Shakespeare is putting on a play in the Elizabethan Age.

It’s showtime!

The theatres of London are abuzz. In one week, her majesty the Queen will attend their new shows and will grant her support to one of the troupes. It’s the chance of a lifetime for the young authors who are inflaming the populace with ever more audacious and motley plays. But how do you create a masterpiece in such a short time? Whoever has the answer to this thorny question will probably enter the rolls of history!

What do you need to put on this show? Well, you need Actors, Production Staff, Costumes, a Decorated Stage and of course, a Script.

You start a round of the game determining turn order which is very cool… You have 5 action disks and everyone picks a secret amount and reveals them simultaneously. The fewer you bid, the fewer actions you will have in the round but the higher up the turn order you are.

Ties are broken by a separate track which I will come back to in a bit.

Actions

So you have action disks and your position in the round, what do you do?

Well, you need to build up those things I mentioned earlier. To do that you can place workers on your ‘Staff’ to activate them…

Your staff do different things. Shakespeare and others with a quill will move you up on the ‘Act Track’, more on this later. Your costume designer and others with a little circle thing will let you get costumes. Your set designer and others with a square let you build your set. Falstaff and others with a Mask increase your morale… or whatever it is.

I won’t go into detail about the sets and clothing but you collect tokens and add them to your people/player board accordingly. You get points n stuff. It’s important but kinda boring to be honest which is why I’m leaving it out 🙂 Collecting certain set pieces can give you effects and not taking some can lead to a loss of morale all around which was quite a nice touch though.

Recruiting

The first player to activate one of their own people goes top of that track I mentioned earlier which breaks the tie breaker for player order. So why not do that straight away and go top? Well, maybe you want to get your hands on a juicy new recruit…

6 were laid out and each player has a recruit card (the ones with a question mark) on top of your action disks. You can spend this card to trade that card for a person to add to your tableau. Remember though, these people will need to pay at certain points of the game so don’t go mad recruiting all the time.

Scripts

How’s that Script coming along?

These are the 3 act tracks… You move up by activating writers and other means. You get rewards the further up you are and punished if you’re too far back.

At the end of the round, you put a token on each person on your tableau that you activated except for one. They are not ‘resting’. This was a great idea.

This goes on for 6 rounds with scoring at round 4, or “Dress Rehearsal” as it’s known and again in the last round.

Shakespeare Summary

That’s pretty much it…

It’s a decent game. Nothing special really… You get stuff to do stuff and move up tracks… It’s themed well but could be anything, however, I do like who Shakespeare putting on a play theme.

Overall, not too bad but nothing unique.

Jesta ThaRogue