This edition, published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Pat Reid’s escape, will feature completely new art-work painted by fan-favourite historical artist, Peter Dennis. Humphries also suggests keeping a written tally of the equipment owned by each Escape Officer to try to analyze which escape route is being contemplated. I suspect that we will find ourselves using one of the optional rules if Security Officers continually find themselves on the losing end. To counteract this, we chose to play under a time-limit, with two POWs needing to successfully escape for the allied forces to win.

Escape from Colditz is a board game produced by Gibsons Games of London in 1973 that simulates attempted escapes by Allied prisoners-of-war (POWs) from Oflag IV-C (better known as Colditz Castle) during World War II. We even saw 2 POWs follow the same route, with the first one being a distraction to get captured, requiring the guard to take him back to the prison, therefore freeing up the path for the 2nd POW to make a run for it. So I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of this game for a few months now, and playing it did not disappoint!

It is also balanced by the fact that in the original game, once a player had created the Escape Kit, it remained with them and could be used by each subsequent POW attempting to escape. One player takes the part of the German Guards, whilst the others play 'Escape Officers' who are responsible for organizing escape attempts by their team of prisoners. In just a few turns, one of those prisoners intentionally ran into a prison guard (which is a way to temporarily remove a guard from the board at the expense of sending a prisoner to solitary), while another prisoner from the tunnel escaped through the fence.

One player agrees to be the German Security Officer, and places some of the black tokens on designated spots on the board, and the rest in the barracks. This game is truly iconic: with its historical note, high quality components and immersive game-play.

POW’s have an advantage over the Security Officer here, as, if playing with more than two players, they can choose to either discard one of their Opportunity Cards or they can pass it over to another POW. The castle, which had been constructed in the 12th Century, “was converted into a high security prisoner-of-war camp for officers who had become security or escape risks or who were regarded as particularly dangerous.

Could a POW move to a tunnel with this card, move through the tunnel to the outer area, cut a fence and continue moving? As infuriating as it can be for the player who gets taken down, watching the Security Officer suddenly rolling doubles and sprinting madly across the board to tackle a POW about to escape is kind of cool. This game was created by Pat Reid, a British Army Officer, and one of the few to successfully escape from Colditz Castle in World War II. This historical material is largely drawn from Michael McNally's Colditz Oflag IV-C in Osprey's Fortress series. If he’s good, he will keep track of how the equipment is dispersed, but that strategy only goes so far.In another bold escape, a friend’s POW scaled the walls using 90 feet of rope (that’s three rope cards), bolted to the staff car in the courtyard, and drove to freedom, ignoring everything in his path. This gives the game a very cooperative feel, but it is still about seeing who can get 2 of their POWs out first to win, so don’t help the other too much. Once they’ve put together a complete ‘escape kit’ (including civilian clothes, map, compass and some food) they can attempt to get out of Colditz! To wrap up this review I have to stop and chat about the packaging because it’s clear Osprey wanted to make this game feel a little bit special.

Once players have settled on a few ideas to outwit the German Security Officer, they begin collecting Escape Equipment by visiting various rooms inside the prison. Gone is the swastika to be replaced by the Prussian eagle - definitely a sign of changing times, attitudes and concerns about sensibilities. He must also place at least 2, but not more than 7 Guards on black circles shown in the Outer areas of the Castle.The prisoner starts from anywhere inside the grey area of the board (the inner courtyard) and must reach one of the safe targets outside of the castle walls within the number of throws specified. The player takes on the role of a prison Escape Officer trying to facilitate the escape of his men beyond the prison walls or of the German Security officer trying to thwart those attempts. German pawns (black) try to position themselves to block entrances and to chase down those prisoners whispering in the corner. It will tell them how many rolls of the dice they have to try and get one of their prisoners out of Colditz. So, for many players, it was often a sore point as to who would be willing to take on this rather unforgiving task of trying your hardest to prevent any of the other players winning, knowing that you were unlikely to succeed and if you did would probably draw several players' wrath at having spent an afternoon or evening failing to win.