Sergio Aragon駸' Groo: The Game
by Ken Whitman, illustrated by Sergio Aragon駸
Archangel Entertainment, $14.95
rating: Neat-O.
I've just gotten back from a dinner party where we played Groo: The Game, and it was a lot of fun. This was a group of coworker-type friends, not gamer-type friends, so the games that we usually play after dinner are more on the order of Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit. My friends found the rules a little confusing at first, particularly that all the cards had their own individual special effects, much like Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games. It's important to note that Groo: The Game is not a collectible card game--every set is the same, and has everything you need (there is one expansion set, with more cards). The game consists of cards, special dice, and a rule-book. The object of the game is to be the first to build a town worth seven victory points, before the armies of the other players, and the ravages of Groo can destroy your town. Each turn you have the opportunity to roll the dice to see what resources you have that turn to construct building with: Laborers, Supplies, and Kopins (money). There's a special die that controls where Groo wanders next. Different buildings cost differing amounts of the various basic supplies, but beware--every die also has a Groo head, which is the resource needed to unleash the walking catastrophe that is Groo, and whatever town Groo is currently in suffers the effects of Groo Events that are brought into play (the usual run of calamities that follow Groo: Famine, Panic, War. I don't think there's a Pestilence card, though). Any resources that you can't use in your turn pass to the next player, and to the next, until every player has had a chance to use the left-overs to build with--including the chance to unleash Groo effects on whatever hapless town Groo is currently residing in. There are also wild-cards, most of which redirect Groo's wanderings to a new town.
As I said, at first my friends found the array of options bewildering, but once they came to accept that despite the seeming complexity, there wasn't a lot of clever strategizing that you can do--since any town, no matter how close to victory, is about one unlucky die-roll away from being wiped out of existence by Groo, and every other player just waiting to gang up on someone nearing victory, they started to get into it.
Highly recommended, and not just because I happened to win both games.