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Topic	thirty-one tabletop games, ranked
SeabassDebeste 03/20/18 4:30:50 PM #180:	12. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (2nd Edition) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103343/game-thrones-board-game-second-edition Genre/mechanics: Area control, dudes on a map, bidding, hand management, player combat, order placement Rules complexity: 9/10 Game length: 180-360 minutes Player count: 3-6 Experience: 5 games with 3-6 players First played: 2015 Minor Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire spoilers may follow A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, based on the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, pits six Great Houses of Westeros against one another in an effort to control either seven castles or the most at the end of ten seasons. Each round, there is a simultaneous planning phase in which you place order tokens - marching, supporting, defending, raiding, marshalling - on each of your troops. The tokens are turned simultaneously face-up and resolved in player order. At the end of the round, Westeros Event Cards are flipped - which may cause players to Muster, or bid for Influence (which affects turn order and combat strength and special powers), or cause Wildlings to assail the kingdom. Design - There are two things you should know about AGOT: The Board Game's design. The first is that it is magnificently thematic. The map of Westeros is absolutely gorgeous, and it's divided into areas you know and love - Winterfell, King's Landing, Riverrun, The Eyrie, Castle Black - along with more obscure ones like Cracklaw Point and Prince's Pass. Getting to the top of an influence track can give you a cool cardboard cutout - the Iron Throne will make you the arbiter of tiebreakers in the future; the Valyrian Steel Blade can be used to boost your combat strength once per round; and the Messenger Raven can give you intel from beyond the Wall, or allow you the ability to change your plans before anyone else reacts. Knights are better than footmen, naval superiority lets you travel faster, and Siege Engines are good for attacking castles but useless for defending. Supply-line adjustments and marshalling opportunities are unpredictable and messy with the Westeros event card deck, and one game may be crawling with massive armies while another game has each player hanging desperately onto a few troops. The very language of the Westeros decks is great - "Crow Killers," "Mustering," "A Clash of Kings," "Web of Lies," and the like - very immersive and cool-sounding. Battle is done by selecting a card from your hand, which represents a character belonging to that house - and they have thematic abilities like House Martell's propensity for retreating without losing, or Stannis Baratheon's propensity for attacking without political support, or the Queen of Thorns's ability to mess with an opponent's schemes outside of battle. All six houses - Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, Martell, Tyrell, Greyjoy - are fairly represented. You may find yourself in familiar thematic situations - the Tyrells and Martells feuding over the Prince's Pass, or Ironborn invading Winterfell and burning down the fleet at Lannisport. No one house will be able to hold six castles over multiple turns thanks to supply limits and the few tokens you get to place, so temporary alliances are critical - just like in the series. And the flip side of that thematicness is: this game is almost stupidly fiddly and weird. Tons of elements are thematic, but don't integrate seamlessly into the game, or cause some issues gameplay-wise. For example, learning exactly how ports work and how the 'ship in the port' power token rule works is fiddly and strange. The in-game instructions on how to handle fewer-than-six-player games are pretty poor (though with smarter house-ruling in blocking off areas, this can definitely be mitigated). The Wildlings are a neat, thematic element, but they have nearly nothing to do with the rest of the game and generally feel random. The entire Westeros phase can feel a bit arbitrary, in truth. --- yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness <cite>SeabassDebeste posted [p:898166433] in thirty-one... [t:76412082]...</cite> <quote>12. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game (2nd Edition) https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103343/game-thrones-board-game-second-edition Genre/mechanics: Area control, dudes on a map, bidding, hand management, player combat, order placement Rules complexity: 9/10 Game length: 180-360 minutes Player count: 3-6 Experience: 5 games with 3-6 players First played: 2015 Minor Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire spoilers may follow A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, based on the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, pits six Great Houses of Westeros against one another in an effort to control either seven castles or the most at the end of ten seasons. Each round, there is a simultaneous planning phase in which you place order tokens - marching, supporting, defending, raiding, marshalling - on each of your troops. The tokens are turned simultaneously face-up and resolved in player order. At the end of the round, Westeros Event Cards are flipped - which may cause players to Muster, or bid for Influence (which affects turn order and combat strength and special powers), or cause Wildlings to assail the kingdom. Design - There are two things you should know about AGOT: The Board Game's design. The first is that it is magnificently thematic. The map of Westeros is absolutely gorgeous, and it's divided into areas you know and love - Winterfell, King's Landing, Riverrun, The Eyrie, Castle Black - along with more obscure ones like Cracklaw Point and Prince's Pass. Getting to the top of an influence track can give you a cool cardboard cutout - the Iron Throne will make you the arbiter of tiebreakers in the future; the Valyrian Steel Blade can be used to boost your combat strength once per round; and the Messenger Raven can give you intel from beyond the Wall, or allow you the ability to change your plans before anyone else reacts. Knights are better than footmen, naval superiority lets you travel faster, and Siege Engines are good for attacking castles but useless for defending. Supply-line adjustments and marshalling opportunities are unpredictable and messy with the Westeros event card deck, and one game may be crawling with massive armies while another game has each player hanging desperately onto a few troops. The very language of the Westeros decks is great - "Crow Killers," "Mustering," "A Clash of Kings," "Web of Lies," and the like - very immersive and cool-sounding. Battle is done by selecting a card from your hand, which represents a character belonging to that house - and they have thematic abilities like House Martell's propensity for retreating without losing, or Stannis Baratheon's propensity for attacking without political support, or the Queen of Thorns's ability to mess with an opponent's schemes outside of battle. All six houses - Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, Martell, Tyrell, Greyjoy - are fairly represented. You may find yourself in familiar thematic situations - the Tyrells and Martells feuding over the Prince's Pass, or Ironborn invading Winterfell and burning down the fleet at Lannisport. No one house will be able to hold six castles over multiple turns thanks to supply limits and the few tokens you get to place, so temporary alliances are critical - just like in the series. And the flip side of that thematicness is: this game is almost stupidly fiddly and weird. Tons of elements are thematic, but don't integrate seamlessly into the game, or cause some issues gameplay-wise. For example, learning exactly how ports work and how the 'ship in the port' power token rule works is fiddly and strange. The in-game instructions on how to handle fewer-than-six-player games are pretty poor (though with smarter house-ruling in blocking off areas, this can definitely be mitigated). The Wildlings are a neat, thematic element, but they have nearly nothing to do with the rest of the game and generally feel random. The entire Westeros phase can feel a bit arbitrary, in truth. --- yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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