Playing Gods

Last night was a good night at Little Shoppe of Games.  Chad had bought a new game while we were at Dragon*Con, and brought it along.  From everything I'd seen and heard at the booth at the con, Playing Gods sounded pretty awesome, and I was really excited to see it in action. As you might guess from the name, each player plays a god.  You can pick from the predefined set that covers the current major world religions or pick something a little more ancient or esoteric.  The goal is to establish yourself as the single dominant religion on the planet.  You accomplish this by converting or destroying all the followers of all the other gods in the game.  The last god standing wins. The board is divided into five continents, each with four regions where your sects can live.  A ring around the outside has spaces which act as portals to those continents, as well as places to draw the Conversion and Wrath cards.  Special spaces allow you to place a new sect on an open space, jump to any of the portals, and so forth.  When you're on a continent's portal, you can use your Conversion cards to try and convert another god's sects or your Wrath cards to destroy them.  Your opponent can use their Conversion or Wrath cards to try and fend off your attacks. When all of a god's sects have been destroyed, they are out of the game permanently.  If all their sects are converted to another religion, they're out until such time as someone else reverses one of those conversions.  There is also a single special card in the deck, with a corresponding special space on the board, called the Godslayer.  If you have the Godslayer card and land on the Godslayer space, you can immediately, and irrevocably kill any other god in the game. We had a blast with the game.  I was the Buddha, Chad was Mohammed, Lane was Moses, and Bruce picked Jesus.  I managed to make the first major incursion on someone else's territory by unleashing a plague of locusts in Africa.  That made me a major target later on in the game when I drew the Godslayer card.  It passed around the table as each of us made a point of trying to steal it from one another.  In the end, Lane managed to get ahold of it and land on the Godslayer space.  I found myself out of the game when it was less than halfway over. Lane proceeded to pretty much dominate the game after that.  He converted all of Bruce's sects, knocking him out temporarily.  Then he went after Chad with a vengeance, eventually drawing the Godslayer a second time and using it to put an end to Islam.  Because Chad had converted some of Bruce's Christians, eliminating Mohammed brought Jesus pack into the game, albeit briefly.  Lane took care of those in short order, and the Jews inherited the earth. It's a mark of a great game when you can lose badly and quickly, like I did, and still have an absolute blast doing it.  The various Conversion and Wrath cards have some great flavor text on them, and the mad scramble to be the guy with the Godslayer card on the right part of the board was downright hysterical.  We all want to play it again as soon as we can. Because he bought it at Dragon*Con, Chad also got a set of limited edition idols depicting Buddha with a minigun (because machineguns go buddha-buddha-buddha-buddha), Jesus wielding a cross, Moses about to lay the smack down with a tablet of commandments, Mohammed with a sword and a bomb, and Kali and her necklace of skulls.  They're really well made, and enhanced the game tremendously.  He also got a set of expansion cards geared toward those five major religions.  In addition to those five, there are stickers for making tokens to use of you want to play as anything from Scientology to Pastafarianism, and anything in between. I highly recommend the game to anyone open-minded enough to be able to poke fun at their own religion (along with everyone else's).  It played pretty quickly with four players, and had us all laughing all the way through.  It's currently available for pre-order, but I suggest getting your friendly local gaming shop to contact the distributors and get a few copies ordered.  You won't be sorry.