Halleluja!

The 'King' has gotta be rockin' in heaven, so perfect tune for Halleluja!

Players have three stacks of three double sided-stones (angel / devil) on an 7 x 7 board. Angels start the game face up, with a moving tile dictating the distance the top tile of a stack can move. The current player moves the 'distance tile' first, then the closest stack, current player & opponents, in four directions ( N E S W) from the 'distance tile' move the top stone. Guidelines are laid out controlling the movement of the Tile and Stones. The object to collect your opponents pieces by landing on top of them and removing them from the board. Angels that capture other angels, flip and become devils. Angels that capture devils score bonus points on 'heavens ladder'. Each stack of three captured pieces (one from every opponent) is worth seven points, stacks of two (different opponents) is worth 3, individual pieces one. You are forced to go after everyone with this scoring system as the better assortment of captured pieces you have, the more points you get. The game ends when only devils are face up.

This is a great little game, with lots of 'screw factor'. Movement guidelines are very clear and rules are very easy. Any level of game player will pick this game up in minutes, then watch out! You have plenty of options every turn, and there is very little down time. You will find greater depths of planning and strategy with each play. My only challenge has nothing to do with the game itself, but with Piatnik. Why the huge box? This game would fit very neatly into a 'Hong Kong' (also from Piatnik) size box. Instead Piatnik used their large game box (San Giginamo). That has got to drive up the cost of the game and cause a certain amount of disgruntled-ness at finding so few pieces in such a large box! But I digress...

Halleluja is great to play with a high replay value. Boardgamers of Reno give it a thumbs up!!