Bristol 1350

The presentation is gorgeous, and the gameplay is a hoot.

Facade Games; 4/5

The players are all inhabitants of Bristol, England in 1350 when the Black Death hits, and everybody's scrambling to get out of town in a manic cart race. The mechanics involve jostling for position within a given cart, kicking each other out of the cart, and the carts themselves rolling toward the city gate and the "safety" of the countryside. Sprinkled through all that are randomized drawings of secret "symptom" cards, which if drawn in unlucky combinations mean you've got the plague. 

The first cart out of town with no plague-infected people on it wins the game. That’s right, the first cart out of town doesn't automatically win. If it's revealed that any one of the players on the cart has the plague everybody on the cart loses. But nobody's sure who's actually got it because the symptoms aren't revealed to the whole table until the cart gets out of town--only the player who draws them knows before that. So if a given player has been unlucky enough to have to draw from the symptom deck a couple of times, paranoia sets in and the elbowing and pushing onto and out of different carts can get ... energetic. 

There are also remedy cards players can draw and play, which can allow you to tweak other mechanics, like moving between carts or managing draws from the symptom deck, though none of them actually cure anything. Between that and the uncertainty engendered by the symptom mechanics, the game presents a surprisingly good illustration of how ineffective the medical guidance of the period was and how that could engender fear based on the flimsiest evidence. It keeps the mechanics of the disease in the game just as seemingly random as the Black Death historically was. It’s a nice touch. 

Fair warning: there's a bit of an honor system mechanic involved. That might be a challenge if you've got troublemakers in your game crew who can't handle admitting they lost a game. However, the rulebook has suggestions for how to ensure doublechecks if you need to. 

Overall, a fun history-flavored game-night entry that will doubtless lead people to start googling and reading deeper. 

4 stars of 5: I liked it, and I’d happily play it again.