Casus Belli
News Brief
Edition 11, No. 5
December 1999
The Netherlands

On A Trail of Roses

Bosworth was the field where the last battle in the so-called War of Roses was held, and where King Henry had the questionable honor of (up until now) being the last crowned head of England to die in a battle.

This background for a game from America? Strange, but that's how it is. Bosworth, released by Out of the Box Games, is a card/board game for two to four players from eight years old up. However we recommend against playing a game with three players.

On a big field players come together to fight each others (chess) armies. An army comes in from every side (here is where playing with three players becomes less fun, one player is stuck in between the other two and has big problems). The game pieces are cards, which follow the movement rules of the chess game. The goal is, naturally, to kill the pieces from your opponentsor at least the king from another side. So, basically chess.

Is the reason for cards in place of the usual chess pieces an indicator that the distributor was trying to keep the game cheap? No, not that. Because, in the beginning there are only four pawns from each side on the board, the rest come out later. The rest of the cards are shuffled and each player always has only four cards in his/her hand, from which he or she can choose. It's more or less a matter of luck, which cards can go on the board.

This game is a game where the overall point is to annoy your opponents. Coalitions only last for one or two turns, and then they are all quickly broken. It is also not possible to sit back, wait and watch, because the board is too small for that. No, this game is meant for players to annoy each other. Rather than some games, which become less fun when players only try to annoy each other, this game refuses to reward other methods than the common annoyance of other players.

The design of this game is very nice. The cards have the silhouette of the chess piece that they represent and a cartoon. This makes the game distinctly American, because the pictures come from the cartoons "Dork Towers" and "Wild Life."

A nice snack that surely is not worth the American name "beer and pretzels game," but is always good for a short intermezzo from fifteen minutes to maximum an hour. Knowledge of chess is not necessary, but somewhat helpful.

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