[Matthew Gabbert]

I was actually a little disappointed by this one. The host of my monthly boardgame group picked it up and I was eager to try it. I've got most of the other Days of Wonder games and my family really enjoys them, so my group gives me the opportunity to try before I buy.

We've played cooperative games before (Lord of the Rings), so this one looked fun and the components are gorgeous. We played with six players. At first, the game was pretty cool -- we worked together to thwart the Pict horde and to recover the Grail.

But then midway through, it just got kind of stale. As soon as we got seven white swords on the table, the traitor was successfully unmasked. From that point on, it was simply a matter of keeping the catapults at bay while we waited for the remaining quests to fail and fill in the five remaining sword slots with black swords. The revealed traitor had little to do but mechanically place a catapult and steal a white card from someone. It was a little tense if someone missed their roll to destroy a catapult, but overall, it was pretty anticlimactic and it bugged my roleplayer aspect. Strange as it may seem, we won when the Saxons came sweeping in from the sea.

It may be that this was just an isolated case. If the traitor had remained concealed longer (we were all first time players), obviously things would have been different. Unfortunately, we probably won't play it again for a while since there are too many good games out there for us to repeat any right away.

-- Matthew Gabbert