Citadels (includes dark city)

This is fast becomming our groups favorite game. The tactics and strategy that have evolved from the game make it a tortured hour of game play.

The different roles that can be chosen each have there own benefits and all hope that the Assasin or Thief ignore them.

The cards are well designed and the graphics are good. I bought some deck protectors as they do get used. In particular the character cards are always being shuffled.

The Dark City expansion adds more characters and locations, and for £14 you would be a fool not to have a copy of this on your shelf.

Citadels comes in a small handy box, approximately the size of a video cassette. Included are character cards, district cards, reference cards, a bunch of gold counters, and a yellow king marker.

In Citadels, every player collects gold and builds different districts, in order to gain victory points. Every round, players choose a character that gives them some special ability that, hopefully, advantages them and/or disadvantages others.

The game plays very well with two players, and games with 4-5 players seem to work even better with this game mechanism (max 7 players). With the Dark City expansion, the game can be adapted more to the players' preferences and to the number of players in the game. Certain characters, for example, are more powerful in a 2-player game, than in a play with 4. A wide range of character cards offers possibilities to balance this. In general, Dark City offers more variety in the game.

Tactics, bluff, luck... it's all in the game. Citadels takes about 20-60 minutes to play, and can definitely be played multiple times in a row. Fun with two, great with more.

I can warmly recommend this game.