BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!

PLAGUE! by STEVEN BARSKY

from B&B Productions

One 22" x 28" mounted mapboard, 136 circular counters, 55 Black Death Cards, 4 plastic pawns, 1 "In Remembrance" Score Pad, 1 Rat Bag, two dice; boxed. From B&B Productions, 15 East Street, Weymouth Dorset DT4 8BW The UK. $35 (SEE BELOW)

Reviewed by RICHARD H. BERG, with the technical assistance of Athena and Artemis, BROG's Rats in Residence

Anyone who has the nerve - and sense of humor - to do a game on The Black Death cannot do poorly in these pages. That the game is more fun than a shipload of rats - or most other games, for that matter - is just frosting on the cheese, for Plague! IS easily one of the best "games" I've played in a while. The Brits tend to do this sort of thing a lot better than we provincials - they approach such matters with a good deal more sense of humor than most Americans seem to be able to muster about any potentially serious subject - and this one is well done indeed. It is a deceptively simple game, one that appears to offer little in terms of strategy or cunning … but, like those pesky little rodents, it's got lots of little nasty surprise waiting for you.

Plague! is a game for 2-4 players - 4 is probably best, although it seems to work quite well with just 2 - which manages to simulate, in a somewhat Pythonesque manner, the Black Death's arrival on the shores of England, in Weymouth, in 1348. Then again, there are so many time warps in this game - all of which do little, if any, harm to the subject at hand - that the 1348 date is representative more than restrictive. Basically, each player is trying to become the first player to pick up 99 plague victim bodies with his wagon and get them dumped into the Burial sites. Sounds like Chutes and Ladders for the Demented, but it is far from that.

Thankfully, this is not "Third World" stuff; everything is quite professional and mainstream in terms of production. The large and sturdy box has an appropriately menacing cover picture that also conveys a sense of humor, overlayed with a host of playfully nasty looking brethren of rattus rattus. Much of the box information lets you know the rather tongue-in-cheek atmosphere contained within, as it suggests the game is for "Adults to precocious 9 year olds who like zapping each other with rats …," while offering you "… Good luck, rather you than me." Only the rather drab sepia tones used reduce its effectiveness.

Not so inside, where we have a very attractive, mounted game-board version of the sister ports of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, in which the colors of the buildings serve to convey specific information. The counters are bland, but they get placed in a nice, cloth Rat Bag - Plague's version of ye olde Opaque Cuppe. The Black Death cards - read Ye Olde Randomme Events - are likewise sturdy and capable of withstanding extensive usage, which they will probably receive. The plastic pawns that serve as the player's wagons are a bit art-deco for the subject, but you can always grab some wagon-like pieces from your old Monopoly game.The rules - three pages of play information - are well printed in b&w, with red highlights for the important stuff. They tend to ramble, but some of the wanderings are wryly amusing … such as the explanation as to what a Vacuum Cleaner is doing in the game. And for those of you not immersed in the subject, enough historical background, complete with a brief bibliography (mostly Ziegler's excellent work) is provided to make you as much of an aficionado as any of your friends.

But you are not playing Plague! for its historical insights. This is Quaff and Laugh Land; even more of interest to many of you is that this is probably a game your spouses will love. My wife, Karen, wouldn't sit down at a game-board on a dare; she loved Plague! As I (or "we", as the two, not-so-little furry friends on my shoulders have just reminded me) said above, the object is to pick up 99 bodies and get them to the burial sites. Simple, huh?! No Way Jose, to quote the rules' visual on how not to move. The map is a series of streets, down which you move by means of the "squares' that make up the streets, surrounding blocks of buildings. The player throws two dice: the large one (1-12) is for his wagon; the sixer is for the Nasties - the Rats and the Fleas, along with an occasional rat-eating cat. With these numbers in mind, that player then picks a BD card. As with most other random event type cards, the BD's serve to not only inject some off-beat - and occasionally, rather spurious - information into the game, but they keep the players "honest" by shuffling the situation. You have "Public Orders" closing off streets, strikes by the grave diggers which close the burial sites, a series of cards for the Pied Piper which shift the rats all over the board, cards which politely - and not so politely - inform you that you are Dead, etc. (Our particular favorite is the "Allo, Allo, Allo … what have we 'ere" bobby card. Best Lionel Jeffries imitation got an extra body; house rule.) Not to worry about catching the plague, though; you may be down, but you're never out. You either avoid it with an immunity card - which, one only hopes, you have been smart enough to save - or you just shrug your shoulders and take your wagon back to the Stables.

Now the player gets a chance to load his wagon. He uses his 12er dieroll to move into buildings and pick up the dead; one point per box move, one point per body loaded. Some buildings allow you to load up with the wagon max of twelve the instant you enter, others double what you already have. However, once entered by a player, that building is Off Limits for the rest of the game (which you mark with some rather jolly Keep Out signs). In the beginning, pickings are fairly easy, as all buildings are open and there are few obstructions. On the other hand, only one of the burial sites is open, the rest being available only from the BD cards. They also close down by time limit (literally), so obstructionist players quickly learn how to play slowly or rapidly, as the situation demands. Going to the loo becomes a favorite tactic; how many games can you point to in which that occurs?!

After a while, wagon movement becomes rather difficult for one other reason: the board becomes littered with rats and fleas, both of which may be moved by the players in their Rat Bag Phase (after the wagon moves). Rats block movement, which they do quite effectively because the streets are all one lane. Fleas kill, and players do just that by moving fleas into their opponents' wagons. Again, all is not in vain, as the worse that can happen is you lose your wagon load and get resurrected in the Stables. Of course, if the Pied Piper has dragged all the rats over to the Stables it might be a bit touch-and-go getting out of there.

What you eventually get, after a fast and wild opening section, is quite a bit of "what-do-I-move, and where to?" strategies by all players, as each one tries to block off his opponents (or drop a Flea on 'im) while keeping his options open. That's all scrambled not so infrequently by the BD cards, which move a player clear across the board, close down a burial site, open the sewers for rapid rat movement, or simply give you a touch of the old bubonic while you've got a cart full of 20+ rotting corpses that'll put you over the limit, if only you could get them over to Clarks Hill.

Plague! is very clever: a clever design by the rather dryly clever Mr Barsky, a chiropodist by trade. Just as you perceive what you think is a maximum strategy, along comes the game to throw that one into the harbor. Equally elegant in terms of design is the concurrent factor that no two games will ever play the same, especially if you go with four players. The system is so random, and the situation changes so quickly, that whatever you were doing at one point has little application ten minutes later. And the game not only moves along right smartly, but a four-player game should about 2-3 hours to complete. An even better sign was that, in the two games we played, all players were within one wagonload of winning when the game ended! That, my friends, is top-level design work.

And best of all, unlike the recipients of the title disease, there is a half decent chance you'll die laughing here. Not a bad way to go.

And Now, BROG's House Rats Make You Their Best Offer: Unlike the game's title, you're probably wondering where you can pick this item up. Well, step right up, folks; tell ya what I'm gonna do. If you live in the USA I can get you a copy for $35 +$2 postage (send ME the money). Aha! you say … that's why the review is relatively ravish; he's shilling the goods! Perhaps. But, in truth, I'm doing so because I think the game is good, and because, if you buy it direct, individually, it'll cost you about $50 a game. (At least; it retails for £20, and air postage is about $15.) For those who live in Europe, you can get it directly from Michael Bruinsma's 999 games in Holland, except for you British-type people, who can just walk over to your local store to get infected.

CAPSULE COMMENTS:

Graphic Presentation: Quite good, quite sturdy. Mainstream stuff.

Playability: Excellent. It takes five minutes to learn and one turn to understand. The Bad News? No solitaire. The Good News? Your non-gaming friends will love it. Playing time is about 2+ hours, depending on delaying tactics and inebriation levels.

Replayability: A key selling point: great!

Historicity: While not a simulation - nor is it intended to be - it does have much of the flavor of the era, and the event. Granted, the time warps the game includes - e.g., the game map is not 14th century Weymouth/Melcombe, but, rather 17th century - tend to puncture any seriousness one might mistakenly impart to all of this. Look at it this way, it's the Tactical Resolution game for the "Plague in York" card in Kingmaker.

Creativity: Clever stuff, quite creative.

Comparisons: Hard to imagine what you'd compare this to. Certainly better than the real thing, which is more than you can say for some other games you've played.

Overall: Whether it's Pneumonic, or even Bubonic … a bout of Plague! is a gamer's tonic. (Yeah, I know; abysmal … but certainly in a league with that old Black Death favorite, "ring-around-the rosies".)