Curse of the Mummy's Tomb - Vintage Fun from 1988

Recently I blogged about rescuing my copy of the vintage Games Workshop boardgame Curse of the Mummy's Tomb.  This weekend I actually got to play it for the first time in about 30 years. 

Curse of the Mummys Tomb

Vintage Games Play Very Differently

Back in 1988 boardgames were very different.  Wolfgang Kramer had only just invented the Kramer Track implemented for the first time in Heimlich & Co. (1984) and no-one had heard of the term Euro game.

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is essentially an exploration game set in a 3 tiered cardboard pyramid.  You move your token by playing movement cards on yourself but your fellow players can play movement cards on you to send you off your chosen path.

If you land on an encounter space, numbered 1, 2 or 3, they can also play encounter cards on you up to the value on your space.  These can be either a hazard, a creature or a discovery and you can have only 1 of each.  This means as a player you must search out the encounter 3 spaces in order to guarantee that you can lay a discovery on yourself.  Of course the more players the more chance that they will play hazards and creatures on you.

Heavy Player vs Player

I was quite surprised at how heavy the PvP action was.  In fact in order for you to get the right movement cards for yourself you have to get rid of as many hazard and creature cards in your hand as possible because you can only hold 5 cards at a time.  

The Mummy Is Not That Much of a Threat

Players bid to control the mummy each round by bidding with their Tana leaf tokens.  This auction style movement runs out of steam unless players are regularly pausing to burn their cards and acquire new tana leaf tokens.

If I were to play again I would definitely up the ante and instigate two house rules.

1. The Mummy moves every turn not just every round.
2. Either the player to the right of the active player moves the mummy or the mummy moves randomly using a d10.  (1 North, 2, North East, 3 East etc.. 9 Go Up, 10 Go Down)

The End Game

Once you find a Key of Osiris you can attempt the end game and ascend the pyramid to find the Chamber of Osiris and try to find the elixir of immortality by testing 3 of your attributes.

This is a bit of a lacklustre endgame to be honest as I hate a dice off.

Player Reaction

My boardgame pals didn't hate it completely.  Once they had gotten to grips with the forced PvP nature of the whole thing and the crippling nature of some of the hazards the pace of the game picked up.