Teutonic incarceration fun for two or more players

We have no anecdotes about the Second World War - we never lived through it. When we at TV Cream are old, the most exciting stories we’ll be able to tell our grandchildren will be about when there were different ITV regions. The single most traumatic experience our generation has shared is News At Ten being moved around the schedules. Similarly, much of what we know about the Battle Of Britain we’ve learned from the telly. We know that Kenneth More lost his legs by crashing a plane whilst trying to impress a girl. We know that Richard Todd blew up the Ruhr dam with bouncing bombs and once had a dog called Nigger (until his name was cut out of the film by PC censors). Oh, and we know that John Mills escaped from Colditz during a ‘Hot Mum style amateur dramatics revue by climbing down a rope made of blankets.

It’s ironic, therefore, that, in an effort to recapture one of our own shared childhood experiences, this is one of the games we bothered to actually source and purchase (from eBay, natch) to play again. For research purposes, you understand.

Thankfully, no familiarity with Nazi-distracting Ents Corp stage business is required, but that’s just as well as it’s otherwise a hellishly complicated game. Essentially a move-counters-along-the-squares-and-collect-objects-and-cards board game (in the same vein as Ghost Castle, Monopoly and many others), the difference here is that one team must play the part of the baddies (Colditz guards) and can block off your escape routes, “discover” tunnels and, by landing on your counters, banish them to solitary confinement.

As a goodie (in charge of a team of POWs), your sworn duty is to escape (and, if we recall correctly, cause as much bally trouble for the Bosch as you can in the process). There’s no option to just keep your nose clean, do your bird and sit out the war in relative comfort. Seemingly the odds are in favour of the three teams of escapees but, although there are few guards, there are even fewer legitimate ways to evade them. Frankly, we think it was foolish of the Krauts to allow us free run of their so-called top security prison in the first place but we imagine, like so many German waiters, zey ver only taking orders.