Pagan: Fate of Roanoke

Pagan is a two player game about a witch hunt happening in a village in old America. An inspector is visiting because there is suspicion of witchcraft. One of the villagers is indeed a witch and he (or she) is secretly preparing for a ritual. The witch wins by successfully performing the ritual. The inspector needs to stop that by catching the witch, or killing the witch. 

There are 9 villagers in the game. One of them is the witch. At the start of the game, only the witch player knows who it is. One thing the players will do is to visit the villagers. You have three pawns, and when you visit a villager, you place your pawn on the person. This prevents your opponent from visiting them on his turn. When you visit a villager, you get to use his abilities. You will get to place your markers on villagers of a specific colour (suit). You may get to draw cards, play cards, or gain influence. Influence is the currency you spend when playing cards. 

Round markers placed by the witch are called secrets. When you have three secrets placed on a villager, you can trade them in for a square marker, and that's a favour. When you have three favours, and that villager with the three favours is the witch, you get to perform the ritual and win the game. So the inspector will be watching out for villagers accumulating many secrets and favours. Round markers placed by the inspector are called clues. If you are the inspector and you visit a villager with three clues, you collect a square marker, which is an evidence. You don't need to trade in the clues for it, and you hold the evidence in your hand. The evidence is not placed on the villager like the favours are. When you have three evidence, you can draw a card from the innocent deck. This lets you rule out one person for sure. If you can rule out eight, you win, but that's normally impossible. 

The inspector is more likely to win by executing the witch. If you have at least one clue on every villager, and three on the villager you think is the witch, you get to execute your prime suspect. If you are right, you win. However, if you are wrong, you lose the clues on all villagers. You will need to start building your case all over again. In case you kill an innocent person for the third time, the villagers will rise against you, chasing you out of the village. In this case you lose. 

The witch and the inspector have their respective player boards. You have slots for cards - equipment and allies. These cards have all sorts of abilities which help you. This above is the witch's player board. 

This is the inspector's player board. 

This is the mayor. If you visit him, you can place a secret or clue on a blue villager. Villagers come in three suits - blue, green and red. When visiting the mayor you also get to draw three cards then pick one. 

This game is a race. As the witch you must carefully build up clues and favours on villagers, to prepare for the ritual. You need to be careful not to let the inspector guess who the witch is. You want to trick the inspector into killing the wrong person. Or you need to manipulate the game situation so that it becomes impossible for the inspector to prevent the ritual from happening. 

The game is a little unusual. The premise is interesting. This is a game of psychology. As the inspector you will be wondering whether those clues and favours are a trap, or they are really preparation for the ritual. For the witch it seems prudent to place clues evenly, to make it hard for the inspector to guess your intentions, but then this will take much time and resources. You can't let the inspector keep drawing cards from the innocent deck. Every card drawn helps him narrow down the possibilities and get closer to identifying the witch. So, as the witch, you are under some time pressure. Playing as the witch and as the inspector offer very different experiences. 

I played this online at BoardGameArena.com, and the downside of that is I wasn't very patient in properly digesting all the rules, especially those related to the cards, the card types and the two pawn types. Instinctively I feel this part of the game should be simpler. I might be wrong about this. I do think the cards can be of great help. It's just that I find them tiresome. Players who have a bit more patience may get more fun out of this aspect and appreciate it better. 

I played two games with Han, and we swapped roles. In both games the witch won. Han applied a very clever technique. At precisely the right time, he placed his three pawns so that I wouldn't be able to stop him from performing the ritual, even if I could work out who the witch was. He picked the right time to make his move. For the witch it is important to manoeuvre the board situation so that you plan becomes unstoppable. Otherwise the inspector will always respond and try to slow you down.