World Without End

'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport'

King Lear must have played World Without End. I do like this game, i like it a lot but i am begining to wonder if it's a Euro man's snakes and ladders.

Planning in this game can be rewarded with what seems like cruel fate. Pay your dues at the end of chapter? Check, everyone else fails and then an event causes everyone to lose their action next turn. Build up medical knowledge seeing that everyone else ignores it? Check. Event gives everyone free medical knowledge. Ok what else can go wrong? Oh an event wipes out the plague a the begining of the fourth chapter...At least the event that wiped out a house got rid of that redundant medical knowledge generator

I think the lesson is to keep the plans flexible, be happy grabbing incremental point scoring opportunities and enjoy the ride. Everyone in my game got hit to a lesser or greater extent, and whilst it might feel like a lottery at times in all the games i have played the winner was the best player (not me!)

This game is not for the control freak, or the self pitying (Lear, were he a gamer, should definately avoid this one). It is a very tense two hours of crisis management played on a lovely board with quite a bit to think about.