United Boardgamers of the Baltics: Beowulf: The Movie Boardgame

There's been too long pause. When me and Andrius started this blog we hoped that at least one of us is nice and keeps up the good work... It seems that it didn't work... Well... Let's give it another try...

The game is published by Fantasy Flight Games and is developed by Reiner Knizia. It's one of those games where the best way of winning is screw on others. The cover may seem frightening but the game is rather nice. To be honest it's pretty good entertainment.

Game includes one two-sided gameboard (for 3 phases), lots of playing pieces and three different sort of tiles and bunch of "money." As I mentioned, game takes place in three phases - for each there's different tiles and board. There's only board of the second phase on the picture but the third peeks under the edge...

There are four different type of playing pieces: ships, fortresses, warriors and the hero Beowulf himself. On the base of every piece is their strength. The ship has 1 diamond, warrior has 3. It shows how many times you have to multiply the points the piece collects.

There are also many different kind of tiles. First of all are they grouped by color - in the first phase the gray ones are used, in the second yellow and in the third red ones... There are also numeric value on the tiles. This value is added (or subtracted) to the figures in the same row and column.

So the aim of the game is to get your figures into to rows and columns with the most bonus tiles and at the same time giving minus points to your enemies. It's not that simple as it seems since opponents try to do the same thing to you. There are also many tiles with special abilities. For example Good Counsel allows other player to move your figure from blissful pile of boons into the depth of perils (I exaggerate of course). Some tiles allow you to exchange other tiles (like mead and drunkenness tiles). Gorge may cut your way to many good boon tiles etc...