Kings of Bluff

A quiet week this week just the five of us sat down to the warm-up game of Bluff, this game has been around since 1987, long enough to pick up various names including Perudo and Roodo as well as having been released with several different film and TV tie-ins and seen  being played on Pirates of the Carribean (2nd film) so I was surprised that it was new to other club members.

In this game each player has a cup with 5 dice in it, everyone rolls their dice and keeps the result secret , the first player then makes a bid of how many dice of any one value he feels are under ALL the cups. The next player either accepts this and raises the bid by stating a higher face value than the one nominated or a higher number of dice, or calling Bluff at which point all dice are revealed.

The bid raising board

Whoever between the called and caller is incorrect loses a number of dice equal to the difference in the call and those revealed. It is a nice game simple and fun with great replay value, the only drawback is that it is a knock-out game and between keen players the losses can be kept to a minimum thus making an early illumination a bit of a wait. As it was just a warm up game we called it quits soon after the second knock-out and we moved on to the next game.

Kingsburg was the second game on the table, the idea of this game is to score the most points by collecting resources and using them to construct buildings.

The winning players board showing buildings built during the game

The driving mechanism for this game is the three dice which every player has of their colour, each round these are rolled and the pip total used to select jobs from the board, the limitations are that the selected job must exactly equal the pips on the faces of the die/dice used.

Yellow fortunate enough to place all three dice singly.

The lower numbers (1-6) give a single resource whilst the higher numbers give multiple resources. The other aspect of the game is that after every 3rd turn a random aggressor is met by all players and should a players combat strength not be enough then they will suffer losses, usually victory points or resources.

Barbarians (8 Strength) if beaten will give 1 VP but if victorious themselves will destroy a building.

Our game went well, however those with experience in the game started to edge ahead after round three and by the end of round four a clear winner was evident. To play the game well you do have to plan ahead and work towards a plan, those with previous experience of the game find this easier as knowledge of how to exploit the buildings benefits is an advantage.