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Discworld: Ankh-Morpork board game 

A few weeks ago, I entered a competition on the Exclusive Books website where you had to place stickers on different Terry Pratchett books and tweet them. I’m a massive Terry Pratchett fan and I own quite a library of Pratchett novels as well as other Discworld companion books (The Compleat Ankh-Morpork City Guide, The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld, The Art of Discworld etc.).

So I was quite chuffed when I won this competition and could add this board game to my growing collection. It costs a pretty penny at R637 and it’s not an amount of cash I would dole out on a game that I was not familiar with but let me tell you, it’s worth it!

We spent the entire Sunday playing it with friends, no really - all afternoon, I think they only left at 10pm that night and then came over the next evening after work to play again. It’s very addictive and fun.

It’s quite different from the “race to the end” board games that I’m used to and slightly complicated to understand at first. In this one, Lord Vetinari has left the city and there is a power struggle going down.

It’s a turn based game, where you play character cards which allow you to perform a number of actions (place a minion, buy an area, assassinate someone else’s minion, get money from the bank and then there are the text bits which give you various instructions). You pick a random character card and your objective is different depending on which character you get.

Everyone starts off with:

• 12 minions
• 6 houses (which serve as area holders - each area has certain bonuses which you can play in your turn)
• AM$10
• 5 cards from the character card deck.

After you play your hand you pick up more cards so that you always have 5 cards in hand.

My one complaint is that the coins are made of cardboard, for R637 I would have expected them to at least be made of plastic. The other pieces are all made of wood though so they get style points for that.

It’s so much fun because while you’re trying to fulfil your objective, you have to thwart everyone else’s efforts without actually knowing which character they’re playing.

So lots of entertainment and intrigue in Ankh Morpork - just as Mr Pratchett intended.

I also have this game, and it’s excellent! Have to agree about the coins being cardboard as not so good though :)