PLAYED FOR YOU

Die Ratten im Gemäuer

Keep your mind with Brains

The game is based on a story by H. P. Lovecraft, titled "The Rats in the Walls", and uses standard mechanisms for dice game with bluff elements.

The game features mind in the guise of 30 plastic brain pieces and five special dice which show four empty sides, one side with one rat and one side with two rats, plus a dice cup.

You start with the maximum complement of brains - five to eight, depending on the number of players. As the first Giver you roll one die in the cup, cover it with the coaster (cat-side on the cup), turn over the cup and can take a peek. Then you hand on the cup very carefully to avoid dice movement and announce zero or more rats. You may lie and the Receiver can believe the number you announced or doubt it. If you believe you either hand on the cup without re-rolling or you add one die and re-roll, thus being the new Giver. When a rat number has been named, the Receiver gives one brain to the Giver. If you do not believe, dice are revealed and whoever was correct gets a brain; if you were wrong, you lose one or two brains. If you announce rats for the first time in a round, you lose a brain. When 10 rats are announced the next player turns over the coaster to the skull side. If you lose a brain when dice fall onto the skull side of the coaster for the first time, you lose all your brains, "kill", that is, oust one player of your choice from the game. This ends the game and the winner is the player with most brains.

Bluff in a Lovecraft setting with some special rules; all in all a cute game of dice which is even more fun when you try to implement Lovecraftian feeling in speech and mien.

Players: 3-6

Age: 12+

Time: 30+

Designer: Henning Poehl

Artist: Markus Bülow

Price: ca. 13 Euro

Publisher: Sphinx Spieleverlag 2013

Web: www.sphinx-spieleverlag.de

Genre: Dice, bluff

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

New game for the "Black Series"

Nice components

Good adaptation of standard mechanisms to a literary topic

Non optimum rules, but good overview cards

Compares to:

Liar's Dice / Bluff and other dice games featuring rolling, announcing and believing/doubting

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0