Friday, October 16, 2015

Oktoberfest at Castle Conn and Escape from Colditz

I got to play this game last night at a friends house with our regular gaming group.  We had six in attendance so the room was full and the game had enough players to fill all of the positions.
This is a unique theme for a game in that a lot of people wouldn't find it "entertaining" to pretend to be prisoners of war attempting an escape from a maximum security Nazi prison camp.

But hey, we are wargamers and didn't give that a second thought.  The co-workers I told in advance of the game night looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, "seems kind of deep.  I'm not sure I would like that."

It is a fascinating puzzle and social interaction experiment in that the players are all cooperative versus one player that is the German commander of the prison and is in opposition to all of the players.

The game components are pretty neat in the recreation of actual prisoner artifacts and text objects that would have been experienced by the people of that time period.


the prison yard during the game.  This layout of the castle includes a pretty intricate and detailed version of the location.  The color coded pawns represent different nationalities that were imprisoned.  I got to play Dutch and was given the orange pawns.  The game has mechanics that allow beneficial and unique participation game play that I had a hard time acquiring.  

The table early on.  I had very little luck rolling a 3, 7, 11, to get opportunity cards.  I was really a back seat prisoner until helped out by the Polish inmates that assisted me in getting my escape kit.

I think only one Polish prisoner escaped but as the game mocked me in all aspect of mechanics I managed to get two of my lads into a tunnel near the end of our time limit.  We had set 11:00 PM as our stop time and the game really heated up nearing this time limit.  I was very near escaping with two men when the German player drew the "Tunnel discovered" card and put my men in solitary.

Not going to make it orange boys!  Up outa that tunnel and into the cells with you!

The game is a roll and move math puzzle that requires a high level of interaction with the other players.  The opportunity cards and the ability to cooperate on schemes is really deserving of another play but man is it a hard puzzle to figure out.

Thanks Ted for the game.  Blog as promised.  Now I am attempting to escape the Braunschweiger cloud in my classroom.
ESCAPE from Braunschweiger
By Farter Brothers Games

1 comment:

  1. Blimey...I remember this game. I used to have it as a kid in the 1970's. Seem to remember it was good fun. It would be interesting to market it now.

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