18th February 2026
Vikings, Dwarf Miners, Dragons and the Prohibition were the topics of this sessions games.
There had been a few people eagerly awaiting the chance to play at being a bootlegger in 1920’s Manhattan, so with it having recently arrived Speakeasy made its debut appearance. This is the latest game from Vital Lacerda who has a few followers amongst our group, and is a fairly heavy Euro based around worker placement, area control and pick-up-and-deliver mechanisms. Each player takes on the role of a mobster trying to control an area of Manhattan during Prohibition, under the eye of Lucky Luciano.
Build up your own speakeasy empire by building stills, speakeasies, casinos and nightclubs, improve the strength of your gang (or possibly don’t) and as your infamy rises fight off the attentions of the police and encroaching mafia families. Make alliances with prominent mobsters, buy illicit booze from the river-going rum runners, or even attempt to rob them, protect your properties and make sure you deliver the booze to the right place for the right price (or just drive it around the outskirts of Central Park).
The main board shows a map of Manhattan, divided into various districts in Uptown, Midtown and Downtown, along with the Docks. These are where you build your establishments and move your booze around. There are also locations for your workers (the Capos of your mob) to be placed, such as the Garage, the Restaurant, and City Hall, with most locations offering a couple of spots with connected actions. There’s also a Docks and Rum Runners board, showing the 4 boats, their contents and values, a Mobsters board showing the active …well…mobsters, and the lovely player boards with chair spaces for the capos, slots for cards, spaces for new family members and the various buildings you can build. All lavishly illustrated by Ian O’Toole.
Over 4 acts you will be placing buildings, trying to avoid the police and mob wars which are marked for the following act. There are various mob controlled speakeasies already in play, you could try to take these over, or associate with the mobster running them in order to use their strength if other mobsters or the coppers come a-calling – for a price obviously. Building a Still lets you produce barrels of booze, which you can then pick up in your shiny truck and deliver to your establishments for a value depending on your infamy and which joint you’re delivering to. At the end of the game the winner is the one who has accumulated the most moolah, cash is king baby!
Being a first play and a heavy game, homework had been set to watch videos beforehand, and Steph arrived early to make sure the chunky tabletop presence was ready and waiting for Darren, Jyo and Reynaldo to dive in, but very patiently gave a recap of the rules. Early moves saw several family members gathering in the docks, obviously planning some shady business with the rum runners, and some careful placement of the first speakeasies and stills in areas that weren’t about to be overrun with the mob – fighting off the mob requires your gang to have a high strength, whilst getting a family member to protect a building means the police won’t shut it down. A lot of building was happening in downtown, along with some taking over of mob run establishments, whilst Darren was quietly building a presence in the lucrative uptown zone. A few trucks started to appear, and start some delivery runs, with Jyo having a nice tight circuit that was bringing in some dollar, and Reynaldo taking a more circuitous route. A few noises were made about where everyone’s Capos were visiting – most spaces are limited to one worker, and although you can bump someone off the space, they will get a decent bonus if you do so, so best left to only the most urgent of reasons.
Steph made some early deals with the Rum runners, and there was a bit of shady shuffling around on the docks as it looked like Jyo and Reynaldo were both planning on robbing them. At the start of the Act there were some minor scuffles with encroaching mobs, but no disasters, and most buildings had been protected by then to stop the boys in blue shutting down operations – most, but not all. Darren’s early Nightclub got briefly closed until a new family member was recruited and went to hang around the doorway looking all menacing and keeping things moving again. New markers had been placed for the next waves of mobsters and police, and some strategies were changed slightly to accommodate any upcoming nastiness. Some. Not all. By now everyone had trucks on the board, but Steph and Jyo were the only ones being efficient with them, Reynaldo taking scenic routes to do his deliveries and Darren forgetting to actually drop stuff off even when the nearest Speakeasy was just across the road from his Still.
With Act 2 coming into play the mob wars were kicking off all over town, with some hard-fought battles being won with the help of Associates, and one or two close fought losses. And then there was Darren. Lording it up in luxury in Up Town Manhattan, when the mob came knocking on his door with tommy guns ready it transpired that the one thing he hadn’t done was gain any strength at all in the preceding acts. Playing various cards lets you increase your family’s strength, how many members you have in the family and how far you can move your truck (and whether you have 1 or 2 trucks). That strength marker hadn’t been moved. Too busy partying. As this was Act 3 the attacking mobs were by now stronger than the early waves, and even with paying some of that cash to his associate and using his helper cards he was 1 strength short and watched his still get burned to the ground, along with the over-the-road Speakeasy. This meant the barrels sitting back at the operations room couldn’t make it onto the board, so the truck had to go chasing a rum runner in order to buy some booze for delivery to the remaining Speakeasy and Nightclub. Which were on the other side of Central Park. Which couldn’t be crossed. Which meant it was going to be a long journey once the rum was in the truck. Several turns worth of journey. And Steph’s Capo in the park wasn’t going to help move it either.
Soon enough Act 3 was here, and with it the inevitable mobs and police, looking for their slice of the action. A few more battles were fought, a casino closed, a speakeasy lost. Also bringing the realisation that Darren had failed to make a significant increase in strength, which the mobsters had. That final nightclub and Speakeasy also disappeared from the board, with the barrel carrying truck not yet having arrived anywhere near them. Elsewhere attacks on the rum runners had mixed success, and the other 3 players were making last minute adjustments to gain those precious, precious dollars. Payouts were made at the end of the round with everyone gaining their share of the wealth for their remaining buildings. So not everyone then.
The final Act was counting cash, with reasonable amounts in people’s safes and hands (money in safes can only be spent in game by laundering it at a 2:1 ratio), and gaining money from the operating buildings (several joyous cries of I Have Nothing from a certain Darren at this point), along with cashing in cards. When the dust settled Steph had won with a respectable 384, Jyo coming in second with 286, Reynaldo 155, and Darren had also apparently played (106).
An excellent game with some interesting interactions to figure out and looks lovely, with an imposing table presence. It will be back.
The first of two different tables had a go at a new short game called Knarr. Its all about vikings in boats exploring new lands and trading. This is a nifty little game packed with lots of strategy and possibility for engine building. On your turn you can either add a viking to your crew, which will activate all other crew members of the same colour - giving you resources - prestige, victory coins and bracelets for trading. Alternatively you can explore a new land, by using your crew (exchanging them) for one of the lands available, which will give you some instant bonuses and an option of trading there. Trading can be done as an extra action during your turn where you hand in up to 3 bracelets to claim the resources from the lands you have explored.
The goal of the game is to attain 40 victory points, which seems like a far away end point, but as you build prestige and your crew and your lands, activating these on a turn can bring in more and more points, so the game end can come very quickly.
Em brought this new game to share with the Club, and it was well received by both tables having a go, as it has more depth than it first looks.
Saboteur was the other shorter game chosen, but as it plays over three rounds it took a while to conclude. This game had been played a few times when the club had to go online, but was only its second physical play, previously seen in session 99. Saboteur is a hidden traitor game, the real dwarf miners are trying to play down tunnel cards and find the gold, while the saboteur is trying to delay them until they run out of tunnel cards. Then that table also chose Knarr and had a couple of games of that before they called it a night.
Wyrmspan was the other long game selected with five fearless dragon tamers exploring the caverns and enticing varied dragons to join them. This was Wrymspan’s third club outing, first seen in Session 93. The game is a slight variant on Wingspan, the food mechanism is a bit cleaner and it introduces Guilds but otherwise it is about tempting dragons with different abilities to your three different biomes/caverns and scoring the most points. There are many ways to score points leading to different strategies, from the actual dragons enticed with larger more expensive dragons tending to score more, from eggs, tucked cards or stashed resources (dragons like hoarding), end of round goals, end of game goals and end of game dragon abilities.
Everyone did try to focus on the end of round goals, first dragons with explore abilities, then eggs collected, next hatchlings and finally aggressive dragons, so those points were hotly contested and not too different between the five players. Simon focused on his Crimson cavern and got that filled with 4 dragons early and did a lot of exploring in it, creating quite a lot of resources. Neil and Em were doing well excavating all their caverns and almost filling them with dragons. Kathy had put down an expensive dragon as her first which slightly hampered her first round by reducing her actions by one. But it started to pay off later as every time she explored that cavern she got an extra guild action and by the end game she had almost lapped the others on that track and was acquiring most of the resources she needed, some extra turns and some end game points from the guild. She also managed a nice combo with another expensive dragon that generated 2 extra turns that she managed to reactivate with a cave ability and extra turns in the last rounds really do help get extra dragons and goals achieved.
So Kathy won by 9 points just scraping over 100 total points with 103, then it was very close for 2nd with Simon managing with 94 and Neil on 91 and the others a little behind that. Always an enjoyable strategic game but without too much overt competition to keep it all friendly.
Next session is on Wednesday March 4th 7.30pm at the St Ives Corn Exchange. What varied topics and game styles will be on offer? Join in on Discord if you want to influence the decision beforehand and reserve a seat.