Deal or Duel Game

I bought Deal or Duel on a whim. It seemed like a good price for a game with lots of moving parts and I liked the idea of setting up a pistol fight between King George III and Napoleon Bonaparte. We’ve had two goes at playing it now, and I must say it is growing on me a bit.

It is fiendishly complicated. And the rules don’t help much. There’s lots of details on some aspects, but others are left delightfully vague. There’s a knack to writing good game instructions and the people behind this game don’t have it. We had quite a few situations where it just wasn’t clear what should happen and we fixed the problem by making something up.

Having said that, it was quite fun to play, and you do get rather attached to the characters in your “roster”. The gameplay is peppered with American Independence facts that are interesting in a pub quiz kind of way and I’d like to have another go at it to try out a strategy that will involve picking fights with everyone.

If you’re prepared to put the time in, you can have fun with this game.