and constantly on the run during daylight hours, but may brave a frontal assault during the nighttimes. Combat is done with dice and cards, and works very well once you figure it out. Dracula starts off with a large advantage, but this slowly wears away as the hunters gather items to use against him. The game seems fairly well balanced overall, although in our game Dracula went down early under the weight of a series of terrible dice rolls (or that is my excuse anyway.)
The main flaw of the game is it’s complexity. There are 5 different decks to take care of, and a plethora of counters and tokens. I can’t say I didn’t get my money’s worth, but there is an awful lot of stuff to keep track of. Many of the rules have odd exceptions that apply only at certain times or to certain characters, exceptions that are only found scattered around the rule book not on the cards themselves. The rule book is pretty good, but the rules do not lend themselves to easy explanation – this is not the kind of game you just pull out and play.
Having said that, Fury of Dracula is a fun game assuming that you want to put the effort to learn something new.
Or not so simple. There are 8 role cards, each player will get one of these each turn which will enable certain actions. For instance, the Magician role can swap hands with another player, the Architect can build more in a turn, the King gets first choice of roles for next turn, etc. Because there are more roles than players and the roles are chosen secretly in turn, the way to win lies in choosing the correct role at the correct time. Some of the more expensive districts also confer additional bonuses apart for score such as more money or protection from certain attacks so thinking several turns ahead is required.
Secondly, The Spoils is a collectable card game just like Magic the Gathering. Seriously, it is basically Magic with a quick paint job and the VIN ground off. This is not necessarily a bad thing – I like Magic the Gathering, but the similarities are pretty blatant. I can almost imagine playing a Spoils deck against a Magic deck in the same game, most of the rules work in exactly the same way, only with different keywords (cards don’t get tapped, they become “depleted”, etc.)
Having said that, Spoils does differ in a few interesting ways which seem to be designed to make the decks play more consistently. A common problem with Magic is that sometimes you just don’t draw enough land cards of the correct type to play your hand full of spells. In The Spoils, you start the game with two staple resources (basic land) cards of your choice already in play – this hugely helps if you are running a 2 colour deck since you can ensure that you have both colours available.
You can play any card in your hand as a resource by playing it face down. These work just like regular resources but do not count towards threshold at all. Although you can usually only play a single resource a turn, you can deplete 3 resources to put another resource into play at any time. 
I love the Settlers of Catan board game, so when an iPod version appeared in the App Store for $6.49 I grabbed it straight away. Dubbed “
If you are getting a bunch of guys together to play a board game, you may as well make it a nerdy one. 
Monday was Queen’s Birthday, and how better to celebrate the life of our monarch than by inviting a bunch of guys around to play board games. Nigel turned up with a game called 
