Second Look - Boardgame reviews in depth. Check out that cat.Just launched on Kickstarter, Noble Blood is a game about vampires herding nobles, and converting them into more vampires. I got a chance to play a pre-release copy of the game, and got a lot of time in with these chubby little blood suckers.

The mechanics of the game are fairly simple. Each vampire can take 2 actions: taking a noble from the city, and converting a noble to a vampire. Every vampire can take 1, both, or none of these actions. Vampires take their turn in numerical order. A vampire numbered 22 will go before a vampire numbered 32. This means that players will be not be taking turns in the typical clockwise fashion. After all the vampires have taken their turn, they’ll need to feed on the nobles collected to replenish their blood, or be removed from the game. The game is over when 1 players has turned 7 nobles to vampires, or turned 5 nobles into vampires that have the same family jewel on their card. Points are then totaled, and the winner decided.

The game takes a play or 2 to get the right groove, but is rewarding, quick, and fun once you’ve gotten the rhythm down. There’s 50 different nobles, each with their own special abilities and stats, so there’s a lot of replay value and strategy to try out here.

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Designer Marc Distefano needs $8,000 to get the game funded, and already the project has reached $1,000. There’s even a few stretch goals announced, with more on the way.

The game is fun, with cute, fat little vampires and a surprising amount of punch in a small package. Here’s a video put out by the designer with a more in-depth look at play.

A pre-release copy of Noble Blood was provided free for review.