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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Medusa Games

The Great Fire of London 1666

Price: £39.99

Boardgame for 3-6 Players, ages 10+, from Medusa Games The players are men of wealth and standing who own property around London. They can use the trained bands to fight the fire, use demolitions to destroy blocks of housing to prevent the fire flowing or turn a blind eye and allow the fire to spread and damage rival’s property. Victory can belong to the player with the most property left but putting out fires can give you a boost. In addition each player will have several hidden objectives which might include helping another player or protecting parts of the city. ----------------------------------------------------- COUNTER MAGAZINE REVIEW: ----------------------------------------------------- 3-6 players, 80-120 minutes designed by Richard Denning reviewed by Stuart Dagger As the title pretty much tells you, this is a game that is similar in spirit - though not in its mechanisms - to the various Pompeii games we have had down the years. A city is about to be destroyed by an unstoppable catastrophe and your aim as a player is to escape with less damage than your opponents. You will have opportunities to direct destruction in their direction rather than your own, but when it comes to saving stuff your options will be more limited. The game wouldn\'t be true to its theme if it were otherwise. You are at the mercy of events which, to a large part, are outside your control. Remember that, go along for the ride and you will probably have fun; start worrying too much about strategy and how unfair things are and you may well not. The board shows a nicely drawn map of pre-Fire London with the Thames running along its bottom edge. The area around Pudding Lane, which is on the north bank of the river and in the eastern half of the board, is already well alight. The rest of the city is divided into four large areas for the purpose of producing a reasonably balanced set-up, and at the start of the game an equal number of houses of each of the six colours are randomly placed in each of the four areas. Note that you use all the six colours of houses even when playing with fewer than the maximum number of players. These large areas lose their significance once the game begins and what is important from that point is the small areas into which they are divided. It is from small area to small area that the fire is going to spread, and at the start of the game each of them contains between 1 and 5 houses - usually 1 or 2. The main mechanism for spreading the fire is fire cards. Each player has a hand of 5 of these and on your turn you play one and then draw a replacement. Because of where the fire starts, there are far more cards in the deck that send the fire north and west than there are for south and east, but there are enough of each to ensure that all parts of the city are vulnerable. The cleverest part of the design is the way the spread of the fire has been modelled. The game comes with a large supply of ``fire cones\'\' and at the start of the game there is a whole mass of these in the Pudding Lane area. A player turn begins with the play of a fire card. The player then takes a fire cone from an area that has more than one and moves it freely through areas that are already on fire before making a final step with it into an area that isn\'t. This final step must be in the direction indicated on the card. You have some flexibility because each direction covers a 90 degree arc - so, for example, ``west\'\' can be anything from south-west to north-west - but there are also rules. If possible you must direct the fire into an area that contains houses but no fire fighters; the next option is one that still has houses but which does contain fire fighters; then come areas that have already been burnt down. If this results in the fire moving into a new area, all the houses in it are removed. Further, if the area contained more than one house, extra fire cones are added from stock so that the district now contains as many cones as it used to contain houses. Since many of the districts only contain one house, the consequence of all this is often some destruction but only a minor threat to neighbouring districts. However, if the district just destroyed was a crowded one, you have a new ``hot spot\'\' and a serious threat. There is also a neat mechanism whereby the conflagration acquires further momentum. Placed at regular intervals in the fire card deck are a number of special cards and when one of these surfaces, extra cones are added to areas that are already ablaze, thereby creating new danger points. It all makes for a realistic picture of a major fire that is quietening down in some areas, flaring up in others, and with a life of its own. So, we have a model of a fire. How is it turned into a game? The answer to that is by providing each player with houses and areas that they want to protect and some means of doing it. Of the houses placed at the start, 20 belong to each player. You will score 2 points for each one that survives. At the start of the game you will also be dealt 3 cards, one that is potentially worth 6 points, one 4 and one 2. Each of these names an important building, such as the Tower of London or St Paul\'s, and you will gain the points if it is not burnt down. These cards are secret, but there are only a dozen of them and the areas are clearly marked on the map. So, from a strategic point of view, it is a reasonably safe bet that if you don\'t have a card for a particular one of these areas, one of your opponents will and that makes it a target. The third source of points comes from putting out fires. To tackle the fire you need bands of fire fighters. These come in the form of half a dozen black cones, which you can move around the map. Each player also has a pawn that represents them - an officer type, taking charge and shouting instructions such as, ``Over here with that bucket!\'\'. The second part of your turn concerns these. You have 4 Action Points, which you can use to move your pawn, move fire fighters and, under the right circumstances, put out fires. If a band of fire fighters finds itself in the same area as a fire, it will tackle it. This is indicated by placing the back fire fighter cone on top of the red fire one. This part of the fire is then said to be contained. If your pawn is in an area where all parts of the fire are contained, you can spend an action point to order the fire fighters to actually put the fire out. Doing this gains you the fire cone, which will be worth 1 point at the end, when there will also be a 2 point ``Hero of London\'\' bonus for the player with the most. The final element in the game is a set of 20 black tokens which at the start are placed face down at various points of the map. You gain a token if you direct the fire into its area. Some of these tokens are worth 1 VP, others entitle you to make a double move when spreading the fire, and the final type consists of explosives. If you have one of these latter, and you and a band of fire fighters are in a district that is not on fire but which is adjacent to an area that is, you can set off the charges. This destroys the houses in the area (if any) but creates a fire break which the fire cannot spread to or through. These fire breaks probably represent your best chance of protecting a key area, but don\'t make it too obvious or your opponents will only increase their efforts to find a way round. As I said at the start, I see The Great Fire of London more as a ``story game\'\' than a strategy one, and it has to be said that my group were lukewarm about it. Their preference is for games where you have more control and a greater range of strategic options. That is not on offer here. What you have instead is a well-themed game with a well thought out and appropriate set of mechanisms. The way to approach it is as a shared experience of the ``take that\'\' variety, rather like a saloon brawl. At the end someone will be declared the winner, but who it is doesn\'t matter and proves nothing; you will have had fun.

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Main Catalogue | Board Games & Card Games | Medusa Games

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