played for you

Lords of Scotland

Clans fight for support and dominance

Cards in the game represent one individual clan each and also the affiliation to a bloodline. Each bloodline commands a special ability, some of them are nasty and very powerful. When you play a clan and it is the clan of currently lowest value in the skirmish, you can activate the special ability of the clan you just played. You are dealt five cards, the rest is stacked. From the stack five cards are laid out for a recruiting pile, and a number of cards equal to the number of players is displayed openly for available support.

Aim of the game is to collect 40 strength points from supporters. Those supporters are acquired in skirmishes, each of those skirmishes comprises five rounds. In each of those rounds you can play a card from your hand or draw a card from the recruiting pile. Cards that you played can be laid out for your army face-up or face-down, cards that you draw from the recruiting pile are replaced from the stack. After five such rounds you reveal face-down cards in your army and add up the strength of all cards. If there is more than one clan in the army and all clans belong to the same bloodline, you double the total strength of your army. Then the highest total wins the skirmish, the winner chooses a supporter first. Then all other players in descending order of strength total choose a supporter. Now all cards on the table are discarded and new recruiting and supporter cards are laid out for a new skirmish.

Sounds fairly straightforward, but is a very sophisticated and rather nasty tactical game on the clever use of clan abilities and score doubling as well as on building up and using your hand.

Players: 2-5

Age: 12+

Time: 30+

Designer: Richard James

Artist: Chris Quilliams, Philippe Guérin, Karine Tremblay

Price: ca. 20 Euro

Publisher: Z-Man Games 2015

Web: www.asmodee.de

Genre: Card comparison, conflict

Users: With friends

Version: en

Rules: en fr jp

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Rather abstract despite the topic

Very, very tactical

Facultative use of two Bruce Clan cards, they are jokers for any other clan

Compares to:

Conflict card games with strength comparison

Other editions:

Arclight, Filosofia

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0