Heyyyy, speaking of needing to buy another game with Yomi, let’s say I started watching Game of Thrones on HBO and I was thinking to myself I wish I could be having this same kind of fun in board game format. What’s up with that? There’s a strategy/wargame looking game from 2003 that’s out of print but maybe getting a reprint this year that looks cool and also there’s a card game? Are they good? If I’m thinking about getting War of the Ring when it comes back out later this year do I really need two fantasy war games? I also haven’t played any of FF’s LCGs.
I mean, it was payday today and there’s still money in my account. What the hell, QT3? Recommend me some stuff. Otherwise I might end up…saving. Ew.
My favorite strategy wargame of that nature is Chaos in the Old World. Warhammer: Invasion is extremely solid as well, if that’s your bag. I have no idea about the GoT games.
The AGoT LCG is great. The board game is also great, but only if you play the Sword of Storms expansion, which requires the base game.
LK, I actually have Chaos. I didn’t realize they were similar but yeah I don’t see any reason to have another game like that.
Thanks, T-Bakes. I’ll think I’ll look into the card game first. Is it good with just the core set or will I need to buy like 8 boxes of cards before playing?
I honestly don’t know and would read reviews before diving in. I bought a few boxes of the first set when it originally came out and was a CCG and really liked it, but chose to spend my money on other crap at the time. I know they did a great job with the Warhammer LCG base box (which was designed to be an LCG from the outset), and a decent job with the Call of Cthulhu base box (which, like AGoT, was originally a CCG). CoC has way too many factions to make a great all-in-one base set, but I think they only included four in the current AGoT box.
I think the card game did a great job of capturing the flavor of the characters, factions, and world Martin built. It’s particularly good if you’ve read the books and know the lore, but the mechanisms are strong enough that it would stand on its own as a great card game even if you hated the theme. All the cards I originally bought were destroyed when my basement flooded a few years back or I’d likely still haul it out every so often.
The new LotR LCG is supposed to be good and plays coop or even solo. Haven’t tried it yet, but I’m guessing it’ll be a little better to get into as a base set since it’s designed to be an LCG.
I hate Game of Thrones, but I love the boardgame! It might be a bit unbalanced, but it definitely hits a sweet spot for me. Sadly I haven’t had the opportunity to play it for a couple of years.
Lorini
2707
There’s a thread already on Game of Thrones LCG. The board game was just not fun, I’m sorry but I’d play Dominant Species a million times before playing that Game of Thrones board game. There’s a reason why it’s out of print and it’s not because it was in huge demand. It was way too long for what it was. You could play 2/3’rds of Twilight Imperium game in the time it took to play it.
Reldan
2708
For the AGoT board game, the base game is flat out not good. However, the Storm of Swords expansion is the real diamond, as it replaces the entire board and is almost a total conversion of the rules, making it into a game that’s actually quite a bit of fun.
Storm of Swords really should have been sold as a standalone - the only thing you use out of the base game are the figurines and some tokens, which makes buying the entire base game just to make use of 1/6th of the contents feel ridiculous (and is the only reason I haven’t bought my own copies).
I played the AGoT CCG for years - great game! Probably my favorite CCG-style game of all time. The LCG version is all the goodness of the CCG at a reasonable* price. Since there’s already a thread on the LCG specifically I won’t waste people’s time here extolling the virtues.
*reasonable for playing a CCG-style game
You mean the game ranked at #89 overall out of bazillions of games on BBG? The Clash of Kings expansion did help remedy some of the real issues with the original release.
Yeah, that game. He means that one. The one ranked at #89, right next to #90 Tikal, which is also not good and difficult to recommend in light of other games in the genre.
I, too, have never understood the love for Tikal. And I’ve long since stopped judging the relative merit of games by looking at their BGG rankings. The original AGoT game is pretty terrible, especially compared to Storm of Swords. FFG often has to patch their stuff to get it just right.
I like Tikal! It’s simple, elegant, plays quickly, and is thematic enough not to be totally generic.
Sheesh. You and Reldan remind me of the board game equivalent of Vogel’s statement about people on RPG Codex…filled with people that love to hate RPGs. I liked the original AGOT board game. Like any game, it had issues, but it was decent. There are lots of well ranked games on BBG that don’t suit me, Agricola is one, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re bad games.
Calling AGoT “horrible” and “flat out not good” is pure hyperbole.
Lorini
2714
Chris, please be pretty specific about what is supposed to be good about AGoT the board game. What exactly do/did you find fun? What did I miss?
I like the character cards. I like the recruiting mechanism, particularly in light of the very limited supply of armies. I really liked the order mechanism and resolution ordering. I didn’t like fleets, but Clash of Kings helped that considerably. I liked that you couldn’t just swamp militarily. I’m not big on diplomacy games, but this hit a decent balance for me. And this is from a guy that hates the game Diplomacy, though I can recognize why it’s still played after all these years.
I doubt you missed anything Lorini. It just didn’t work for you. Games are very particular, kind of like music or books. What’s great for some is dull, broken, or otherwise unengaging for others. I see lots of people raving about things like Pandemic and it’s ilk, which I generally find dull.
Mark_L
2716
I love the system in A Game of Thrones, and also love how it thematically works with the source material, but I think the original game was pretty broken-
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Greyjoy could smash Lannister’s fleet on turn one, and it was arguably always in their interest to do so. This put a dagger constantly at Lann’s back.
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Tyrell’s position is effectively hopeless.
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Stark’s position is almost as hopeless.
In my experience, victories overwhelming went to Greyjoy, followed by Baratheon (who has a great position, not having the squids at his back) and Lannister if he could convince an irrational Greyjoy to leave him alone. The other two only won in the face of bad, wrong play. Tyrell in particular…yeesh. Don’t know what they were thinking there.
One of the “issues” it has is that it’s broken. It’s not difficult for Greyjoy to crush the Lannister fleet in the opening moves and dominate with their then-unstoppable navy. This was later fixed in the Clash of Kings patch … er, expansion, and Storm of Swords changed so much stuff that it’s a vastly superior game.
EDIT: Whoops – Mark L got there first.
If I hated board games I wouldn’t own hundreds of them, and with so many games to choose from, “OK” doesn’t cut it. I had some fun with the AGoT base game until it became clear it was rigged, then moved on. There’s no point playing it when so many much more polished games have been released in recent years (even in that same series).
I think maybe part of it is I don’t play the games rapid fire a bunch of times. I play them irregularly enough as I rotate through a bunch of games that the optimized openings that were broken just weren’t realized in the games I played. By the time we might have reach that point, Clash of Kings was out and helped.
Now, if you played it 15 times in the first 2 weeks it was out, you probably think it was a completely broken game.
Not for that one. It took all of two plays for people to start exploiting the hell out of it.
Lorini
2720
That frequently happens with strategy games. You play very casually and play mostly to have fun instead of worrying about how to win. Unfortunately my group plays to exploit every strategic hole there ever was so games like AGoT just don’t work well for us.
It’s the same thing that happens with Dominion. It’s funny to see new people in the Dominion forum swearing that the game is broken without Moat. Or earnestly trying to convince people that Chapel is a really good card. (Chapel IS a really good card but Dominion veterans learned that nearly 2 years ago).
I personally had an issue with Vinhos and when I posted about it in the Strategy section, I was very clear that the posting would reveal spoilers about the strategy and warned off people who wanted to discover it for themselves.
