Bristol 1350 Board Game of Strategy, Deceit, and Luck for 1-9 Players

Product Information

Highly group dependent, and deeply enhanced by higher player counts, the essence of this offering is engaging on a level that similar titles routinely fail to vault. In Bristol 1350 by Façade Games, 1-9 players will embody the flighty boots of citizens desperate to escape the plague ravaged streets for the promise of the countryside’s proximal vapours before they succumb to the relentless waves of pestilence afflicting the city.

In fact, for me, this is what helps the game along, since it’s not even social deduction, it’s mathematical suspicion. I’m not generally enamoured of ‘party games’ or social deduction as a primary mechanic, however-with its actual (relative) strategic depth and perfect embrace of theme, Bristol 1350 has quickly become a favourite that gathers no dust between sessions. To subscribe to GeekDad’s tabletop gaming coverage, please copy this link and add it to your RSS reader. Overall, I found Bristol 1350 very playable and it has seen its turn at our table many times since we first played it, making it GeekDad Approved and worthy of a place on your bookshelf and game table! These cards progress from low value symptoms like a cough or a headache all the way to the dreaded buboes themselves.The fourth game in the Dark Cities series – Bristol follows Salem, Deadwood and Tortuga in embodying a ‘Horrible Histories’ style take on some of the darkest chapters of our collective civilisation. The only thing that stayed consistent through all the versions was the core racing mechanism of the game and the Facade Games’ special ingredient of deceptive deduction. With probability as the driving deduction force, there can only be suspicion and almost never outright sureness, which means one has to take risks, increasing the tension in the game. While this is a nice idea to push, you do still need to face that this is a game where dead players don’t have a lot to do.

I appreciate that Facade Games has put forethought into ways to keep their game more replayable by offering what amount to “house rules” that people may want to use in future sessions. I bought the deluxe edition of the game from Kickstarter and received the game with the upgraded components and Alms expansion. With this scant selection of rules the bones of the experience are laid out, but its in the player interaction that the experience is animated.The best compliment I can give is that this game of social deduction with a hidden traitor mechanism is incredibly engaging within that entire player range. The Black Death certainly wasn’t a time of fun and games, even if Bristol 1350 happens to be a fun game about the Black Death. Similar concerns, and therefore similar signals, are found in every successful social deduction game.

If you’re like me, then you heard it many a time after saving the Lylat System from the schemes of Andross. But even then there's so many different factors to account for and so many different styles of games with different aims, investments and ambitions that I struggle to contract my impressions of them to a numerical shorthand. The art, on the other hand, really brings out the flavor of the game, and our group spent a lot of time just admiring the different characters. In Battlestar Galactica, Dead of Winter, and Dark Moon, a crisis check might fail through no fault of the players. It is believed that the first deaths occurred during the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, 1348.Shuffle the remedy cards and give each player a number specified in the setup table in the instructions. The Chicken remedy comes into play if you reroll dice on your turn, and aren’t happy with the result.

Bristol contains that right balance of incentives and clues to give both sides a chance of deducing secret diagnoses and attaining objectives. I am not colorblind, and I am not sure if the colors of the components are colorblind friendly, but if they are not, that is my only critique of the components. One additional card is also placed in the mingle pile from the symptom deck, or a card might already be there from someone playing a Leeches remedy card. Domestika on using python to do generative art and then realized the whole thing was in Portugese with subtitles. If victory is your sole concern, you should strive to catch the plague as early as possible, even though that means you’re soft-cheating by violating a wishy-washy social rule.This standalone game is Volume 4 in the “Dark Cities Series” by Facade Games following Salem 1692, Tortuga 1667, and Deadwood 1876. Take a step back in time to Black Death infected Bristol, England, for some back-stabbing fun trying to escape the city. It's right in the vein of the light hearted quick paced, minimal strategy themes of the Tortuga, Deadwood, and Salem. Those in possession of the deluxe edition of the game also received a cloth bag filled with six copper alms- one of which houses a cure, one a plague, and the remainder red herrings to sow suspicion as their recipient doles them out to the other players, splintering alliances and casting aspersions with every gilded handful. At first, I couldn’t believe that Travis was so consistently comfortable with taking a hammer to the very thing that was going to pay the bills and feed his family.