Z-Man Games to Release Rattus

In addition to releasing the QWG / White Goblin Games’ title Martinique in May 2010, Z-Man Games has announced that it will release another White Goblin title, Åse and Henrik Berg’s Rattus. (2-4 players, ages 10+, 45 minutes) I wrote a first impression of Rattus in January 2010 based on a single play. Here’s a game description from that write-up:

Rattus is themed around the Black Death, with player cubes dying off again and again as the plague travels throughout Eurasia. One face-down rat token starts on each region of the board. On a turn, a player adds one or more cubes to one region, with the upper limit of new arrivals being the number of rats in the area; optionally takes one of the six special characters; optionally uses the powers of any characters he holds; then moves the plague figure to a new region of the board, most likely spreading more rats along the way.

If the plague figure – being the personification of death – stands on a region that contains both rat tokens and player cubes, the rat tokens are revealed one by one. Each rat token has a limit value showing the number of cubes (1-6) that trigger an outbreak and symbols that show who dies in the event of an outbreak. Those symbols are M (meaning the player who has the most cubes), A (meaning all players) and the six symbols that represent the special characters; if you hold the special character shown on the token – or have the most cubes in the event of an M, or exist at all with an A – you lose one cube for each matching symbol. If rats and cubes remain in the same area, you keep revealing rats until one group or the other dies off. Whoever has the most people on board at game’s end wins and gets to bury the dead.

No info on a release date from Z-Man at this time. This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

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