YORKTON – Tis’ the spooky season, so lets go wandering around an old graveyard shall we?
Imagine you are in a place of the dead, the moon is full, and the spirits are restless. It’s high time to get back home to a warm bed.
But first you make a bet with your friends about who will be first to cross the graveyard and get away. You feel you can win, all you have to do is avoid the ever expanding horde of spirits.
Welcome to The Lychgates, a perfect game for the Halloween season.
Now this one from prolific game designer David McCord sounds like one where you are moving around a board trying to void lurching ‘zombies’ but this is a bit calmer than that. Here the spirits are more into impeding your path, forcing you to make added moves, they are not out to destroy players.
So like all McCord games through newventuregames.com this one has a very nice wooden board – 121 spaces on this one, and the pieces are wooden pegs.
There are four starting points and four goals (the Lychgates). There are also five points on the board which will spawn ‘Spirits’ as the game progresses – up to 25.
Movement here is through playing cards – players have three per turn. You can move your piece, or a spirit.
Each player also has six special move-enhancing cards that they can play when they wish, and once all six have been used they are refreshed to be used again. When you use the special cards is a critical element of this game.
The game is for two-to-four players, and while it works with two, it is better with higher numbers. It’s one of those games where players don’t gain an advantage teaming up to thwart a weaker player. At times it will seem like it for a turn or two, but you have to get safely across the board too, so impeding an opponent is often more stop gap in late game situations as you hope for better cards next turn.
The Lychgates plays quickly too, and is quick to learn, and highly transportable, all of which are huge positives.
McCord has designed many solid games – none better than The Lychgates.
