The latest game from Klaus Jurgen Wrede is one that I expect will appeal to both families and gamers. The theme is a good one, the gameplay ties in with the theme pretty well and there are enough decisions to keep gamers happy. That said, it is still reasonably light and fits in well within an hour.

The game is played in two phases. In the first, players play a card from their hand and place a follower into the respective building within the city of Pompeii. Part way through this phase, Vesuvius begins to simmer at which stage, players are able to place additional followers into the city if the first is put in a building that is already occupied. Eventually, Vesuvius erupts causing the second phase to begin. Now players try to get their followers out of the city and to safety. On a turn, the player first adds a lava tile to the board and any followers on that space or who become trapped are lost and thrown into the volcano. Then, the player is able to move two followers a number of spaces equal to the number of occupants in the space where they start their move. Once no more pieces can escape the city, the game ends and whoever has released the most followers from the city wins (and in the case of a tie, the tied player with the fewest followers inside the volcano wins).

This game works really well. The result of our game was very tight with John winning by just one point. Getting the right cards to bring more followers into the city in the first phase is important but can backfire if too many of them become trapped. In the second phase, getting men out of the city quickly is good but it can work better to position pieces out of harm’s way to give you more opportunity to escape later. We all thought it was very good and seemed to play very quickly.