LogFAQs > #898166454

AGOT:TBG is also incredibly punishing. Lose a battle, lose your troops, lose your castle - these can all happen and they can severely fuck you over, depending on what cards/troops/influence you have left and what Westeros cards are turned up. The power of a navy is almost ridiculously important if you want to expand, meaning the Lannisters, boxed in by the Greyjoys, are in a really rough spot. The cards that let you kill opposing troops only work if you win, so some cards can really just be straight garb (sorry, Melisandre/House Baratheon in general). Despite that the house cards' printed strength is the same for each house, the power level of the cards definitely varies.

So to sum up, the game is thematic and will make you feel like an actual lord in the ASOIAF world. Which means, life will be extremely messy and occasionally pretty damn unfair.

Enjoyment - So why is such a massively flawed, messy game so high up?

AGOT: The Board Game was my breakthrough heavy game. It might be the first game I played that regularly takes over an hour to play that I actually enjoyed. It's the first game I heavily researched before my first play. Because of that, it occupies the softest of soft spots in my heart. That game took nine hours from the beginning of teaching (even after the Youtube video I watched) to the end. It spanned two meals, several breaks, and some extremely salty comments. (The girl playing Baratheon backstabbed me - the Lannisters - for zero gain in Round 10 because I went to the bathroom. As a result I had to punish her instead of the pain-in-the-ass Greyjoys for my final move.) But after finishing it, I was officially in "the group," and that was worth a lot to me. I also managed not to have my feelings hurt personally, which might be surprising, considering I'm very prone to holding grudges and being petty, despite my best efforts.

It's also one of the great thematic games for me, in terms of world. ASOIAF might be the only IP that catches my attention at the moment simply because of how rich and interesting the lore is. (Six different factions here! Each with a full complement of great cahracters!) I had never read ASOIAF or watched GOT before playing the board game, even though I'd always intended to, but the board game (along with some other fantastic social media occurrences during this time - shout-out to Paul Pierce) finally pushed me over the edge.

But real talk - it's pretty damn fun to play, despite all its fiddliness. In my fourth game, I was the Lannisters and Greyjoy ran me over early on. I was annoyed and never got into the game, but it was still fun watching the others duke it out. There's just something awesome about feeling like you're playing something epic as you hide your pieces behind the screen. The complexity of it obscures strategies a bit and makes it so that what you find most important - i.e. the worst-case scenario of what someone is going to do to you - is rarely what's on your opponent's mind, because they've got other opponents to worry about, and they're worrying about their worst-case scenarios. Blind-bidding is an inherently fun mechanic to me, so the games where the "A Clash of Kings" cards turn up a lot are fun to me.

The game has a 4-player expansion called A Feast for Crows that I enjoyed playing once. It's more objective-based than territory-based and it's considerably shorter.

Future - I don't know who will compose the six players I next play AGOT with - I'm part of a meetup group that I've played three games with, but they were with five, five, and three due to flakiness - but I'm hopeful. There's also the Dance of Dragons expansion, but that would require six experienced players along with the base game. So it might be a pipe dream, but I'd love to see that on the table someday.

Bonus question - What is your favorite game based on an IP you love? What is your opinion on IPs?

Hint for #11 - even if you don't like dexterity games you must understand it's a peel
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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