Just three of us this week and John kindly agreed to host this session. I had suggested to John that we have a go at Liberte as I had never played it and I knew that John had a copy. He hadn't played it yet either so I read up on the rules beforehand so that, between us, we could work out how to play without reading through the rulebook on the night.

The game is about the French Revolution and players aim to gain VPs by having influence in the government and the opposition after each of the elections at the end of each game turn. There are three factions (Royalists, Moderates and Radicals) vying for power and players play cards to place faction blocks on the board. At the end of each game turn, the various provinces on the board are evaluated to see which faction wins the election in that province. Often, however, the factions are tied and then players try to break the tie by using cards they have set aside for this purpose. Once all the provinces have been resolved the faction winning the most provinces forms the government and the faction in second place forms the opposition. The players who have the most influence on these two factions are awarded VPs. Later in the game, VPs can also be won by leading the revolutionary army in battles. After four elections, the person with the most VPs will normalyy be the winner. However, there are two other ways the game can end where VPs are not relevant, through either a Royalist counter-revolution or a Radical landslide at one of the elections, which means that those lagging behind in VPs can still win.

In our game, the first two turns were very tight, but in turns three and four Nige pressed his advantage in the provinces where extra VPs were available. Although I had tried to get a presence in these early in the game, both John and I had forgotten about the benefits these provinces gave in the second half of the game, allowing Nige to grab control. Nige also managed to acquire good cards for election ties and the good cards seemed to elude me and this helped him cement his position in the important provinces. Having said that, Nige played a good game and certainly deserved the win. We all thought Liberte was an excellent game with lots to keep an eye on with very little downtime.