Playing Sons of Liberty with Mom
So at our family International Americans Kicking Ass Day celebration, we played Sons of Liberty. My mother had watched us playtest way back when the game was still taking shape, and she was interested in giving it a go herself. So after the grandparents headed home, we broke out the game.
Our Objectives fell together rather nicely with a few overlapping results: we had “judge” show up twice, and had a preacher, some Quakers, and a good wife, which we decided were all related. We ended up with a British plot to incite the Quakers to abandon their faith and take up arms on the British side, which, in conjunction with a land dispute resolved by a corrupt judge, would swing the membership of the Salem militia from Patriot to Tory. Clearly, something must be done!
I elected to play Tory, even though I’m a terrible, terrible Tory player. Meghann picked up John Hancock (Meg: “I’m pretty much the colonial version of Batman.” Me: “…yes, yes you are.”). Then my dear, sainted mother selected her patriot. Of course, this lovely woman who raised me with tenderness and kindness, who does she pick? Sam Adams. And then picks “womanizing” as one of his circumstances, to boot.
The travel hand went well, with the usual slow and deliberate first plays followed by quicker and more spontaneous plays as the players get acquainted with the system. The traitor Benjamin Church was travelling with Sam and John, ostensibly one of the Sons of Liberty, but bombed their carriage and “misplaced” their powder and shot. However, the Sons of Liberty quickly regained their feet and headed to Salem. I was somewhat surprised when my Mom started threading bits of the objectives into the travel hand — not jumping the gun, but totally using foreshadowing and priming the pump for later action. This trend continued through the rest of the game, giving us a pretty tight narrative.
The objectives mostly consisted of the Sons of Liberty running around Salem, which we decided had a large Quaker population for convenience. They contacted who they needed to contact and informed who they needed to inform against a backdrop of Tories invading, causing Quaker scandals, and impressing boatloads of colonists into service. Their poor, beleaguered coach kept getting blown up, rebuilt, dragged through the country, and was finally fitted with a boot by the Tories (so it then got used as an anchor). I pulled the cutscene twice, which let me capture, arrest, and imprison the Sons between objectives, which is always a favorite tactic of mine.
My personal high point of the game, in the Primary Objective phase, is my Mom looking a little uncertain and saying, “I’m not sure if this is a valid play, but… Sam Adams is going to break the mold by revealing that he’s not just the Boston brewer that the redcoats think he is. He’s going to… um, use his tae kwon do kung fu martial arts powers and mind zap the redcoats.” To which we cheered in approval because hey, my Mom mind zapped redcoats. Hard to beat!