Masque of the Red Death: Kickstarter läuft

Ein interessanter Brettspiel-Kickstarter mit Miniaturen läuft gerade.

Masque of the Red Death is a deduction and movement programming game for 4 -7 players set in the grim world of the short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Players are nobles attending an extravagant masked ball while a plague ravages the country. Players are trying to do what nobles do – feast, dance, celebrate –become as popular as they can. But rumors swirl as the night goes on, and everyone feels oddly nervous each time the clock chimes. The nobles might be wise to spend some time listening to these rumors. It is becoming increasingly clear as midnight approaches that something sinister awaits. At midnight, a horrible figure in the guise of the Red Death appears at the masquerade! It stalks amongst the rooms of the abbey, killing the nobles it comes across. The most popular noble wins… but that only matters if you survive the night.

Das ist in der Box (Kostenpunkt 60,00 Dollar):

 

The game takes place in the peculiar abbey of Prince Prospero. The abbey is divided into 7 rooms; each decorated and lit in a particular color.

Players start with a set of 9 identical action cards and one unique personality card. These action cards include things like: Discuss, Dance, Admire, Mock, Flirt.

Each turn, players will:

1. CHOOSE a card from hand to play (simultaneously)

2. PERFORM THE ACTION one at a time, to gain popularity or rumors

3. MOVE to an adjacent room (after everyone’s actions are complete – optional)

As each turn goes by, the clock gets closer to reaching midnight. As players gather rumors, they begin planning out their movements after midnight to avoid the Red Death. They can make changes to their plan at any time… until 12:00. The Red Death will visit 2 rooms at each time: 12:00, 12:10, 12:20, 12:30, 12:40, 12:50.

Players must plan out movements behind their player screens to avoid being in the rooms that the Red Death visits.

At midnight, the game drastically changes. Players can no longer change their planned movements and they must now hope they gathered enough information to avoid the Red Death! Players enact their planned 12:00 movement, either moving their figure clockwise, counter-clockwise, or staying in place. Then the two 12:00 Red Death cards are revealed (one at a time, for suspense).

The Red Death visits the rooms shown on the cards, killing all nobles in those rooms – removing their figures from the abbey and the popularity track. Surviving nobles enact their planned 12:10 movement, and the 12:10 Red Death cards are revealed once again. This repeats for each time slot until the 12:50 time is resolved. The most popular surviving noble wins! May this victory give you strength as you contemplate the inevitability of death amongst the corpses of your fallen countrymen…

Play Tips from Designer Adam Wyse

Masque of the Red Death is all about the balance between gaining popularity (to win) and gaining information (to survive). You can’t have one without the other. If all you do is Flirt and Laugh and Dance around all night, odds are you’re going to die after midnight. If all you do is Discuss (to take rumors), you should be able to survive but if anyone else survives they will likely be more popular than you. You must strike a good balance of both. Not knowing for sure if you will survive is what makes the game so tense. It is very important to not fall too far behind in popularity.

Players who take advantage of the ability to jump over others on the popularity track will consistently get extra popularity each time they take a popularity action. The unique personality card each player gets at the start of the game can be quite powerful, and no one knows which card other players will have. Time it right to benefit as much as possible from your personality card. Movement over the course of the night can be very important. Prince Prospero will be flitting around the abbey from round to round, but players get to see which room he will be in at each time, from the very start of the game. Try to move in a way that gets you near the prince as much as possible.

You may sometimes want to bunch up with other players so you can play cards on them, or you may want to get away from the pack so that others cannot play cards on you. Some action cards allow you to lower or raise other players’ popularity or even steal or look at their rumor cards. But be careful about making enemies; they may be looking to get you back later. Stealing rumor cards can often be very effective. If you know nothing about 12:30 for example, when you steal a rumor you are allowed to request a particular time. This is obviously more effective than simply playing a Discuss action to draw a random rumor from the deck.

Each player starts with 9 action cards and 1 personality card, but most of these do not come back to your hand after being played. You’ll want to wait for the right moment before you play your more powerful cards!

Movement matters during the masquerade for a couple reasons: 1. Many action cards can only be played on nobles who are in the same room as you. 2. Prince Prospero, the lord of this abbey, is here for the masquerade as well. The prince moves through the abbey a lot over the course of the night. It is good to be a part of the prince’s entourage. If a player begins their turn in the same room as the prince, they simply gain 1 popularity. The popularity track that runs around the outside of the abbey board keeps track of the players’ popularity level. It’s important to note that players may never share the same space on this track. When you gain popularity, you move up a number of open spaces on the track, jumping over occupied spaces along the way.

Videos zum Spiel gibt es auch:

Und das sind einige der Gäste:

Die Kampagne läuft noch 12 Tage.

Quelle: Masque of the Red Death