Bristol 1350

Today's review is of the 2021 release, Bristol 1350. For 1-9 players, it takes 20-40 minutes.

Overview

The plague has struck; everyone, flee for your lives! Well, take a cart out of town for your lives. In Bristol, There are three carts racing to be the first out of town. Each cart holds up to three people. Be in the first cart to leave, and you all win- IF everyone on board is healthy. But if one has the plague (which means your two secret symptom cards add up to 6 or greater, at any point in the game), instead everyone in that cart loses and the game continues. 

game in progress; image from here

The game is played in rounds. Someone rolls six dice and a round begins, going in order from the first person in the leading cart to the last person in the trailing cart. The die have one rat and one apple of each cart's color. On your turn, you take one of three actions:

• re-roll two dice
• draw a remedy card, which has special abilities that help you exchange symptom cards, lock in die results, or prevent pushing (see next action)
• move your pawn through (pushing your way to the front of your cart), (if you're in the front of your cart, exchanging places with the last person in the cart ahead of you), (if you're in the front of your cart, pushing someone behind you off your cart, to the cart behind or off the cart entirely)

After you take your action, you can also play one or more remedy cards (even if your action was drawing that cart this turn). Once everyone has had their turn, the round ends. At the end of the round, each cart will progress along the track according to the total number of their colors present on the dice. But beware! Rats help your cart progress, but if your cart has two or more rats, you must 'mingle' at the end of the round with others in your cart. Mingling is drawing an additional symptom card to mix in (likely a high number), shuffling this and all of the respective players' symptom cards together, and re-distributing two cards to each, discarding the extra. If the cards you receive equal or exceed six, you have the plague. Once you have the plague, your win condition becomes not allowing anyone to leave the town healthy, so your goal is to spread the disease.

Review

This is a tidy little game- I liked it. The components are small but of good quality; the game is simple and fun. It accommodates up to nine people and doesn't take forever to play. There's some light strategy and luck. It does rely on player honesty (if their cards exceed six at one point but then later abilities drop that number, they still have the plague), and it's hard to think about who might have the plague, but it's good overall.

Rating: A-