Politrics - Chaos Games 1996. (New) A track game where you try to progress from backbench MP to Minister to Party Leader/PM to win. Produced in 1996 it features cartoons of Major and Blair. You roll dice to move around the outer track, buying shares in companies like Virile, Fat Cat Gas etc., or buying directorships. Passing one corner gives you directors fees, passing another corner pays out dividends on the shares multiplied by the dice roll. Landing on Sleaze or Favour squares brings good or bad events. You must collect Popularity cards to win the election. After accumulating enough cash, you jump to the short centre track and hang on till there's a leadership election. Player in the ring with the most Pop cards wins the game. Politrics is a lame take on Monopoly, with too few cards, no player interaction, lame mechanics, all or nothing events. The inventors have obviously never experienced anything other than Monopoly and have produced a crap game. Verdict - Avoid this like the plague.

Poleconomy (The Power Game) - Woodrush Games 1985. A track game combining finance and politics, where you progress around the 2 circuits as a tycoon or politician. One player by dice roll becomes the Prime Minister until and Election occurs and can control parts of the mechanism. The game ending is vague (the money runs out) and the winner has the greatest assets. Verdict - We haven't played it so I cannot comment further.

The following 6 games are all by Games Workshop, in neat 'bookcase' packaging, well designed and packaged. They are well worth looking out for, as being much more like Continental European games than British;

Super Power - Games Workshop 1986. Invented by E Bruce Hollands & Daniel R McGregor. In this game you take the role of a world superpower, trying to control volatile regions of the world, Middle East, Asia, Africa & Latin America. You move around the outer track, taking control of countries in these regions by using Military & Economic Influence! The winner has accumulated the most victory points when the last country is captured, for the countries themselves & for World Opinion. Verdict - I haven't played this for a long while, but as I recall, it was a complicated game and not very satisfying. However it sells for £25 now, so somebody likes it.

Railway Rivals - Games Workshop 1985. Invented by David Watts, won Spiel de Jahr 1984 and now in production as Dampfross. This is a classic game of steam railways. The board is laminated, with a hex map on both sides, Central England on one side, Western USA on the other. You start off drawing your tracks between the towns, then you race your trains between the towns. You use felt-tipped pens, so you can wipe the board clean after each game (the same pens you use for overhead projectors). It is very tactical to start with, it costs more to go over mountains, cross rivers, but the first track to reach a town wins the cash bonus. When racing, you roll a d6, and the first train into the destination gets 20,000, the 2nd gets 10,000. After 2 races, you build more tracks etc. It is a very simple, clever game. For example, if you are last to go, you can still win the race; if I am 2 hex from the town and I roll a 3 I get in with 1 to spare. If you are 3 hex from the town and roll a 6, you get in with 3 to spare, and so are faster than me and win! You can join onto opponent's tracks at a cost too. Excellent stuff! Dampfross has 4 maps, and the inventor has produced maps for all sorts of regions. Verdict - A great game, original, tricky, but lots of fun.

Dungeonquest - Games Workshop 1987. This is a version of Brio's game Drakborgen by Dan Glimne & Jakob Bonds. You must escape the dungeon before night falls, battling monsters, collecting treasure, potions, rings etc. The board is built up as you go along, laying tiles for rooms, passages, traps etc. Dan Glimme has produced more interesting games from Sweden, Svea Rike. Verdict - I haven't played it yet, but it looks good stuff, a nice dungeon hack.

Rogue Trooper - Games Workshop 1987. Designed by Richard Halliwell. GW produced various games based on characters from 2000AD, a weekly UK comic which created the popular chap Judge Dredd. Rogue Trooper was some sort of future soldier battling to find a traitor. In this game each player is a Rogue Trooper trudging through the wastelands blah blah blah. I got this 2nd hand and it's short of a few vital cards & tokens, so we couldn't play it properly. But in any case, I didn't like it much. Verdict - If you like 2000AD, you'll like this. I didn't.

Calamity - Games Workshop 1983. This is Andrew Lloyd Webber's Calamity, designed by him & copyright to his Really Useful Company. It is the board game of the exciting world of high risk insurance. The cartoon on the cover shows an executive putting a gun to his head. Working in insurance does that to you. You troll round the board taking on risks, paying out on disasters, buying and selling policies. However, players don't have their own dobber, there is one used by everybody. The game is a track, but you go round once only. Verdict - Good grief, insurance!? We shall see...

Blood Bowl - Games Workshop. Excellent tabletop version of American football gone mental. Orcs battle elves by constantly knocking each other over, running and passing the ball. Great fun! Big polystyrene playing board and loads of plastic figures for players, and plastics rulers to gauge distances. Verdict Yeah get this one!

The following are Gibsons Games, an old established games producer in England, H.P. Gibson & Sons;

Sharpe's Attack - Gibsons Games 1996. (New) Sharpe is a very popular TV show from a series of novels by Bernard Cornwall, the character being a soldier in the Peninsular Wars, played on TV by actor Sean Bean. This 2 player game is simply a version of L'Attaque, an old war game which has also inspired Jumbo's Stratego. You have a range of different types of soldiers and move them across the board to engage the enemy, in an attempt to capture their flag. If your soldiers are of higher rank, they can capture your opponent's. The trick is, your men face you, so your opponent sees only the blank backs and doesn't know which piece is which. Of course, the same applies to you, you can't know which soldier you're attacking until too late! The game is almost exactly the same as Stratego, except for the pieces themselves. In Stratego, all the pieces are like little towers, with badges on one side. In Sharpe's Attack, the pieces are cards with small paintings on one side, which sit in grey plastic frames. Regrettably, the cards don't fix in the frames, so everything has to be taken apart after the game. And the big box is flimsy too, so the game falls down on quality and design. I like my games to last, and this doesn't seem destined to survive long. Verdict - Good, but Stratego is a better production.

Diplomacy - Gibsons Games 1989. (New) An edition of the classic strategy game by Avalon Hill from the 1960s, in which European nations compete to build their empires. No luck involved, it's all pure strategy. There are pages on the web about Diplomacy, so all I shall say about this is that it is an adequate product, flimsy box, garish board, detailed rules. Verdict - Serious gamers must have.

Wembley - Gibsons Games 1995. (New) Compete for The Cup by buying up star players and playing matches using various d6. The mechanism revolves around the colour of the dice but I haven't played it and can't explain it. It seems to be quite short to play, but would appeal to soccer fans. Again a flimsy box, with very small cards, but with nice plastic trophies etc. Verdict - We shall see.

221B Baker Street -Gibsons Games . (New) Players become detectives as they move around town collecting clues to solve murders. There are 40 to solve with the game and additional books can be bought. Not too difficult, but the clues are deliberately misleading. Quite good fro a while. Verdict - Good family game, but not too taxing.

Sherlock Holmes Card Game - Gibsons Games. (New) 3 or more players needed for this, one is the villain, the others must discover which it is. A deck of cards illustrated with the original drawings guide or delay you to the criminal, e.g. fog, trains, cabs, clues etc. Verdict The rules are a bit confusing but it's a good, simple game. Plays better with more than 3. Perhaps the mechanism could be ripped off...

And now, onward to even more games reviewed; Bought 04