OUR REVIEW

Apparent idyll

Die blutige Herberge

Assasinated guest in the Country Inn

Sounds like the title of a C-class horror movie, but at second glance turns out to be a new release from the Belgium publisher Pearl Games, which was released on occasion of Spiel at Essen 2015 in several languages. Contrary to its renowned predecessors, for instance Deus, Bruxelles 1893, Tournay or Troyes, the Bloody Inn is not slotted into the Frequent Player segment of games, but is absolutely suitable for casual gamers. The age notation of 14+ is probably due more to the topic than to the mechanics of the game, as the game can be played easily within an hour, even with the full domplement of four players.

As you can tell from the name of the game, the purpose of the Bloddy Inn is not only to be a good host by housing and feeding your guests, but rather to assassinate one or the other of guests and then bury him properly and cash in on the money he carried on his person.

Usually 2 to 4 players – there is also a solo version available – are assigned one room each in the inn with a key in the corresponding color and begin the game with a 10 Franc cheque.  At the start of the game each player only holds 2 Peasant cards in hand. The remaining rooms are – depending on the number of players- equipped with neutral keys.

Scheme of a round:

The starting player assigns one and only one guest to each room, represented by a card. Those guests come, besides a level of 0 to 3, with a certain sum of money, which is related to the guest level and is the main object of the game. Forthermore, nearly all guest cards command a so-called special talent and an “annex”, which is a certain advantageous effect, which is triggered if you lay out the card in the course of the game.

Now each player has exactly one of 5 action options, followed by a second action for each player and the round is done. The game itself ends, when the stack of cards has been dealt with twice.

The first action option is „to bribe a guest“ in order to take him up in your hand. For this action you pay a number of cards from your hand, corresponding to the level of the guest (0 to 3). If you make the payment with peasants, these are always placed into the bistro of the inn – this goes for all peasants that are used in any of the actions that are described later, too. All other guests used for payment are placed on the Exit Stack (discard pile). But should you have used a guest for payment that shows the special talent of “Bribery”, which is a bundle of money, you need only to show him and can then take him back in hand. Instead of a guest you can also bribe one or two guests from the bistro, if available.

The second action option deals with the „annex“ of a guest card by addingthe card from your hand into your own display with the purpose of using this Annex“ for the remainder of the game. All such Annex functions either give you money, facilitate standard action by allowing you to pay one card less or have various other advantages. Furthermore, those “annexes” allow you to bury the assassinated guests, numbers relate to the level of the Annex. You need to dispose of the bodies somewhere, after all, preferably underneath one of your own annexes, because that earns you the full amount of money stated on the card. In analogy to the bribery action you take back in hand all cards that were used for payment showing the “annex” talent.

This takes as to the two most important action options in the game, which only yield the intended result when used in combination: „Assassinate a guest“ and „bury a body“. Both actions need to be well planned and well prepared, as it costs up to six cards ins hand to implement those action options with a guest of Level 3. You assassinate a guest by choosing a guest card in the inn (not one from your hand= and, once again, pay for him with cards from your hand according to the level of the chosen guest card. Should you use a Force of Law, that is, a police card showing a talent symbol of a weapon you take this card back in hand. The assassinated guest is laid out showing the “dead” side of the card. Burying a corpse is again done by discarding of cards from your hand. Here it is important where you bury the corpse, as the using of an opposing annex results in the spliitting of the sum of money stated on the corpse between the players involved.

Finally, there is the action option of „pass“, which, contrary to its name, provides a very important effect, which is „laundering of money“, that is, swapping cash stated on the money track on the board for cheques or vice versa, done in increments of 10. It is important to know in this context that your marker on the money track, representing part of your wealth besides those 10 Franc cheques, cannot surpass 50 Francs. So you need to use the option of “pass” early enough to make sure that you can always mark your earnings on the track. If a lot of money should be forfeited in that way it hurts a lot, as usually a lot of money has cost you lots of cards from your hand.

When each player has implepented his two action the round ends with three end-of-round steps. It is important to already pay attention during the two action rounds if a Police Force is present in a room. If at the end of the round at least one of those Policemen be present in the inn, each unburied corpse goes out of play and, even worse, you need to pay 10 Francs per corpse, either with a cheque or with cash from the track. And I can make a nearly failsave prophecy: If that happens to a player several times he has very probably forfeited his chance to win the game. Therefore take my advice and don’t kill too many guests without properly burying them instantly afterwards.

Besides the end-of-round step of „departure, in which all remaining living guests are placed on the exit stack, which earns you a Franc for each of your own rooms, there is the end-of-round step „pay wages“, in which each card in hand must be paid for with a Franc. If you cannot pay those wages, your dearly paid-for accomplices will run off quickly.

Summary: Straightforward rules, there is an option to vary the duration from 45 tp 75 minutes with the number of cards used, a new topic, a good-sized box which can easily be taken along – so what more can you want to meet your desire than A Bloody Inn?

Gert Stöckl

Players: 1-4

Age: 14+

Time: 60+

Designer: Nicolas Robert

Artist: Luis Francisco, Weberson Santiago

Price: ca. 23 Euro

Publisher: Pearl Games 2015

Web: www.pearlgames.be

Genre: Card game

Users: With friends

Special: 1 player

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr pl

In-game text: yes

Comments:

New topic

Simple rules

Playing time to be selected

Compares to:

San Juan, Brügge and all other card games featiromg cards with multiple card functions.

Other editions:

In English, French and Spanish by Pearl Games, Polish by Rebel.pl

My rating: 6

Gert Stöckl:

A well-working fun card game for friends and families with playing experience, with a reasonable time to play and a fresh, albeit unusual, topic.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0