No, No, The Other Dracula

Because of the Jesusita Fire, we didn't play Annalise last night. (We're all fine, I just wasn't in the right mental state to play.) On Sunday, however, I did get in a game of Fury of Dracula. Our friend Mike was visiting from out of town, so we let him vamp it up, and he pretty much destroyed us. He made a very clever move near the beginning to hide a vampire on Cagliari, and while we realized it just in time to have a chance to stop it from a maturing, it came down to a 50-50 die roll. The roll went Mike's way, which netted him two victory points. A few turns later and he was up to three. We managed to track him down in Germany, but in order to stop him from slipping away to sea again, Mina had to attack him on the first turn of night. A few good card plays by Mike and bad luck on our side meant that she ended up in the hospital, Mike was up to five victory points, and two turns later he won.

I hadn't played for a while (according to the Geek, in almost three years), but Fury of Dracula remains a solid game. It was three hours of good fun. I wish, though, that the combat system was more manageable. The cheat sheets that give you the full combat matrix are useful, but it's still too cumbersome. I feel like they tried to span too much with one thing. Yes, it's nice to have the same mechanics to fight the minions and to fight Dracula. But should you? I suspect that if you trimmed the matrix down, you could make the fights seem much less like a crapshoot.