Thursday saw the chance to do some gaming with Jonathan, and play my first game of 2019. Which happened to be one of Jonathan’s Christmas Haul, Lancaster.

As usual this was a learning game, so we were making it up as we went along. Correction, reading the rules as we played. Yeah I know gamers out there will be having sharp intakes of breathe, tutting away in disgust that we hadn’t read the rules, watched the YouTube tutorial, downloaded and printed off the rules errata/FAQ (and memorised that also) before playing. But that’s how we roll.

Lancaster is a worker placement game, and we were playing the two player variant.

So for those with short attention spans and have had enough of this post already, the headline is I liked the game.

For those interested here is what I liked about the game.

The production of the components for the game is pretty solid. The battle and scoring rules cards were not actually cards but thick cardboard, more a tile than a card.

I loved the fact you could upgrade your workers. Thus making them more powerful, and unlocking the possibility of more locations you could chose as an action using the more powerful worker. But you then had the difficult choice of did this new more powerful worker get used to select one of these newly available slots, or did you use them in combat with the French?

You were also limited in the maximum number of workers you could recruit, but also you could never exceed the maximum power level. You were limited to a single worker at the maximum level. Although in the two player variant with the friendly house you could have more than one potentially.

I liked that when selecting an action you had to have a worker with the minimum strength indicated to be able to use it. You could then use a squire token to bolster your strength in the space. Why would you want to do that? To lock out your opponent from taking that action instead. On your opponents turn if they want to use the action instead of you, they have to place a worker on that space with a strength one more than the combined strength of your worker and the number of squires on the space with them.

The reason this is a thing is that you don’t get the action straight away. You only get it at the end of the round if you are still on the space.

The battles is a nice addition. Going to battle gets you an instant bonus, plus if the French are defeated at the end of the turn you get points allocated on strength of your forces committed to the battle. This means my opponents can help win the battle, and get a share of the spoils (victory points). If the French aren’t defeated everything slides down. Some consolation points are awarded, and you have one more round to add to your forces and hopefully defeat the French. If after the second round the French remain undefeated, the workers in the battle are captured, and can be bought back or you lose them basically back to your supply.

The voting at the end of the round for which new rules get added to the end of round scoring was ok.

I also liked that when it came round to taking the action on the space you could take the noble (if you didn’t already have them) or the action. But if you paid three coins you could do both. The more nobles you collected the bigger points bonus you got at the end of the game. A nice additional decision to make.

It’s also not a long game, it was four rounds I want to say, based on my fading memory.

I know the whole theme is medieval times, castles, knights, battling the French. But the theme is paper thin really.

In the end it was the end of game bonuses that enabled me to steal the win from Jonathan by 2 points.

Lancaster really is a nice worker placement game. If you like the mechanic/genre then you will enjoy this for sure.

Afterwards as you can see The Luxe had just gotten in the promotional drink toppers for the Spider-man Spider-verse movie. They look pretty cool.

I have to thank Jonathan for a great afternoons gaming, and the chance to try this game. And as all good award ceremony speeches, a big thank you to The Luxe once more for hosting the impromptu session.