I’ll admit I’ve only played the base game 4 or 5 times, but I’ve pulled off an honest Tyrell win. It is hard, and requires better diplomacy and coordination than a Baratheon win; unseating them from King’s Landing requires too many parties to work together for too long, even with their supply drought.
I’ll have to check out the Storm of Swords expansion though, that sounds great. The current gimmick is for my friends to come over for a game in the early evening on Sunday, and then watch the new episode of the TV show on HBO.
You and your group are just hardcore I guess. By the time we’d played the 2nd time, we’d forgotten most the rules from the first time, switch up roles and basically had a good time.
Based on the overall BBG rankings, I’d guess more players are like me than you. That doesn’t mean you aren’t right, just that what you need in a game isn’t necessarily reflective of what others require and base their rating on. There are an awful lot of good games that only get broken out once every few months at best for a lot of people. Generally by the time the game comes out a 2nd or 3rd time for me, FAQ’s and recommended changes by the designers have come out (I remember one in particular to address the Greyjoy/Lannister turn 1 issue).
Hey, fair enough. #90, then, is simply the game I am least likely to ever attempt to play again from my collection, and am too lazy to get out of storage in order to try to tiptoe around my dislike for it while selling it at the next game fest. I just didn’t see much to recommend it beyond it being easy to learn, and found it about as thematic as Lost Cities without being as mechanically interesting.
Mark_L
2724
Oh sure, anyone CAN win. My proudest victory was a Stark auto-win. I think it can be safely said, though, that Lann is dead turn one at Greyjoy’s pleasure, and Stark and Tyrell just plain have it tougher- much tougher- than Grey, Baratheon, and a lucky Lann.
For me, that honor goes to Mystery of the Abbey, a deeply broken ungame. It’s like Fluxx without the deep strategy. Excluding that, though, it’s Ra, which I just do not get at all, and can’t imagine ever wanting to play.
Heh, my group often picks Ra as a 30-45 minute filler game.
Lorini
2727
When you play with the same gaming group, and only play a ‘broken’ game 2 or 3 times a year then everything is fine. But when you play with a bunch of different people, and one or more of those people play in a way that exploits big holes in a game like AGoT, then it’s a problem. Cons are a fine example of this.
To me, a game needs to be able to withstand 10 plays for me to rate it 7 or better. If it can’t withstand 10 plays without a major issue coming up, then it’s not a good game. The good news is that there are plenty of games that are entertaining as well as being solidly designed, so I can sell off the broken ones before too many people know about it.
I LOVE strategy games although I don’t necessarily like every single one. But AGoT I couldn’t love even if I tried because it just didn’t work.
As far as rankings on BGG goes, I really don’t care. I care a lot more about how my geek buddies feel about a game than its actual ranking. I have really good geek buddies who are looking for the same thing I’m looking for in a game and I lean on them heavily when making choices on what to buy.
I care only to the extent that it’s an indicator of things to check out. I can pretty safely pass on any game that’s rated a 5. Games in the top 100 or hot in some fashion are usually ones at least worth looking at. Doesn’t mean it’ll be good, but it means it has a chance.
One of my very favorite games of all times, Duel of Ages, is only rated 6.7 overall and I understand why. It’s fiddly and doesn’t show it’s colors well with occasional play. It’s really something that you play a bunch and revel in it’s replayability. It’s sort of the opposite of AGoT, which doesn’t hold up with to lots of plays. But I’d break out AGoT for a group’s first play without much hesitation, I wouldn’t do that with Duel of Ages.
Thanks for the link, Lorini. I missed that one. From what you guys are saying I think I’ll skip the GoT board game. Even if the expansion does make it better I already have Dominant Species and CitOW downstairs and those both need to get played more. I don’t have any LCGs so it would probably be a better idea to look for one of those instead to mix things up.
Played another game of Arkham tonight. Even though I really wanted to start mixing in expansions we had a new player and I was more interested in not overwhelming him with stuff so we did the base game with 3 players and picked Azathoth. I think. The one that ends the world when he wakes. I guess he’s supposed to be an easy one but we barely eeked out a win. It was pretty suspenseful, doom was at 13/14 and terror was at 10 when my friend (the new player) sealed the sixth gate. He got beat up a bit in the middle of the game so it was pretty cool that he got to win it for us. Yay for more Arkham players.
We managed to survive 3 nasty rumors. One of them was the terror-track-raising rumor that got us a few times. Then we had to waste about 8 on good deeds undone and, man I don’t even remember the other one. Kind of a long game. Good times, though. Good times.
I noticed Dorn getting a bit of a mention on BGG and ordered both the base game and the expansion. A dungeon crawler with a dice-less combat system intrigues me. The graphics look nice too. The price+shipping for the game was high but living in the antipodes means that anything good will cost an arm and a leg from wherever it comes from. Anyone else noticed this?
I did, when it recently shot up to the hotness thanks to a popular review. However, I’m past the point where I’ll invest in a 1 vs all for myself without having played it first; even the ones that are widely acknowledged as good (whether Fury of Dracula or Mansions) have not been to my liking, so it’s a genre I view cautiously.
Arg, Mystery of the Abbey. I so wanted this to be fun because the theme was great and the little gimmicks (bell) and whatnot sounded entertaining… But after the first game it went on eBay the next day. You just muck around with everyone else until pretty much everyone knows who the killer is at about the same time before rushing to the end. Pointless.
Good Deeds Undone nearly led to us losing a game to Azathoth too. Probably the most memorable game of Arkham Horror we ever played, as the Mythos deck kept screwed us over in delightful ways to stop us from removing the rumour, including blocking the exact street we needed on a vital turn.
Lorini
2734
Just placed a very large order (at least for me) with Boards and Bits. This order includes Claustrophobia, Manoeuvre, Die Burgen von Burgun, Kaigan, and Railways of the Western U.S. I will also get Airlines Europe from my local FLGS. Claustrophobia I was kind of skeptical of, but all my geek buddies who’ve rated it really like it, so hopefully it will work out. I’ve been wanting Manoeuvre for a long time and am glad to get it at a substantial discount.
I’ll give some session synopsis after next weekend when my gaming group meets.
I found it sort of weirdly disappointing. It ends up feeling like a light semi-abstract, like Stratego-level, except with fiddly wargamer pieces and chrome. It seemed like the sort of game that would be better if it’d been developed at Hasbro with plastic pieces and bigger boards ‘n’ stuff.
Dean
2736
I"ve played the boardgame quite a bit and it works best with 5 people. The standard way it plays is everyone fights around the neck and either the southern house scoops up enough castles to win while no one’s looking, or Stannis comes in from the isles and scoops up enough while no one’s looking.
So the Lannisters and Baratheons always have to agree to who’s going to keep the Southrons down on the first turn. This works out great until one of them betrays the other.
All in all, it’s a really good, manipulative politics game. It’s the first game I played where you put an order chit in the place you want to activate, so everyone knows where your interests lie but they don’t know exactly what you’ll be doing there (you can put “Defend” and have those guys do nothing = feint so that the other side gets all nervous about your impending attack when there is none).
I’ve never played the expansions though.
Starcraft does the order chits really well. I could not be more hostile to the brand without being nuts, but the overall game is difficult not to like, and that part in particular is well-executed.
I don’t see that this has been mentioned, so heads-up if you’re one of the sane people who does like Pandemic. The On the Brink expansion is back in print and in stock online and in stores. I had been waiting for it to come back for a while, and I picked up a copy this week just in time for a little get-together this weekend.
The thing I like about cooperative games and Pandemic in particular is that cooperation is the game. Your group comes up with a plan together, people agree or disagree on strategies, somebody has an idea I didn’t think of, etc. That’s a lot of fun to me. Sure, I could sit down with the Pandemic board and a few pawns and probably win by myself, but that’s not really the point.
JM1
2739
Having played several games with the expansion last week, I have to say I think it’s near-mandatory just for the new roles. They are superb.
The Pandemic expansion is pricey for what it is, but it’s also one of the best expansions I’ve ever bought. Anyone who has Pandemic should have it. Even the tchotchkes are fun: It comes with a set of petri dishes to hold the infection cubes.
