If you own any board games at all, there are probably a few standards in your closet: Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, and Clue. And, if you dared to break them out on a rainy day, one of them might even have ended without the table being flipped. That one was probably Clue.
But underlying any animosity at the game table, there has to be some fun, right? Of course there is. Still, any of those classic board games can get stale. That’s why it’s nice to see new, fresh takes on the classics.
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Often that’s a matter of mashing up a known, popular property and squeezing it into the board game as a theme.
There have to be hundreds of different versions of Monopoly by now, from Simpsons Monopoly and Star Wars Monopoly to — and I can’t believe I’m not making this up — Bass Fishing Monopoly, there’s a Monopoly for everyone.
But at their core, they’re all just Monopoly.
However, ‘Game of Thrones’ Clue is not just Clue with Grand Maester Pycelle instead of Professor Plum — it’s much, much more.
Funny enough, the idea of a GoT Clue started as an April Fool’s prank by the web store for all nerdery needs, ThinkGeek.
It just so happened that it was a really good idea, so USAopoly went ahead and made it reality.
In GoT Clue, you do have to solve a murder with the classic weapon + location + suspect formula, and you do traverse the board in search of clues.
But there are some significant and highly appropriate twists to the gameplay.
The difference starts when you take out the game board, which is two-sided. Yeah, you have the option of scouring two different maps for clues: one based on The Red Keep, and the other on Meereen.
Meereen is closer to the classic game board, while The Red Keep has a bunch of secret passageways between rooms, allowing you to jump around the game board.
The murder everyone’s trying to solve can be carried out with one of an array of GoT weapons.
There’s a crossbow, vial of poison, dagger, arakh, axe, and a Faceless Man’s coin. They don’t look like they’re Valyrian steel, but that’s okay.
Each player gets to take a character card, which grants the player a unique ability to use during the game.
So, if you’re Cersei, for example, once per game you can choose to move twice during your turn.
There are 12 characters in all, six for each side: Cersei, Jaime, Tyrion, Sansa, Petyr Baelish, and Magaery Tyrell, for The Red Keep, and Daenerys, Hizdahr zo Loraq, Missandei, Daario Naharis, Jorah Mormont, and Gery Worm for Meereen.
The other big twist involves the Varys-themed intrigue cards.
There are a few ways to get intrigue cards, and they offer more interesting game effects, such as providing extra turns or advantages on dice rolls, or maybe forcing someone to show a card — you know, the little backstabby things that can ruin an opponent’s game.
The intrigue cards also have a surprise: a White Walker card that spells the end of the game for whoever draws it.
Given how, with the show, we’re usually just wondering who will die next, not who did the killing, ‘GoT’ Clue is an interesting concept.
It’s good to know that it’s not just the same ol’, same ol’ for either franchise.
And isn’t there a part of you that wants to shout out, “It was Cersei, with the poison, in the bedchamber?”
h/t GeekDad
