This week, we tried out Ideology, a game that Nige had acquired at the UK Games Expo at the beginning of the month. This is a game about scoring VPs through spreading your ideology across the globe. Each ideology (Imperialism, Fascism, Communism etc) has a different advantage and disadvantage that means everyone approaches their expansion tendencies in somewhat different ways. Mark G ought to have been in a good position as there is a lot of potential for bashing your opponents. However, military attacks are only one way of infiltrating others' ideologies: cultural and economic influence can have equally devastating effects. The game ends once someone reaches 12 VPs.

Early in the game, it seems expanding your influence at home is key as this gets you more cards and more flexibility on subsequent turns. Mark K and I were both unable to do this at the start, which put us a bit behind early on. I made a land grab for a couple of countries which I only held on to for a turn or two as Guy and Nige's greater card numbers gave them both the ability to grab these countries from me. It came down to a final turn with all of Mark K, Guy and Nige having a shot at winning. However, Mark K could only do it by developing as much as he could, leaving him with no cards to defend in the conflict phase. Nige had the most cards to use and Guy made him waste as many of these as he could in stopping Mark K's chances. However, Nige was still able to hold onto the critical country as we weren't able to match his military defence and he ended up grabbing a good win.

Ideology was quite good but, for some, went on a little too long. There are some good ideas in the game and I'd definitely play again. And the end was reasonably tense as it wasn't clear who was going to win.