The artwork of
Mad Zeppelin! is superb and adds to the enjoyment of this game. Each turn the players take the role of a Traitor sent aboard the Zeppelin by rival nations to scupper the Emperors plans by bribing guards to throw his treasure overboard to their waiting minions.
The traitor cards are large cards and there is also a set of reference cards with all the traitors listed on it (I find this very useful as there are abilities that require you to name a traitor and my memory is not that great
)
At the start of each turn the Lead player shuffles the traitors and removes some based on the number of players, he then deals a traitor face down to each player starting with themselves. He then looks through the remainder chooses one and passes them on, the remainder are placed with the other discarded traitors which the leader then gets to look at. The leader rolls dice which determines the directions the Zeppelin will fly in and this determines which traitors are able to attempt to throw cargo off.
On your turn you pick a traitor, search - take a gold and draw a card (Unless your traitor card says otherwise) if you draw a Journey turn it face up and take a gold for each.
You may then activate your traitor's ability and Throw cargo (you can do both,l either or none) when complete the next players does the same etc.
After everyone has used their 2nd traitor the turn ends and players check their scores. If no-one has reached the required score the Leadership passes on to the next player and the process starts again.
You gain points by throwing cargo and the game ends when either the 10th journey card is turned over when the scores are totalled or at the end of a turn at least one player has reached the score for the game type (Run Mode: 20 pts, Long Haul: 30 pts).
The winner is the person with the most points or in the case of a tie the one with the fewest gold.
This game is extremely fun, the characters well thought out each with their own backgrounds and abilities. It plays well with any number of players and I would recommend this to anyone for their collection.
There are a few niggles with how to play certain card but these have now been cleared up by a thread on
boardgamegeek.com.
All in all there is a lot going for this game and very little to find fault with, AEG / Dust Games seem to have great eye for games.
