“Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
Feared by the bad, loved by the good
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood”

And that quote shows my age. But even as I write this post that song is playing in my head. I suppose I could easily have also made reference to Robin Hood: Men in Tights or that Bryan Adams song that blighted my younger years and the music charts (when they actually mattered) from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

Wednesday evening saw Jeff, Diego, Jonathan and myself meet up for a rare gaming session together. Life had been throwing barriers to the band getting together since we had to put a break on playing Charterstone together. But this session could be the start that means we can continue our journey and that campaign.

Earlier in the day I dropped a less than subtle hint that maybe we could learn Diego’s latest addition to his collection Robin Hood and the Merry Men. This was a game that Diego had backed on kickstarter and got just before Christmas.

I have to say the production values of this game are amazing. I’m not sure how much of this is in the edition you’d get from your FLGS or online. But certainly as a kickstarter edition with the metal coins, the painted character meeples, metal first player token, extra heroes (which I hope are available out side of the kickstarter) and the player boards that are a nice thickness with recesses in for the traps and barricades.

This was a traditional learning game for us. Meaning we were reading from the rule book as we went along.

We did have a time constraint on our game. Our hosts for the evening needed us finished by 9pm for reasons. Starting at 7pm meant we had 2 hours to learn and play the game.

It took us about 30 mins to set up and go through the rules. Which felt a long time, even for us. There is a lot going on in this game.

But that meant we had approximately one and a half hours to play the game.

Now this was a learning game, so play was slower than if we knew what we were doing. The rule book was being referred to regularly, points being clarified etc.

In that time we had, we only managed to complete two full rounds.

There is a hell of a lot going on in this game. It’s a semi co-operative competitive worker placement game! I think that summarises the game play. You definitely can all lose the game. However there can only be one winner. But you are all working together to stop the game winning.

I don’t think considering the circumstances it’s fair to pass judgement on the game. There was definitely enough there to warrant playing the game again. The session we had can really be looked on as a taster. The sort of thing you’d get at an expo.

It was great to spend time playing with my friends. Our hosts were great as usual.