With a bit of time left, we decided to try Gnadenlos, which is the latest non-Settlers game from Klaus Teuber. Set in the time of the American Gold Rush, players hire cowboys to perform one of three tasks: gold digging, gunfighting and playing poker. Cowboys are represented by cards and these are nicely illustrated with numbers showing how good the card is for each task. Each turn, one of the 3 event types is competed for with the best card/s (cowboy) played being rewarded with Victory Points, gold nuggets or currency depending on the type of event. Extra cowboys are auctioned off at certain points of the game and these are paid for with IOU's. However, when enough IOU's are in circulation, the cowboys demand to get paid and a number of IOU's have to be redeemed by paying gold nuggets.

The game ends either after a set number of turns, or if somebody achieves a given number of VPs or if someone runs out of gold 3 three times during the game. Gold is very important and in our game was extremely tight. Nige ran out of gold on the first pay day and never seemed to be able to get enough back to save him at later pay days. None of us seemed to progress very far towards the target number of VPs and although the gameplay was fairly light, it didn't really hit us as much fun. This is a bit of a surprise because I've played before with a different group and really enjoyed it. Perhaps, we just didn't grasp the right spirit of the game and it disaapointed us. Maybe we'll try again soon and see if we feel differently about it.