i am not beowulf!

i’m lucky in that i have so many awesome gaming friends, and that every thursday night there’s a big get together at winston’s (a local café) to play all sorts of games.

last night was a good get together.  i was able to get a couple of games in, one of which was beowulf the movie board game.

obviously, this game was designed to take advantage of the excitement of the 2007 film starring ray winstone, crispin glover, angelina jolie, sir anthony hopkins, robin wright penn, brandon gleeson, and john malkovich.

beowulf is an FFG game with a play style based on reiner knizia's kingdoms game structure with some tweaks to the board and the tiles.

The basic premise is that each player is a skald telling the saga of Beowulf. There are 3 acts, each represented by a different game board, where players place figures and tiles to take advantage of boons and avoid perils.  

here we are early in the first act.  of course, as the act progresses the board fills up:
 

once the first act is over, the tiles and figures are removed and the second act begins:

the second act has fewer spaces and some of the special actions the tiles allow you to take a much more cutthroat.  once the second act is over the tiles and figures are removed yet again, and the third act begins:

 

as you can see, this act has nearly double the play area, which meant some contemplation on tile and figure placement.

as you can see some of the players (melissa and chris) took the third act a bit more seriously than others (i'm lookin' @ you jacob)...

when the game was over, chris was the victorious skald having told the best tale of beowulf, and collecting the most saga points for it.  jacob was in second place, melissa in third, and i came in dead last.  so much for my career as a wandering poet/bard reciting epic verse and norse eddas.   

other games were played (like die kaufleute von amsterdam), so stay tuned for those posts!