I’m reliably informed (if you’re someone who trusts gamers) that it wasn’t the lava or indeed the ash that killed the population of Pompeii it was the pyroclastic surges.

Well that’s all well and grand but lava is the staple of so many adventure stories and when we played on Thur it was lava and to be even more accurate ME that killing the good people of Pompeii left and right.

The downfall of Pompeii. The game is medium length under an hour will see you good. We played it three time last week. THREE TIMES. that should tell you alone how good this game is. A few of the guys at knavecon IV had played it stupid and had recommend to me. They weren’t wrong

The game is very simple. Each turn you add one of your meeples to a building based on the cards in your hand. Each building can fit a limited amount of meeples and placing one in an occupied building lets you place additional meeples elsewhere via the relative rule

So the first half of the game you’re loading your guys (as many as possible) into building, preferably ones close to an exit because all hell is going to break loose come act two. During the first phase there’s cock blockery aplenty with players jockeying for the best spots like Guerrers trying to get up on a phone box during a parade. Omen cards allow you to (with great pleasure) take an enemy meeple and chuck them into the volcano freeing up some choice real estate but in no way appeasing the angry gods.

Then suddenly it’s fire and brimstone ,nikes on and to hell with making an orderly exit.

Once the second eruption card is pulled its lava from there on out. Players add an extra all devourer lava tile onto the already bubbling mass that’s rising up from six points within the city. So every turn a player gets to steer the avalanche hopefully onto enemy meeples and iggy pops two of his dudes to the nearest exit (the so long suckers salute is taken for granted)

Once everyone has exited Hanoi or at least got as many out as they could it’s all over and it’s most survivors that carry the day

This is superb. Absolutely fantastic game. I wholeheartedly recommend it. Works great with kids too. Despite what seems like a very simple game there is depth here. Each time we played it we found a bit more

Get this game. It’s cheap. If I was to fault it the build quality could be better and I already see a bit of wear and tear after three games but I can forgive

Going to play this again real soon

Huzzah

Vic