New Educational Game: I recently received a few copies of a nice little card game from Sweden. It's called "Comrade Koba", "Koba" was one of Josef Stalin's nicknames taken from a Caucasian bandit in a romance novel. Comrade Koba is a simple and furious card game of political survival in the era of Soviet history known as "The Great Terror". It reminds me a bit of "Family Business" from Mayfair Games or "Guillotine" from Wizards of the Coast. You can buy it from us for $12, at Comrade Koba. The characters on the cards are actual people from Soviet history and hopefully playing the game will inspire some curiosity about that historical period.

PRIVATE GAMES FOR TEACHERS

We here at Flying Buffalo have been running play by mail games for individuals for over 25 years. But play by mail games work well in a classroom, especially now that we have the internet. We have a game called "Feudal Lords" for instance, that is not only entertaining, but teaches the students cooperation, diplomacy, strategic planning, basic mathematical skills, and creates an interest in Medieval History.

We normally run our games every three weeks. You can set up a private game for your classroom to run on any schedule convenient for you. You collect the students instructions, email or fax them to us, we process the game and email the results back to you within 24 hours. You can have daily turns for a couple of weeks, or set it up to run on the same day of the week for several weeks in a row.

You can set it up with any number of players up to 17 (more than one student could play the same position) and for any number of turns (or you can make it "until someone wins" if you like). You can have individual students play each position,or you could have several classes compete with each other, with an entire class making the decisions for a position. (One common way to play it is to have a team of 3 players playing each position. Thus a 10 position game would handle 30 students.) We will charge you $2 per position per turn. (Thus if you set up a 10 position game for 10 turns, it would be $200). We can bill your school with a valid purchase order.

The RULES and the GAME MAP are here online. You can print them out and copy them yourself, or we can sell you printed copies of the rules.

Here is a description of the game:

FEUDAL LORDS

Designed by John Van De Graaf, this game simulates the struggle for kingship in a mythical period of English history. Up to seventeen players, each representing the head of one of the more active noble families, vie for the throne which has been left vacant by the death of King Arthur. Only by building both economic and military strength can one prove himself worthy of the mantle of King (or Queen).

Players must feed their peasants, tax townsmen, train and pay knights, hire mercenaries, buy & sell livestock, improve their castles, dabble in foreign trade, and go on military campaign. They may conquer neighboring fiefs, forcing them to swear fealty to another player.

The object of the game is to get a minimum number of other fiefs to swear fealty to you (at the same time) by force of arms, persuasion, or bribery. When that happens, you become king (or queen) and have won.

To read strategy articles about Feudal Lords, see FBQ.

We can also arrange special school games of any of our pbm games, and we can arrange discounts for multiplie copies of our roleplaying games or other games. Teachers should call 480-945-6917 and ask for Rick.

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