Brides & Bribes

In Brides & Bribes, I take charge of a Renaissance Genoese family and steer its eligible sons towards the daughters of local grandees, because respectable society rarely captures itself. It has the smell of an old wooden house: for a comparatively modern release, I would readily believe it had come out of an Avalon Hill box twenty years earlier.

At its centre is hidden worker placement. I secretly send members of my family into the various areas; once their placements are revealed, they carry out missions or get in the way of someone else’s plans. It asks for a little more handling than it first appears to — the rulebook is fine, but the procedure is fiddly — though the hidden placements keep the tension properly alive.

Naturally, nobody builds social standing through humanitarian work. Sabotage, resentment and murder move freely around the table, so I am not merely tending my own household: I am watching for the person about to block my path, and deciding whom I can block first. You will marry off your friends, and ruin their lives too. Elegantly, of course.

I enjoyed it and would play it again, just not immediately and not in a state of rapture. At five, though — an awkward number for many games — Brides & Bribes earns a permanent place high on the shelf.