Shadows over Camelot review.

I thought I’d take a break from D&D for a post to talk about a board game.  This week at my local board game night we played “Shadows Over Camelot”.  Shadows, produced by Days of Wonder, won a Spiel Das Jahre (German game of the year) in 2006.  And with good reason.

The game is a co-operative game where the players (4-7) work together against the game.  On each turn you must first choose to draw a black card (which speed the failure of quests), place a siege engine outside Camelot, or lose one life point.  When we play we call this part of the turn “choosing a bad thing”.  Then, you get to perform one heroic action – traveling to different quests, moving toward completing those quests , battling siege engines, or drawing white cards.  You may also use your knights special ability on your turn.  Each knight has a different special ability that can contribute to the group achieving its goals.  You can also lose one life point to perform a different heroic action from the one you did already this turn.

The goal of the game is to complete quests and gain white swords to place around the round table.  Each completed quest earns a number of swords.  Each failed quest earns black swords.  The players win if they can fill the round table with more white than black swords.  The players lose if Camelot is besieged by 12 siege engines,  or if there are more black swords than white when the round table is filled.  Here is the catch – one player may be a traitor.  The traitor works against the rest of the group while trying to remain unnoticed.

The game is really fun to play because of it’s co-operative mechanic, but the possibility of a traitor in the midst keeps you guessing and provides a good amount of dramatic tension.  It usually isn’t long (at least with my group) before the accusations start flying.  Wrongly accusing someone of being a traitor earns the group a black sword, so players need to exercise some caution.  The traitor can do some serious damage by accusing people he knows not to be traitor (remember, it only takes 6 black swords for the players to lose).  Every time I’ve played this game it is won or lost by only a sword.  It always feels desperately close at the end – which is great.

The components are pretty good too.  Each knight has his own unique figure (unpainted) and a card with basic rules, his special ability, a picture of him and a space for your secret role card(loyal or traitor).  Each knight also gets a color coded 6 sided die to keep track of life points with (you start with 4 and can gain some for defeating quests or from a few special white cards).  There are also pieces depicting the holy grail, Excalibur and Lancelot’s armor (which you can quest for).  The board is pretty cool looking.

I give this game a high recommendation.  But you don’t just have to take my word for it.  It’s been reviewed on boardgamegeek.com nearly 5000 times with an average score of 7.35 of 10 (and the people over there are pretty harsh critics) and it has a 4.5 of 5 star rating at boardgameratings.com.  If you’ve got $40 and a good group of board gaming friends, pick this one up.