First Impressions of Raise Your Goblets

I propose a toast! Would everyone raise your goblets to the wonders of modern board gaming. That we might have such wonderful, graspable, physical objects to play with is a testament to where this hobby has come too. Though it may make them seem even more like toys to an outside audience, we all know, deep down, that that is exactly what we wanted anyway. To modern board games!

Modern board games!

That’s right, drink deeply. Yes. Good…

Wait why aren’t you convulsing on the floor, scrabbling for – oh you switched the goblets round didn’t you? God damn it.

Raise Your Goblets

Raise Your Goblets is a fun little game about trying to poison someone at your dinner party. The undercooked chicken and out of date salmon moose will provide a cunning cover to the actual deadly poison you’ll slip into your target’s wine glass. Unfortunately, your scheming and hateful friends are also planning on doing something similar, each with a different target in mind. And yes, that means somewhere out there is a moulded plastic glass with your name on it.

Each of you has a private stash of gems representing wine, poison and antidote concealed behind your screen. You can drop one of these into another players glass, without them seeing, you can peek at your own glass to figure out just what concoction is brewing in there, and you can swap glasses with someone else. Once someone has used up all their wine beads, they can call a toast and you’ll all pretend to drink from the goblet in front of you by spilling it all out on the table and counting how much poison and antidote there is. Honestly, your table manners are appalling! Points are awarded for how much actual wine you’ve managed to drink, and for killing your target. Simple!

In many ways Raise Your Goblets is similar to card game Mascarade, albeit more expensive and for fewer players. But it’s also more ostentatious with those awesome wine goblets giving it a wonderful table presence. You do need to be careful of not accidentally looking in a glass as you add tokens or swap glasses or just sit up straight. But that gives you the excuse to lean luxuriously back in your chair as you play. In fact, Raise Your Goblets is probably the first game that deserves to be played from a chaise-long.

It’s a game supposedly of Machiavellian planning that is probably best played at high speed because so much can and will change between your turns. In fact, information is much harder to track here as so much is hidden, with little being revealed until the final whistle. I feel like it’s a game to play fast and loose, and to have a laugh with. And you know what some dinner parties end up like: multiple rounds of toasts in a row!

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