I was extremely happy to win the ebay auction for this one. To understand my joy at picking this up, it might help to know that in my teens, I worked my way through all of the Edgar Rice Burroughs “Mars” books, and they remain some of my favourite pulp fiction books. The sheer invention ERB shows in the books is far superior (IMO) to that of the Tarzan books. My old copies of the books have mostly disintegrated by now – sadly, they weren’t on the best paper – and at some point I’m going to get new copies… probably electronic for my kindle.

One of the other noteworthy things about this game is its designer: Mark Herman. Later in his life, he’d go on to design the first card-driven wargame (We the People), two of the great ancient-era wargames (Great Battles of Alexander and SPQR), and create many other interesting designs, many of which I own. This is an early work, but it really shows the love of the Barsoom books throughout.

Is it a good game? Well, it’s got its clunky moments. There’s good design in there, but I feel that combat might be less than it should be. However, it apparently is an enjoyable 2-player game (especially if you’ve read the books), so we’ll see how it goes some weekend in the future.