Preview the Scenarios of The Last Banquet

My dear Baron, I am flattered by your interest in my wares, but the king naturally has the first selection from my goods. He has such a love of exotic goods, and personally ordered me to bring these silks back from India. Take a look at this jeweled, double-edged dagger, but be careful – it’s very sharp. It‘s my present for the king, to demonstrate how highly I regard him. In fact, I intend to give him the dagger during this very banquet… if you take my meaning.
   –The Trader

Ambitious courtiers, greedy citizens, and wily servants compete for power in The Last Banquet. In this large-group game, you and your friends take on the roles of guests at a royal banquet where no guest can be trusted and scandal is served hot. Using the actions allowed, players strive to further their faction’s agenda. Whether your goal is noble or nefarious, you’ll need cleverness and guile to triumph at court.

Our last preview introduced some of the cunning and deceitful palace personalities you and your friends can play in The Last Banquet. Today, we’ll look at two of the six possible scenarios that shape the game.

Rival Assassins

In A League of Traitors the duke and the baron both seek to kill the king and seize the throne for themselves. Before game play begins, fifteen to twenty-five players separate into three roughly equal factions: the duke’s faction, the baron’s, and the king’s. Whichever faction succeeds in their assassination attempt wins the game, but if the king survives three rounds of play, his faction is victorious.

The duke’s faction and the baron’s faction then secretly choose assassins by giving one player either the dagger token or the poison token. The assassin kills the king by sitting next to him at the end of a round and revealing his weapon. If there is an assassin sitting on both sides of him, the king avoids death and another round begins, since neither faction wants to be caught in the act of murder.

Both the trader and the lady’s maid make ideal assassins. Under the pretense of serving the court, the lady’s maid can use her action to directly approach any royalty or nobility. Similarly, the trader can lure a royal or noble character towards him, as if encouraging that character to look at his costly merchandise. Your faction can avoid suspicion by saving your assassin’s action for the last possible moment. That way, no other character can interfere and separate the assassin from their target. 

A Royal Rescue

In The Missing Princess, six to ten players work cooperatively to free the princess from the clutches of the traitorous duke who has abducted and imprisoned her. In order to save her, you must defeat the duke’s palace guards, steal their keys, escape from a vicious hound, enter the palace, and find the princess.

When you set up your playing area for this scenario, establish a place for the guard tower, where the guards stand watch and keep the keys, one for the gatehouse, and a place between them for the bastion, where you set the princess character card. Male characters, such as the baron, messenger, and king attempt to defeat the guards by moving next to the guard tower. When the four guard tokens are gone, the keys can be liberated. Female characters attempt to get the keys and move into the gatehouse, where they can search for the princess. If you have found the princess at the beginning of your turn, your group wins.

The duke begins next to the guard tower, and moves through the other players, switching one place at a time. Whenever a player carrying the keys switches places with the duke, that player has essentially been caught and must return the keys to the guard tower. If the duke moves adjacent to a player in the gatehouse, then your rescue attempt has been foiled, the princess remains captive, and the duke triumphs.

Take Your Place at the Royal Table

The king’s murder and princess’s abduction aren’t the only scandals shaking up this court. In The Count’s Estate, clergy and citizens vie to inherit the best of the deceased man’s land and lavish possessions. If you like ghost stories, you might choose to play The White Maiden’s Lament, in which the king’s dead wife haunts the palace and seeks vengeance against the new queen.

Play despicable nobility or trustworthy servants, take on the role of the king or pay him court. The Last Banquet offers a wide variety of roles to play, plots to execute, and knavery to enjoy at your large-group gathering.

Prepare to enter the palace gates. Pre-order The Last Banquet from your local retailer today!

…