Ankh-Morpork is Martin Wallace's venture into the family market as regards game design. It's by far his lightest game and has a fair amount of random chaos in it. This in itself will turn a lot of hard-core gamers off as they cannot control everything that happens on the board. I myself can play both types of game, you have approach them with a different take that's all.
It plays from 2-4 and Tina and I have played four games so far. The games premise is basically that you are trying to control the city of Ankh-Morpork. There are 7 personality cards and each has it's own victory condition. For example, Commander Vines wins if the card deck runs out and the Dragon King of Arms wins if there are 8 or more trouble markers on the board......oops, sorry not supposed to mention the number between 7 and 9. In the collectors edition, which I have, it is never mentioned. Even the 12 sided die has 7a instead of it. Each player draws a random personality card at the start and so each player has (maybe) different victory conditions. As I said, we have played 4 games, I have won 3 and Tina 1. My wins were as Lord Vetinari (who needs minions in 11 areas to win), two of the personalities that need control of 7 areas to win. There are three of these in the game. You have control of an area if you have more pieces (minions and buildings) than anyone else in an area. Tina won with one of these as well.....I wasn't concentrating and she sort of crept up on me.
As you can see Tina is playing red and won quite easily. The game is primarily card driven. There is a deck of over 100 cards depicting the characters and places in Terry Pratchett's fantasy world of Discworld. Your turn consists of playing a card, doing what it says on the card and drawing back to a hand of 5. Easy, eh! Well, there's a bit more to it than that. There are 12 areas on the board and each has a corresponding card. If you build a building in an area you get the card for that area and that gives you a special ability. It may be once a turn take 2 dollars from the bank, or pay 3 dollars and place a minion in that area or an adjacent area. They are all beneficial to some extent. Then there is trouble, trouble happens when there are more than one minion in an area. You place a trouble counter in that area if you add, remove or move a minion. You cannot build a building in area with trouble in it. There are also Trolls and Demons just to spice up the game a bit.
That cannot be said for the event deck. There are wizard cards in the deck, well, there would be wouldn't there. If you play a wizard you must draw a card from the event deck.....all events are bad. Fire, flood, murders it's all good fun. All in all I really enjoyed Ankh-Morpork. The randomness will increase with the number of players so will the fun I think. There is always a lot chaos and trouble in the Discworld books so it's true to the theme.
Happy Gaming!!
