Date: 24th February 2006
Game played: Poison, Reiner Knizia's ( Playroom Entertainment ) BGG Id: 17025

We finished off with this recent Reiner Knizia card game. The players are witches adding potions to three cauldrons to make an evil brew. However, if the pot overflows, the player causing this to happen takes penalty points and the pot has to to be started again.

Each cauldron will only take cards of one colour (or a neutral “poison” card). The cards are numbered between 1 and 7 and once the total in a cauldron exceeds 13, the player adding a card takes all the cards already in that cauldron as penalties and restarts the pot with his card played. Once all the cards have been played, the round ends and whoever has the most cards in each colour is allowed to discard all the cards he has in that colour. Then the remaining cards in hand each count 1 penalty point, except poison cards which each count 2 points. After a set number of rounds, whoever has the fewest penalty points wins.

This is a great light game, which plays fast and has a bit to think about but in a fairly relaxed way. Do you try to avoid taking any cards at all (pretty difficult) or concentrate on a single colour, hoping to discard them at the end (easier but painful if you get it wrong). Also people have a nasty tendency of putting poison in the pots and these can’t be discarded. In our game, I got completely stuffed in the first round, taking a massive 14 points. Ouch! Mark G didn’t fare much better gaining just one point fewer. It soon became obvious that this was turning into a three horse race between Mark K, Nige and Phil. Although Mark K took a 6 point cushion into the final round, the others managed to leave him with 8 penalties in that round while they took none. This allowed Phil to squeeze through for the tightest of victories.

We all enjoyed Poison as a nice end-of-evening game, especially Phil and myself. Nige rated it a bit lower than the rest of us because it was just a bit too much fun. An excellent game to play with the family.

 
Player
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Phil
7
19
1
Nige
5
20
2
Mark K
6
21
3
John
6
33
4
Mark G
6
35
5
Garry
7
35
5

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