Tom Liberman

Only Andrew had played Fury of Dracula before and not often so we were all pretty new to the game. Mike volunteered to play Dracula and I got Lord Godalming, Rock took Mina Harker, Jim took Dr. John Seward, and Andrew took Abraham von Helsing.

Mike started in Munich (we didn’t know this at the time of course) and headed east and away from the main group but toward Godalming. I eventually ran across his trail and drove him into Mina. Dracula knocked her out but took some serious damage in the process. We were able to get back on Dracula’s trail relatively quickly and had a very good chance to win the game when we had him trapped in the Balkans.

Dracula managed to defeat Dr. Seward but took more damage leaving him precariously close to death but he did fly away as a bat.

We attempted to close the circle and I thought he might be heading back to Castle Dracula to heal and this proved to be a poor guess as instead he headed in Europe and eventually Spain. It took us a long time to once again get on his trail and by then the group was pretty badly dispersed although I used a movement card to leap right to where we thought he was but, again, I didn’t get lucky.

It was getting late so we called the game although I would guess there was about an 80% Dracula was going to be able to escape. We would have had to get lucky finding him and then fortunate in a battle. Meanwhile the clock was ticking quickly on our chances. Our chances were improved by the many hits Dracula had taken which basically precluded him taking to sea. Still, he had a lot of movement options left in Spain as he had not been there yet and trapping him would have proven difficult.

I enjoyed the game a lot. It must be noted that Mike comes from a naval background and studied submarine warfare. Playing Dracula in this game has parallels to that strategy and Mike played it quite well.

It’s an interesting game to be certain and we didn’t use Mina’s link with Dracula very well. I suspect that coordinated play by the chasers will usually win, although there are advanced rules that appear to give Dracula more options.

Fun game!