Tuesday 10th January - Kremlin

Kremlin-2-WEB
Originally uploaded by coljen.

Our first full complement after the holiday break and Richard chose the 1988 Avalon Hill game, Kremlin. This was designed by Urs Hostettler and hadn't been played by Garry or myself and I think Richard and Steve hadn't played for many years. Anyway I have been reading up on the geek and this is a short description of the game:

A game of political intrigue set in the Soviet Politburo. Players secretly influence politicians, using them to expunge other players politicians to Siberia, promote their own, or wheel and deal. The player who successfully gets their controlled Party Chief to wave 3 times at the May Day parade wins the game. Nice balance of chrome and playability, and the theme fits tightly.

Most of the comments on the geek rate this game very highly, I must say that on our one play both Garry and myself didn't warm to it. I found the rules slightly confusing and we took nearly 45 minutes just to run through them.

We played the advanced rules as well, perhaps this didn't help. I found myself in charge of the KGB for a while and kept getting urged to purge, purge, purge. I didn't think that purging characters with my influence on them or that I had written on my sheet but not yet played was a good move. So I think my KGB chief was very lenient. Steve managed to get the party chief to wave 3 times with 3 turns still remaining and we had been playing 105 minutes by then. With all the excellent games that have been published and I have played before I don't think that Kremlin will be top of my list to try again. But, hey, that's me. For the next 3 weeks there will only be 3 of us, no Richard who is off skiiing in Utah. Lucky chap!!Until next time.......happy gaming!!!