Fury of Dracula

I played Fury of Dracula again this evening. I should note that I love board games and I’m not sure why. I’m not particularly competitive, or perhaps I am and I manage to restrain it. I remember enjoying playing board games when I was a kid. I also remember losing much more often than not. Pente remains the only board game I’ve ever showed any skill in. My family played games—Mastermind, Othello mostly. When I graduated to more interesting and complicated games though, I wasn’t able to get anyone to play with. I had a host of SPI games that I’d either play by myself or else never play at all.

In any case, Fury of Dracula was for my money the best of the old Games Workshop box games. I enjoyed some of the others, Dr. Who, Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Warrior Knights, etc but this one had great mechanics. Fantasy Flight just released a new edition and it is fantastic. You really have to have the full five players to get the most out of it, but it is worth it. One player plays as Dracula, while the other four play the hunters. Dracula moves in secret from city to city in Europe, using cards to build his trail. He can also leave behind encounters for the hunters in these places, so just tracking him can get messy. The card system for the hidden movement works really well; it keeps Dracula from making illegal moves (most of the time) and provides a nice visual when the hunters have found a location that Dracula has passed through.

I understand that some of the mechanics come from an older game called Scotland Yard in which detectives chase down a thief trying to escape London. This game adds to that a nice combat system, event cards, powers and items, and a lot of trappings that really carry the atmosphere of the game. The theme doesn’t feel tacked on at all and everything fits with the storyline. It is however a little more complicated than your standard “German style” board game. Explaining it to new people the first time can be confusing, but after they’ve played a couple of turns they pick everything up. There are a lot of detail-ly bits that get lost in play (how weapons get used up, special effects of attack cards, some timing issues) but each time I play I’ve been able to keep a little more straight.

I’ve now played Dracula in each of the first three times I’ve played this new edition. The first time I got smoked badly. In part that was due to an illegal move I made in the game that I then had to take a penalty for. In the second game I managed to kill one of the hunters to secure the win. It was pretty close though and if he’d managed to beat me, I probably would have lost. Tonight I was inches away from winning. I gained an early lead by having one of my hidden minions turn into a Vampire, scoring me two out of the six points I needed to win. I had a couple of opportunities to kill hunters that I just couldn’t close the deal on. Any of those would have gotten me the win. Eventually my badly hurt Dracula fled towards castle Dracula to heal. It was also to draw the hunters away from Italy, where another minion was about to mature which would have given me the win. At the last possible moment—just before I was to take my turn and win—another player pulled an event card that had a 4 in 6 chance of revealing the minion. Needless to say he exposed it and then was able to blow several special abilities to get to it and destroy it. The hunters then descended on me, with the first one drawing off my cards and then a second one following up to finish me off. Still a close and really fun game.