My son and I playtested the game back in January. It was a lot of fun, but at the time we played it the game ran a bit long. This was before Eagle had picked up the game. In my notes is a "buy if ever published' comment. Seeing that Eagle will be doing it means I'm getting it for sure, because the cool components will add to the fun. What I didn't care for was how liquor production, randomly determined, influenced your position so strongly later on, because ownership of the best Speakeasy goes to the player who can spend the most, and of course, more liquor production means more income. This meant we had sort of a ruanway leader--hence the feeling that things ran long. As we got further into things, we began seeing things we could have done to offset producction rolls that weren't "good," including buying bigger trucks and trying to monopolize distribution instead of Speakeasies. I've been told by one of the designers since then that they tried to address some of the issues our group identified. It was fun to play, has plenty of tension, and a great theme. There are always interesting choices available, and very little down time. In prototype form I rated it a 6.5, which for me means I'd play it again with the rules the way they worked in the playtest. If the changes the designers implemented improve the balance, so much the better. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 9 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com