I have had an opportunity to try a number of games in the last few weeks and I think it’s time for some quick reviews.
Jamaica by Asmodee 2007
Score: (2.9)
Colorful and thematic, its a very magnetic game, but mechanically it’s more a game for children then gamers.
I have played this one a couple of times now, my first exposure was years ago but It recently found its way to the table at board game night at my gaming club and I think I’m ready to put a score to it.
Jamaica is essentially a racing game with some fun & quirky card mechanics and resource management to make things go. It’s a simple game, but there is a cleverness to how the race is manipulate, a kind of combination of some dice and card play decisions. It’s a very streamlined, easy to teach, easy to learn mechanic that makes Jamaica a very relaxed game to get to the table. I think the one really memorable take away from this game is its visual appeal, it’s a very colorful, very pretty game with sturdy components and very firm stylized art. While there is strong theme here from the art work, for how simple the mechanic is, it has a very good connection to that theme for Caribbean pirate racing mechanically as well. Jamaica falls into the “light-casual” category of board games mechanically, though I found that there was enough interesting decisions and strategy in the game to sufficiently entertain a veteran gamer for a quick run through.
It’s nothing I would rush out to add to my collection and I definitely felt that it’s a bit overhyped for what it is. Much like Small World, it takes the light-casual element a bit too far and wanders into that “for kids” category which is typically a type of game I don’t mind playing but it’s nothing I want to own, nor would I suggest it even as an entry level game for someone. This is at its heart a family game with young children in mind sufficiently entertaining for adults to not get bored on family game night but for a gaming group I found the game too simple to make the table. If you have kids between the ages of 6-12 I think this might be a good pick, but for gamers I think there are considerably better racing games with more umpf than Jamaica offers to fill a game night with.
Le Havre by Lookout Games 2008
Score (3.25)
It looks like a Euro because it is one and like many Euro’s it has that simple to learn impossible to master design that Euro game lovers will appreciate.
I used to own this game and ended up giving it away to some friends, but now that it was back in print I snatched it up. Le Havre is an economic simulation game where players take on the roles of business men working in the city of Le Havre, trading, manufacturing and selling goods. It sounds complicated but the true beauty of Le Havre is precisely the fact that the game is super simple. You can effectively write the core rules on a napkin and while it has the appearance of a complex, busy Euro with lots of moving parts, it plays more like a casual game, yet boasts a fairly advanced level of strategic options. You could say it’s one of those easy to learn impossible to master type of games, something that is often said about great Euro’s and this Euro is no different.
Now it is a Euro game and it does have a rather flat theme, though I personally love great economic games and I often give Euro’s considerably more room to breathe with the themes as they tend to make up for it in the area of gameplay and replay ability. If you’re looking for a game to wow you visually or with its theme this isn’t going to be that game. La Havre’s strength is in its gameplay and re-playability, exactly where you would expect it for a euro. It plays great with 2-3 players, which is a great niche unfilled in my personal collection I was happy to see plugged up. This is a classic, it’s not going to blow you out of your seat by modern game design standards, but I it’s held up considerably better than most old school Euros have. You will definitely appreciate a game you can pull out and just start playing without a lot of rules explanation while still getting a quality, thinky strategy game.
Roll Through The Ages: The Bronze Age
Score: (1.65)
I try hard not to judge a book by its cover or be some sort of gamer snob but sometimes you just have to trust your instincts, it looks terrible because it is terrible.
Ok I’m a huge fan of Through The Ages, it ranks as one of my all-time favorites at this point so I thought, hey why not a short dice based version of this game. In fact I had considerably higher hopes for this one then one might presume about a dice game, it is after all a Matt Leacock designed game, a man I hold in the highest regard as a game designer.
Unfortunately Matt really missed the mark here. I should not judge this game too harshly it is after all a quickie dice chucker, but dice chucker or not there where some key decisions in this design that really broke it apart for me. It was quirky with odd and unnecessarily complex rules for resource management while simultaneously being too slow for a dice game. At the start the game it just feels like you don’t have enough dice to do anything and because of how the odds are shaped, getting more dice just makes the whole thing more swingy thanks to negative effects on the dice. It’s actually this precise effect (negative dice results) where the game kind of falls apart.
I think the negative effect on dice (the dreaded skull) was an unnecessary addition. Just a simple golden rule for designers out there; When making a dice chucker, don’t put negative effects on the dice, make negative impacting effects be part of player decision instead. Blanks are ok but a dice chucker should be about using your dice results (resources) and trying to find clever ways to extend the results(resources) as far as you can take them, it should not be a judge and jury result, aka, roll the dice and see what horrible things happen to you. This sort of negative dice mechanic takes a game already largely driven by luck and just overemphasizes that fact, making any decisions you make in response largely irrelevant compared to the smack down you get from just rolling badly.
I wasn’t fond of the components either, the whole wooden pegs thing was just very unthematic and unnecessarily fiddly, not to mention ugly. This was a 2008 released game so I suppose we should be a bit more lenient here but all and all Roll Through The Ages was a hard pass for me.
Ordinarily before I do a review of a game I want to play it dozens of times, have plenty of time to think about it and in general dive into it as deep as it can go. It’s kind of my process and the only way I feel comfortable and certain that my review will hold up as I’m writing it as well as 2 years later when I look at it again. I have realized over the last year however that while I play a wide variety of games and plenty of them, I actually typically only review a dozen or so games a year as result of this sort of system. More than that, I generally only review games I like because naturally, I don’t want to dive that deeply into games I don’t like.
The end result is that I don’t review a lot of games I play and I kind of don’t like that, I want this blog to be filled with played games and opinions. As such I have created a new article format I like to call Quick Plays & Reviews. For these shorter reviews I will effectively apply the same rating system, but will only post the final score and my overall comments about the game. There will be less nuts and bolts to the review, but it will allow me to get more game coverage. Some games on my quick reviews may get full reviews later on as well.
This last month I have played several games so let’s see if we can stick some scores on them.
Colt Express by Asmodee 2014
Final Score:
A simple and visual enticing game that is sure to be a hit with the family.
The winner of the Spiel des Jahres, among countless other awards, this western themed card game includes some visual pizazz, robo-rally reminiscent pre-programming mechanics and just enough take that to be fun but not mean. It is a family game both visually and mechanically, it has the appeal typically associated with Spiel des Jahres winners.
I liked it well enough, it was simple and intuitive enough that rules explanations could be done as you play, yet had just enough depth to ensure that some strategy is required to win. This game sort of falls into that “I like it but have no desire to own it” line of games for me, which to be fair, is most games. I think in part this is due to one common issues with these sort of very light family games, over the course of many plays it just doesn’t hold up and it’s in particularly problematic when I can see that after playing it just once.
I definitely think this is a great game for kids, it’s just simple enough to teach to youngsters to more or less get it and thanks to great artwork and theme it’s an easy sell. Again, everything you expect from a Spiel des Jahres winner, it’s no surprise at all to me that this game won the award.
Conclusion: Clever combination of classic mechanics in a streamlined package based on an easily relatable theme. For me personally it’s a bit too simple for the collection, perhaps something I might put on the kids shelves. Great design, lack of re-playability will probably hurt it in the long run.
Terra Mystica by Feverland 2012
Final Score:
Over-hyped and overrated snooze-fest not worthy of your shelf space or table time. There are far better cube pushing Euros out there.
When Terra Mystica hit gaming collections in 2012 it become an instant boardgamegeek sensation catapulting it into the top 10 where it sits comfortably in the no. 4 spot today. I had played this game a couple of times online shortly after it released, but after my most recent in person play I’m convinced that it firmly deserves a spot on my top 5 games popular games you can skip list.
I’m sorry but there is very little to love here and while I have my grudges with boardgamegeek.com, I can usually at least understand why a game like Twilight Struggle or Pandemic Legendary reaches the heights it does. I can see that these games have that objectively good design thing going even if it doesn’t speak to me personally. Terra Mystica on the other hand is just a very mediocre, poorly streamlined, cube pusher and it’s neither objectively a particularly great design nor is it innovative. There are at least a dozen boring cube pushers that are a lot more interesting than this one and far less pointlessly confusing. We get it, push cubes, score points, it’s a simple concept yet in Terra Mystica its made painfully slow and complex to the point where caring or even knowing if your winning requires someone to wake you up. Your going to spend a lot of your time calculating how many points you have and how many your opponents have to even know how well your doing, I really hate that about most Euros but in Terra Mystica this is particularly annoying. This is one of those games that even obscene amounts of alcohol can’t make entertaining.
What little substance that is here, is rather poorly executed resulting in an awkward un-intuitive game that can be at best described as an “interesting” design. There is some cleverness buried under all the gears and pistons that make this workhorse go, but there is little pay off in the end and it takes far too long time to get there. Games end very anti-climatically after being played in silence for far too long with virtually no interaction between players, some might say it’s a fun game but you better check that persons definition because about the most exciting thing that happens the entire game is when a player digs for terrain in a location you considered at some point you may want to dig for terrain in the future, maybe. The entire game just felt like I was waiting for a dentist appointment, I was neither enjoying my wait nor looking forward to my turn, I just wanted the whole mess to be behind me.
Conclusion: This is a huge pass and I believe even more now than before that this is without question one of the most over hyped games in existence. Boring, slow and overly complicated for a cube pusher.
Tyrants of the Underdark by Wizards of the Coast 2016
Final Score:
Wizards of the Coast board games are hit and miss, like Lords of Waterdeep this one is a hit.
Where Terra Mystica is over hyped and overrated, Tyrants of the Underdark has the exact opposite problem. No one is talking about it and they really should be because it’s fantastic. The D&D themed game driven by a deck building mechanic, area control and dark elves hit with my group like strippers and beer. It’s a game practically tailored made for us as it taps the theme and the mechanics we love with just enough take that to create and settle some rivalries.
Personally I think this is going to be one that is likely going to become a regular at our gaming nights for a long time to come, it hits those joy centers, in fact its already hit the table top more times in just a short month then most games will see all year.
I think the trick to the game is the smoothness of play and the fact that each players turn causes you to have to adapt and adjust your strategy. You’re constantly in over watch mode, adjusting your plan until your turn comes up. There is also this element of time pressure, people are buying up cards, taking over cities, scoring points and it quickly starts to feel like a race but one where you can slap your opponents to get them back in line behind you. That is definitely right up my ally mechanically.
Of course I think the theme helps a lot as well, my group, myself includes loves the D&D franchise, in particular forgotten realms and we are a twisted lot so getting to play the “evil” side of things is definitely a cherry on top.
Now I will say that I think the game is very open to expandability and in the past with games like Lord of Waterdeep Wizards of the Coasts created a great core game, but it was a interaction focused expansion that really nailed it home. I kind of see the same thing with Tyrants of the Underdark, it has a great core, but what it really needs is a hard hitting “complexity” raising expansion that makes the game just a wee bit nastier.
I think this one will eventually get a full review but my first impressions are quite solid, I’m surprised how little hype this one is getting.
Conclusion: Strong gameplay and streamlined mechanics, tough decisions with a unique take on a nostalgic theme. Great choice for both casual and veteran gamers.
Star Wars: Rebellion by Fantasy Flight Games 2016
Final Score:
It’s Star Wars so there is a lot to love, but remove the theme and this game might feel a be a bit too linear.
When FFG announced Star Wars: Rebellion the word “excited” barely describes it, this bad boy easily made my top 5 most anticipated games list and as I sat down to play it for the first time it suffices to say that being objective wasn’t going to be part of the experience. Star Wars Rebellion is a Star Wars nerds wet dream, taking on the role as either the Empire or Rebellion players have the opportunity to use the entire weight of the Star Wars universe from the Death Star to Luke Skywalker, from freezing people in carbonite to shooting open exhaust vents, it’s all here.
My first play of this went down exactly as one can imagine, grinning from ear to ear, I was simply overwhelmed by the spectacle of it over all and if you asked me what I thought about the game right then and there it would have gotten an 11 out of 10. Time however is the reviewer’s greatest weapon and I was wise enough to hold back my opinion about the game, taking a step back to get a more objective perspective on things.
Now Rebellion is often referred to as the Star Wars version of War of the Rings, a story driven game heavily tilting the theme over gameplay and I think that is without question the most accurate way to describe. This of course assumes you have played War of the Rings, if you haven’t it leaves you with little perspective to go on. I think perhaps a better way to describe is that Star Wars is a board game that leans so hard on bringing the story to the game that mechanics almost take a back seat, which is not to say the mechanics aren’t good, they are in fact great, but it does mean there are some sacrifices made that more critical reviewers might be quick to point out.
For one the game is a bit scripted and this is something that only comes to light after a long hard look at what is under the hood once the fanboy rainbow glasses are removed and you focus in on those mechanics. One problem that immediately jumps to mind is the fact that while the game hinges on finding the rebel base, it can and most likely will very anti-climatically be revealed by simply accidently stumbling across it. As such the Imperial players ability to win the game is often driven by his ability to get lucky and find the base. The quicker he does it the more likely he is to win because once the base is revealed; given sufficient amount of time (one or two turns) typically the Empire can overwhelm the base and win the game. More than that, once the base is revealed the games nuances and core mechanic, that cat and mouse game of finding the base dissipates and the game becomes a RISK like war game of simply conquering a single important territory, something that the rebels are not well equipped to do against the overwhelming forces of the Empire. Now this is a very simplistic view of things, there actually is a bit more to it than that but in a nutshell the game boils down to the Empire looking for the base, winning if they find it, losing if they don’t. All of the other mechanics are kind of a thematic show boat full of distractions, but matter little in the bottom line of things.
There are some reset buttons here, the Rebels can for example move their base to a new location which is a good solution to the problem for rebels if the opportunity is available. I’m not really here to complain about this element other than to say that a lot hinges on that random game of chance where an Imperial player can simply get lucky to put him in a position to easily win the game or get unlucky and never find the base. Play this game 6 or 7 time and I think you will start to see some repetitive patterns emerge on the static map of the Star Wars universe.
The objective review for this one is still very far away for me, I really need to get more plays as the game does have some subtle nuances I’m sure I missed but for now I can say that the thematically driven gameplay is strong enough to easily push this to the top of the list of a Star Wars fans play list. I don’t think you need to hesitate but keep in mind that while it has the look of Twilight Imperium, it doesn’t have the dynamics. This is a two play game and that epic feel might start to feel quite a bit less epic once you have played it a few times and start to see the formula for what it is. For what it’s worth, I think mechanically, Star Wars is not as good a game as War of the Rings but thematically it has the same strength which personally I think is more than enough to carry it.
Conclusion: For Star Wars fans this is a must own/play game, for everyone else I strongly suggest you look over the mechanics and consider the fact that without the strength of the theme this one may be a bit linear. Loving Star Wars is an absolute must.
Designers: Steven Kimball, James Kniffen, Corey Konieczka, Jason Little, Brady Sadler, Adam Sadler
Final Score: (3 out 5 Stars)
I have been playing and collecting Star Wars X-Wing since release and have always been a big fan, yet oddly enough I always felt an aversion to reviewing it. I think in part it’s because I know that while I love the game, staying objective was going to be difficult, but also because I knew that ultimately my rating system would keep me honest and in the end X-Wing wasn’t going to score as high as I would want it to. Still I have played X-Wing so long, I know it inside and out, from every angle, in every style of play. I think I’m as ready to review it as I will ever be.
Keep in mind this review is not of the core set, it’s the entire combined experience of everything X-wing from start to finish up to this point (roughly wave 8). Ok so here we go.
Overview
Unless you have been living under a metaphorical gaming rock, you know what Star Wars X-Wing is. Exploding on the miniatures gaming scene, X-Wing rose to be one of the bestselling and most popular miniatures game on the market surpassing the reigning king, Warhammer 40k. Leveraging one of the most popularized and fanatic induced franchises at a time of its rebirth, X-Wing puts players behind the cockpit of Star Wars most famous star fighters in pitched dog fights. The game packs hidden movement with clever template mechanics, a wide variety of special powers and a unique execution phase that creates dynamic and interesting combinations on level with complex CCG deck building.
You could go out on the street anywhere on planet earth and most people will know what this ship is, the popularity of Star Wars is undeniable.
It’s popularity is neither surprising nor is its economic success, but when you get right down to it, is X-wing a good game or does it live by its franchise fame and it’s fanatic fane base?
Components
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: The miniatures look fantastic on the table with sturdy components all around, inspiring the theme and setting you up for an imagination induced Star Wars nerdgasm without worry that you’ll break something when you get too excited.
Cons: While the miniature casts and pre-paints are good, they are considerably below the quality level of your average un-assembled and unpainted miniatures game. They are on the low end of the spectrum in the hobby.
When it comes to miniatures games, components are probably more critical than any other type of game. In fact, the miniature game hobby is referred to as a hobby because you normally spend 95% of the time assembling and painting miniatures and about 5% of your time actually playing.
Fantasy Flight being clever business folk flipped things on its heel and decided that assembling & painting wasn’t going to be a part of X-Wing and produced a pre-painted miniatures game instead. Some loved it, some hated it, but there is no denying that if you played Warhammer 40k for 10 years and you played X-Wing for one year you will have played 10 times more X-Wing matches then you will Warhammer 40k matches and it’s in part because painting is pulled out of the equation.
We have seen a improvements over time in X-Wing, the latest releases are pretty fantastic even under close inspection, if only it started out this good.
Now the drawback here is that pre-painted miniature quality is never going to be up to snuff compared to hand painted miniatures unless you are particularly bad at painting minis. That is the case here, while the miniature paint jobs are passable, perhaps even “pretty good” this is largely thanks to the fact that most Star Wars ships are effectively variations on the color grey or beige. It’s not going to blow you away and under close inspection it’s easy to see that very little attention was given. Thanks to the rustic color scheme of Star Wars ships however, the imperfections are easy to ignore, the ships look pretty fantastic on the table and evidence of that can be seen in the fact that re-paints are quite rare in the hobby.
The casts also fall in the pretty good category but there really is little to complain about here unless you are accustomed to incredible detail of modern miniatures games. The minis are detailed enough to be recognizable and sufficiently accurate if you’re a fan. They are scaled well enough to keep all but the most rabid fuck-tard pleased. They are sturdy as well, my miniatures have lasted through endless box shakes, drops and careless handling with little more than an occasional bent antenna. There is little to complain or praise about Star Wars X-Wing miniatures, they get the job done. When it comes to the quality of miniatures FFG produces while 40k fans will be quick to point out (and be correct) they don’t compare to what you get from Games Workshop, considering they are pointing the finger from second place, it’s clear that while component quality is important, having a great game mechanic is what puts you in the number one spot in the 21st century.
I personally love the fact that the game is pre painted, in fact if X-wing was not pre-painted I seriously doubt I would be playing it. I have neither the time or the patience for painting these days, so for me, pre-painted minis were really a big decision maker.
Theme
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: From the classic to the epic, in X-Wing the theme pours out of every exposed thermal exhaust port.
Cons: If you don’t like Star Wars go fuck yourself. That’s really all I have to say about that.
In a word, pitch perfect. If there is anything X-Wing got right it’s the feel of a thematic Star Wars infused dog fight. You start each match with a small, controlled and well formed group of fighters and by the time you reach your enemy it’s a cluster fuck of ships, jockeying for position, trying to get on someone’s tail and blowing them out of the sky…. eh space-sky. Success is based largely on movement, special skills of the pilots and abilities of ships as well as a bit of luck. Each ship brings something unique to the battle and every ship functions as you might imagine based on Star Wars lore.
Star Wars is an epic series of movies, and playing X-Wing will give you that same nostalgic feeling.
This is hardly the end of the thematic presence of X-Wing. Take any dog fight scene in the movies, cartoons, books, comic books or video games and easily re-create it in X-Wing. Whether it’s battles between the Millennium Falcon and a bunch of Tie Fighters or made up dog fights like contest between Red Squadron and Black Squadron, it can all be done and the rush and thematic presence is there. Thanks to the introduction of Epic play, you can now also throw in huge ships like the Raider or Corvette to add exactly what Epic play suggests, bigger battles with more ships.
Every card and piece of gear is meticulously illustrated with a distinct Star Wars feel giving the already visual presence of the game even more appeal and this is important because you want to have a sense of a person behind the ship.
Suffice to say the theme here is in bulk and there is no disputing X-Wing’s success in this department. If there is anything to complain about here is that at 100 points in a standard match, typically the battlefield is not quite as full as one might hope. While you can throw in a bunch of low cost Tie Fighters to give it some girth, typical 100 point match ups allow you to put between 2 to 4 ships on the table. Since this is the competitive standard, it is the most common type of game people aspire to but personally I think the game is a lot more interesting at the 150-300 point mark. In particular when you are trying re-create thematic battles with authentic squadrons, it can be quite difficult to accomplish at the low point match of 100 point. This of course I wouldn’t count against the theme, after all, how many points you and a friend decide to play with is up to you and while 100 points is a standard, it’s not a requirement.
Gameplay
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: Between the brilliant flight system, hidden movement, challenging list building and multitude of ways to play the game all wrapped in a Star Wars theme as a fan it’s simply pure joy.
Cons: As if to countereach good point in the game FFG has poured sour milk into it through a steady and painful release of poorly thought out and unbalanced ships, pilots and/or equipment.
Ok so this is the big one and the one I have been dreading. I knew X-Wing would pass components and theme with flying colors, it is FFG and it Star Wars after all. That said in order for this review to be truly objective, despite my personal tastes, I would have to deal with the many negatives of X-Wing. Gameplay is the single most important thing to the game. Sure theme and components are critical but all the pizazz in the world isn’t going to make you want to collect hundreds of dollars in miniatures if you don’t enjoy the game, especially since the painting part of the hobby is largely removed. I’m a glass is half-full kind of guy so let’s do the good stuff first.
X-wings flight system mechanic is nothing short of brilliant in particular considering the subject matter here, it just fits in with X-Wing dog fighting like peanut butter and jelly. It’s important to note it’s not the only game that uses the system, it can be seen in Star Trek Attack Wing and Dungeons and Dragons attack wing and while the system works exactly the same, it just doesn’t fit those games at all in my opinion. The maneuver templates while a simple concept gives X-Wing a very distinct dog fight feel, quite possibly the most important and defining aspect of the game.
Next up is the hidden move first, shoot later mechanic. Again, this is such a great yet simple way to represent a dog fight in space. You have these ships buzzing around each other trying to get into position and everything from pilot skill, ship type and equipment are accounted for while simultaneously adding that wonderful human factor of trying to read your opponents mind and predicting where he will be, what maneuvers he will take. I love the way this work and it’s just a pitch perfect touch to the games already fantastic flight system. Put together, this is one of those mechanics that you look at as a amateur game designer, realize its simplicity and wonder why the fuck you didn’t think of it!
Finally and you really have to hand it to FFG here, they have ensured that there are lots of different ways to play the same game, each more dynamic then the next. You can play pitched battles or scenarios, there are different point counts, you have epic play and team epic play. They have created mission creation system which houses thousands of player created missions. Those are just the official by rules methods, but X-Wing opens itself up to the creative fans and as you might expect from a miniatures community lots of alternative rules, campaign modes, even cooperative play have all been invented for the game. The mechanic is simple enough to manage that creating balanced sub-system is a snap to do with and really everything kind of clicks in terms of trying to work the games core into alternative concepts. You buy these miniatures and you don’t just by one game, but an entire series of games all within the confines of a dog fighting epic. It’s fantastic and by and large it’s this over anything else that I love about the game.
The Flight System is simple, elegant and thematic. It’s a perfect fit for X-Wing.
Overall I can also say that X-Wing is just fun to play and I think fun factor while a matter of personal taste exclusively should never be ignored, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. Pushing around miniature versions of childhood toys in a game clearly made for grownups is its own magic.
Ok so now it’s time for the bad stuff and unfortunately there is quite a bit of it, it really does pain me to say.
For one the games “balance” leaves a lot to be desired, in particular in the 100 point standard match arena, the most common type of match up. Worst yet in a lot of ways many of the things released for X-Wing over the years have kind of broken its thematic spirit as a dog fighting game which really adds salt to the unbalance wound.
While we got 360 shooting on the Millennium Falcon in the early days for example, this very expensive, large ship while pretty strong, against the big scheme of the game had sufficient drawbacks that special builds were not needed to counter it. 360 shooting however became something of a common practice in releases afterwards, more and more ways to do it were released with every wave and at this point it’s just kind of turned at least the competitive game into less a dog fighting game and more a Yahtzee dice challenge. Can you roll well on command? Now I will say that unbalances of this kind can be overcome by high level play and to that X-Wing can be said to be an easy game to learn but a hard game to master. Once mastered I think unbalances become less of an issue, but that pull towards 360 shooting is strong if you’re having trouble winning.
360 degree shooting is hardly the only issue, but it’s sort of the catalyst to how releases where handled because each new wave is effectively trying to correct the problems and imbalances of the previous release, or we are meant to believe anyway. Most dominant Meta lists however in competitive play are based around 360 degree shooting or ridiculous dice control/manipulation, so you either had to just get in range to roll dice or you could forgo maneuvering and just joust without fear thanks to amazing dice odds.
Ship A was too strong, ship B was created to counter ship A, leading to ship B becoming too strong so equipment C was created to counter ship B but it accidently made ship D too strong. Etc.. etc. If you know anything about collectable card games you might be familiar with this phenomenon and you probably also know it’s no accident that the newest stuff is always center stage of the new meta. These implementations are not a result of bad design but actually an intentional way to push collection element of the game for competitive players. Another words if you want to compete, you needed to buy the new stuff because it’s always better than the old stuff. X-wing suffers horribly as a result and in large part competitive play will typically render 90% of your collection useless at any given moment and you’ll be flying variations of the 2-4 actively competitive lists if you have a desire to actually be able to compete.
Now a lot of people might argue with that assessment, believe me, I want to as well but I fully understand fanboyism, suffer from it too but it would be dishonest to assess the game any other way. This upping of the power curve is blatant. There was a time in the early days when rolling 4 dice was a lot and you would only sometimes land such opportunities, but in today’s environment, this is just average and there are ships that will roll 5 or 6 dice with re-rolls and dice manipulations thanks to combinations of ships and cards.
I love X-Wing, so it’s hard to put that to paper, but it’s true. At the end of the day X-Wing is not a balanced game. It swings wildly, there are heavily overpowered ships, ship abilities and equipment combo’s and while something new will always come along that will trump the current “cheese”, in the end the standard 100 point match of competitive play is really a disappointing experience of predictable metas. You end up facing these cheesy lists and the only way you can compete is to build your own cheese.
Epic play might take a bit longer to resolve, but X-Wing really flexes it’s muscle as a game at this level.
Yes sure, if you’re a really good X-wing player you will win more often than lose and I get that and it really is true, but that really isn’t the point. The point is that you should be able to build an interesting or fun list and still be competitive within the scope of a balanced game because you play well, but in X-Wing you just can’t do that. You have to play the meta lists to stay competative AND you have to be great at the game, simply being great is not enough. I don’t mind the latter, but I absolutely hate meta play and I think it’s a flaw to design a game that hinges on it so heavily.
Now thankfully this does not mean the game has to be unbalanced. Get a friendly group together, break away from the 100 point standard, play scenario’s, epic play, re-create battles from movies or books, create a couple of house rules and you’re golden. There is fun gameplay in there and you can really avoid these broken elements of the game, but if you play X-Wing long enough you will find this ugly competitive nature of the game rear its ugly head and deflate your enjoyment of the game even among friendly groups. The unbalance is inbred into the game.
Thankfully I can honestly say that at least as of this writing X-Wing is in the best shape it’s been a long time. Many of the problems with overpowered elements of the game have strong and varied counters. A lot of gear for older ships was introduced that will make a lot more of your collection viable, even competitively. Still there are many elements that still are not that great. Ordinance equipment like missiles and torpedoes are still extremely weak despite repeated attempts to correct it. X-Wings, the most iconic ship in the Star Wars universe are universally accepted as being utterly useless and overpriced point wise. 360 degree shooting and Turrets you will still find in an overwhelming amount of lists and there is still gear in the game that will just make you hate the game as a whole as it frustrates the shit out of you in how unfair it is, both when you face it and the fact that you have to use it for your ship to remain viable. I hate having 100+ cards in my box but only 10 or so that are worth a shit competitively.
The game has aged now, whether it’s done well or not is a topic of debate, one which would make little difference in a review. The good news is that FFG still releases fun and interesting content pretty regularly and the unbalancing elements at this point are probably not repairable anyway so it’s pointless to argue about anyway. As gaming group you might consider house ruling certain things to create more enjoyable games but personally I find that the attempt are balancing and re-balancing the game via new releases is geared towards standard 100 point matches and when you break away from that, many things that are not viable become so as a result. This is kind of a good thing and I highly recommend getting away from 100 point games.
As it stands, X-Wing is a sort of wild swinger, it boasts some of the coolest and creative mechanics in any game I have ever played, while simultaneously suffering from some of the dumbest “cheesy” additions that just chip away at that wonderful design and the joy of playing a dog fighting game in the Star Wars Universe.
Replay ability and Longevity
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: Various game modes, plethora of ships, variants via list builds and the default dynamic nature of the game result in a game in which no two matches will ever be alike.
Cons: Much of what I just said in the pro’s section really relies on you building a sizable collection from which to work and that can get expensive real quick like.
When it comes to most miniatures games replaybaility is usually not a problem and X-Wing is no different. I do believe however that you have to keep collecting and bringing in new units and gear to keep the game fresh and interesting and in that regard like most collectible games, replayability hinges a bit on expanding your collection.
There are tons of ways to build every ship, but there are also plenty of staples. Even if you use the same list every time you play however there is a ton of replayability.
In general though once your collection reaches a certain size and in particular if you collect more than one faction, you really have a game that you will never run out of new experiences to offer. Every game of X-Wing is unique, every match up will dramatically alter the outcome and different point values have a huge impact on the way games play out. The higher you go the more interesting things get and more importantly the more gear and ships you might ordinarily ignore in the 100 point frame become viable.
X-Wing gets an A+ from me as far as longevity goes as well, I have been playing this game steady since release and I’m as excited to play it today as I was the day it was released.
Conclusion
You might think that I have a love hate relationship with X-Wing and perhaps to a degree it’s true. I do love its ingenuity, its fantastic dynamic simplicity and most of all it’s fun factor. In the same breath it’s swingy with many unbalanced elements and there is far too much “useless” equipment, ships and pilot types that make your collection feel unused, in particular in competitive 100 point standard matches.
So why is it still my favorite game? In the end I think the bad parts of X-Wing can be worked around pretty easily with some creative alternative ways to play the game outside of the 100 point standard match. What you’re left is all the good with little to none of the bad. Sure it’s a bit swingy of a game and luck plays its part either way, but I think there is an element of thematic correctness to that, dog fights are wildly unpredictable and so I’m pretty ok with that.
My personal experiences with X-Wing range from good to amazing and while I understand from a competitive stand point there is plenty to complain about, the idea that competitive is some sort of requirement or standard is silly, it’s simply not. If your looking for a thematic Star Wars dog fighting game and want to re-live some of the most epic moments in Star Wars, X-Wing will let you do that with ease.
If however you are looking for a competitive game, I think there are much better miniatures games for that. Star Wars Armada comes to mind in particular if you insist on the Star Wars theme, but X-Wing doesn’t fair that well in that department in my humble opinion. It’s much better as a thematic game of creating fun scenarios, thematic and epic sized games. That’s were all the joy of playing X-Wing really lives.
For what it’s worth, my heart bleeds to see my beloved X-Wing get a 3 out of 5 stars, if I wasn’t bound by my own rating system and stupid requirement to be objective I would have given it at least 4.5 Stars. It is my favorite game of all time and I love it, flaws and all.
Of all the games to make my collection Lord of the Rings the card game might quite possibly be the least likely candidate I could imagine. For one it’s a cooperative game, my least favorite of all table top game genres typically. Secondly it’s a pure card game which is usually not my thing, again generally not always and it’s a collectable card game which is definitely not my thing pretty much always. So how does a game like Lord of the Rings even get a chance from me let alone meet the stringent requirements of my personal collection given it has everything working against it? It’s a long story, but that is what this review and coincidently what the Lord of the Rings the card game is all about.
Overview
Lord of the Rings the card game by famed card game designer Nate French can be described as a thematic, progressive collectable card game with a focus on challenging puzzles in the form of quests, challenges that are met through optimized deck building and clever problem solving during game play. Now that is one boring way to describe it, alternatively one can say it’s a card game that lets you play out the entirety of the Lord of the Rings fairy tale by J.R.R Tolkien, and then some, quite possibly one of the most epic fantasy stories ever told through an ever mounting series of mini adventures and expansions.
Without question the most immediate impact of the game is it’s visual appeal, it’s stunning.
In Lord of the Rings you build decks around a small group of hero cards that will be the key resources for your group as they take on the adventures right out of the middle earth storylines. You will do everything you might expect from searching for Gollum, escaping Nazguls, fighting at Helm’s deep or facing Sauron in the two towers. Each game of Lord of the Rings consists of taking on a quest, typically as part of a series of quests that achieves one of the core story elements from the book, expanded universe or just the creative minds at FFG. For example in the first adventure series “Shadows of Mirkwood” players are tasked with finding Gollum over the course of six separate adventure packs. Each adventure pack is a separate purchase (of course), hence the collecting, but in addition to providing you with a new quest and quest encounters, you gain new cards for deck building that are thematically linked to the adventure.
The main difference with Lord of the Rings the Card game and other Living card games from fantasy flight is that it’s purely cooperative but more importantly it can be played solo without losing any of the quality of a multiplayer game.
Since the game is cooperative, the challenge comes from the quest cards. Collecting these quests is the key to the thematic story element of the game.
The game was originally released in 2011 and I actually had an opportunity to try it way back then. I recall noting it was interesting with potential but really needed to be expanded. Well, expanded it has been, in fact it may be one of the most expanded products in the FFG lineup at this point, there is tons of content for this game and its popularity has steadily grown since its humble beginnings. The only question now is whether it’s a game for you.
Components
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: The art work is absolutely stunning and consistent, card and component quality is everything you expect from FFG, top notch.
Cons: The core set is a bit light on content, you get just enough to capture your interest but not enough to maintain it, expansion is necessary and fairly expensive.
Take a visual franchise like Lord of the Rings and put it to a company with a near perfect reputation for producing amazing components for games, especially card games and it should come to the surprise of no one that Lord of the Rings the card game components are the highest of quality. Visually the games novelized artwork could have a museum of its own, it’s nothing short of stunning, as is the case with all of the living card games FFG produces. Each card has the appearance of an oil painting, meticulously created to bring it to life. It’s an amazing achievement that FFG is able to maintain such high quality of art work over the course of such an expansive game with so many cards. In fact, I find it mind boggling that anyone can do it with any game, I don’t think people realize how difficult and time consuming this is to do until you actually try to design a game of your own. It’s clearly a big investment on FFG’s part to produce this game and it may explain their dedication and support of it long term.
The support for Lord of the Rings card game by FFG is exceptional with expansions still rolling out with regularity 5 years after release.
If there is anything to complain about it’s the fact that the game is spread out across dozens of expansions that nickel and dime you to death to gain access, but such is the nature of collectable games. Fortunately with the Living Card Game concept you go into knowing you will never have to buy more than one of anything. You’re not getting abused by the randomness of booster packs, instead with each adventure pack you get everything you ever need from the pack. While each expansion is very reasonably priced for today’s standard, if you’re a completionist be ready to spend hundreds of dollars and continue to spend money regularly to keep up. At some point the game will probably see it’s end of life but even at this point to buy everything you are talking some serious dough.
Theme
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: From evolving campaign arcs to mini stories, from the amazing art to the clever mechanics the Lord of the Rings theme is vibrant.
Cons: To really get the full sense of the thematic nature and continuity of the games ongoing story you must expand your set.
Lord of the Rings is one of those franchises that would be hard to screw up thematically but in my humble opinion most card games, despite having unique artwork on hundreds of cards usually fail to capture themes. Art work is a fantastic start to present a theme, but for a game to feel thematic it needs to have gameplay that is reflective and immersive, especially for a card game which can feel so benign. You really need something that draws you into the theme and urges you to read and explore the game capturing your imagination.
Thankfully Lord of the Rings the card game does exactly that. Theme really shines in two separate but connected forms here. First, it’s the episodic nature of adventures that take on the form of quests with unique challenges suited to the story it’s portraying, something consistently done throughout the expansions, adventure packs and saga adventures. Each quest is a story and to resolve it, to overcome the challenge, there is some unique mechanic or element that drives it you must leverage or overcome through clever deck building and play. Whether it’s defeating an iconic enemy like a Hill Troll, or tracking down the famed Gollum, every quest in the various adventure packs is unique in some way. Which drives the second part of the games theme, continuity and progression.
In large part the theme of the game hangs on the progression of the story, but to get that, you have to buy expansion packs and adventure packs. It can get pretty expensive in particular for completionists.
There is a sense as you play through different adventure cycles and expansion packs that urges you to play on to see if you can take the next step, and the next. One is a connection to the latter, you move forward through the story and progress through the game as you develop an addiction for it. If you like the game you’ll find that common pull towards buying more of it as you would with CCG’s but it’s not because you are collecting but rather you want to progress your game to the next stage of the games timeline thanks to the wonderful theme and chaining of adventure stories.
The introduction of Saga expansions and campaign mode have in particular done wonders for this games theme driving the bigger more epic moments of the books more directly. You can play out the hobbit saga or the classic Lord of the Rings Saga and as of this writing they are still continually producing side quests, adventure cycles and deluxe expansions in addition to the continued support to complete the main Saga.
Simply put the theming here is fantastic and well supported. Whether or not that theme really comes through in the card play is always a question of how you see things. For me personally when I play a card game, in particular a deck builder, my focus really narrows down to abilities on the cards and strategy of play rather than theme. It’s there, the connection of characters and abilities, quests and mechanics all drive the game. The relevance of the theme however in the case of Lord of the Rings is more about the progressions of the quests and the story’s behind the various packs and expansions. If you follow along, play them sequentially there is a lot of fun story to work through. During play though you are likely to be bunkering down on the mechanics and focusing on winning rather than drawing some element of story out of the game.
There are of course periodic movie moments, in particular if you theme your deck to the quest your running and that is something players do for fun. Typically though you build decks and make decisions to win rather than for theme.
Gameplay
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: Easy to learn, impossible to master, LotR LCG offers creative challenges and addictive gameplay.
Cons: The core set challenges are bi-polar ranging from introductory adventure to near impossible to defeat quests. Makes for a poor introduction.
Lord of the Rings the card game is a unique card game because of its cooperative play, but for me personally this would have normally been a major strike against it. Simply put, I don’t like most cooperative games, in fact, after 20 years of playing and collecting board games I have a grand total of one cooperative game on my shelf beside this one (Fury of Dracula). Typically what I don’t like about cooperative games is that they are usually fairly scripted, a script written by the player who has the greatest knowledge of the game. Often referred to as Alpha gaming, most cooperative games are basically single player games that people play together, making decisions together, and effectively acting as one. I HATE that.
Cooperative games like descent are essentially 2 player games masquerading as group efforts but in the end there is often that one guy who knows the game and you effectively get your marching orders from him. Alpha gaming is a big problem for many cooperative games.
Thankfully this simply does not exist in Lord of the Rings the card game, in fact, most of the cooperation of the game takes place before you actually start playing during deck building. What takes place during the game is cooperation with minimal information, so you make decisions together about what’s on the board but you don’t really know for certain what people are holding in their hand and since you’re not allowed to talk about it by the rules, Alpha gaming is severely hindered.
The core cooperation really happens when players must construct decks in preparation for the adventure and here you build the synergies, make tactical decisions and strategy of your combined effort. Once the game starts however, everyone is kind of on their own. There is little help you can get in making decisions during the game because no one knows what cards you have and no one is allowed to know. So while you have built synergies into your decks and can assist each other through card play, when and how they are executed is something that happens dynamically by individual choice.
There is quite a bit of competition in the Living Card game genre even in something as specific as cooperative, progressive, story based living card games. For many I think it will come down to a preferred theme, but Pathfinder is definitely a great contender in the genre.
For me personally though I love Lord of the Rings for the fact that it can be played solo and in a big way it’s why it got a second chance with me. Good solo games are hard… one might say nearly impossible to find. In particular thematic games that offer a real challenge in the long term and don’t lose anything because you don’t play it with other people. Lord of the Rings however is as fun to play with a friend or two as it is to play alone. It’s very portable as well which is great for a working/traveling stiff like me who spends a lot of time on trains/planes and hotel rooms.
Now how is the gameplay? Well to summarize, this game is hard as fuck. Not hard to learn, not hard to play, but hard to win. This is a game made for veteran card players looking for a true challenge and while that doesn’t speak to me directly, what I do like about card games is a semblance of balance. Not necessarily as a game but a type of balance where there are no “useless” cards and there is no counter building, rather every card has a purpose and when leveraged in the right synergy can be game changing and Lord of the Rings has that in spades. Every card is meticulously thought out and combinable in a variety of ways and discovering how to use cards is a big part of the fun. Really, it’s a requirement because each new quest brings new challenges that will require you to go back to your card pool and look for cards that can help you. Coming up with clever ways to defeat quests that often seem simply impossible is part of the challenge of this game.
Deck building is a critical component of any good collectible card game but you will appreciate the fact that in Lord of the Rings you will build specific decks for specific quests, so there is no “winning deck”, there are quest challenges that will always require specific builds to overcome keeping the game fresh and progressive as you try to figure it out.
It’s just a perfect fit despite my general genre and game style objections because I love to find a game I can’t beat and have to think and fiddle with it to try and figure it out. I love it when a game occupies my brain space, I find a great deal of satisfaction in solving a good puzzle and I love it when a victory is well deserved. The fact that a game that does that turned out to be a cooperative, collectible card game is weird, but I can’t deny the strength of the game. It’s icing on the cake with Lord of the Rings that when you finally figure out that quest and beat it, there is a hundred more quest puzzles to solve waiting to challenge you.
Lord of the Rings the card game gameplay is a relatively simple fair even though it has some complexity in how the phases break down. In short during play you will be committing characters and allies you have put into play to either quests or to fighting. While each quest goal is a unique puzzle to solve, the games challenges are always dynamic as the encounter decks, a blending of different challenges, is constructed for each specific quest but resolved in a random sequence each time you play. For example one quest might be to simply produce progress tokens and defeat a specific enemy at the end. However the encounter deck will be constructed from certain location and monster decks, so what you actually face will vary from game to game as well as the order, creating unique obstructions to the default quest. It’s really all about manipulation, judgement calls and timing during play, but the resources you bring with you are the key. As such, it’s as big part of the game to prepare, aka, deck building as it is to actually play the game.
The game sequence is important as each decision is a commitment of resources without knowing what unique elements might arise in the next sequence. So you might commit two of your heroes to questing, only to discover that the encounter deck produced two monsters that will attack that round, now your short a hero and will suffer for it. Alternatively if you don’t commit the heroes you might end up increasing your threat levels, the sort of game timer that will cause you to lose after you reach a certain point. The end result is trying to prepare for the unexpected, choosing which cards to play now, which to save, which heroes and allies to commit to which task and of course to a degree gambling a little on the limited knowledge you have about each different encounter deck a particular quest might have. The wonderful thing is that there is a card for every problem and as such again, building a deck to compensate for each hurdle is the key. Naturally you can’t prepare for everything but through clever deck building you can successfully complete even the most impossible quests.
As if the game wasn’t tough enough already, those seeking even greater challenges can get the upgraded versions of quests lovingly called “Nightmare Decks”.
In essence your deck is your main resource for overcoming quests and challenges, you only have what you bring with you. Hence playing a quest for the first time is especially tough, but once you have lost to it two or three times, you’re going to go back to deck building to try to create a combination of heroes, allies, weapons and event cards that will allow you to succeed. Typically most quests you will be able to unravel after a half a dozen or so plays, for the real tough ones it might take you more or less and in some cases quests remain challenging no matter how many times you play them regardless of deck building because of the many dynamic elements in the often tough encounter decks. It’s also worth noting that if you play the game progressively, meaning you play each adventure pack in order and with the cards available to you up to that point, the game is considerably more fun and challenging as you have to work with resources limited to what is available to you in your card pool. It typically gets easier to beat old quests if you use cards from further down the release chain. So for example beating the first adventure cycle using the second adventure cycles cards is going to be much easier than using only cards from the adventure cycle you’re playing in or even tougher if you only use cards from the core set and up to the adventure cycle of the specific adventure.
At the core of gameplay in Lord of the Rings the card game is discovery, learning about what challenges are in a quest then trying to create a deck that can beat it.
The end result is a game of making decision before and during play, tough ones. It’s a game that will continually surprise you and cause you to re-think and adapt both during play and during deck building.
Game-play in Lord of the Rings the card game is challenging, progressive and very thinky as such It’s not something everyone will appreciate, I really do think it caters more to the hardcore gamer crowd that really likes a deep challenge, which fits me just fine, but casual gamers will probably feel overwhelmed and frustrated with the difficulty level.
There are some pretty sizeable gameplay concerns which I think might turn off a lot of people. For starters, the core set while absolutely necessary, is probably the weakest thing in the game, at least that will be a typical observation. Many reviews reflect this, often referring to the 3 core quests and player cards you get as unbalanced and impossible to beat. The thing is that, this is simply not true. When you approach in particular the 2nd and 3rd quests, they are really going to challenge you and they are in fact very tough to beat but with experience and clever deck building these challenge can be overcome pretty consistently using nothing but the core set cards. It’s something however you will discover long after it frustrates the shit out of you and if you judge the game purely on those early experiences the result is the common consensus about balance issues in the core set most reviewers will mention.
It’s likely new and casual gamers will find the core set quests seemingly impossible to overcome, but if you become dedicated to the game with experience you are likely to learn to appreciate the challenge.
That said I do agree that perhaps the core set should have been made more approachable, in particular when you consider that the first cycle of quest revert considerably. The first expansion in the Mirkwood cycle “The Hung For Gollum” for example is easier then all three of the quests in the core set. It almost feels like a step back in difficulty of the game globally. Then things get more difficult as you progress. Suffice to say I’m not going to invalid the complaints about the core set other than to say as you become more experienced with the game you will learn to appreciate having quests that are in fact very challenging rather than a bunch of freebies that you can beat with your eyes closed.
As for deck building with the core set, there is some to be had, but deck building doesn’t really emerge fully until you get a few adventure packs so the game feels a bit narrow and closed with just the core set In terms of what you can do with it. Expanding the game in the end is vital to get the full effect of the gameplay, without it, as a core set deck building in Lord of the Rings the card game runs out of steam pretty quickly.
That said, it’s a foregone conclusion that if you are going to pick up the core set you will buy expanded content and really I would say unless you’re ready to at least purchase the first adventure cycle you can probably skip the game all together. The core set alone does not carry gameplay or give you enough value if that is all you plan to buy. It’s at best an awkward introduction to the game and it will hit and miss with people for that, but the truth is that for a first time introduction I much rather use the first quest of the first adventure cycle than anything that comes in the core set. The Hunt for Gollum is a really great quest to learn with and its difficulty is very manageable.
Playing the game solo is quite different from playing it cooperatively but both are excellent ways to experience the game. Few games out there can claim that.
All and all though I find Lord of the Rings gameplay to be fantastic and I highly recommend it if you are a gamer looking for a good solo game in particular, this really is the best I have played in years. I would also recommend it for Lord of the Rings fans, or fans of cooperative games but be advised that this is a very gamy game, so it’s not something that falls anywhere near the casual arena of games. It would be tough to bring it to a gaming group and say “let’s play” because without deck building the game’s difficulty ramps up considerably, in particular in the core set and teaching someone to play and then promptly asking them to build a deck is asking a bit much of your gaming group. As such the game is a bit less approachable and that’s definitely a strike against it. The core set really should have focused more on making itself casual player friendly to make it easier on fans to introduce it to their gaming group. That said I think most gaming groups that get together regularly won’t find this to be much of an issue.
Replay ability and Longevity
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: The game has incredible support from FFG with tons of expandable content for you to choose from.
Cons: Replay ability hinges on you expanding your set which can get expensive.
When it comes to replayability Lord of the Rings really hinges on expanding the game. There is definitely some fun to be had with the core set, but given it’s price tag and limited deck building options, I think most gamers will find it runs out of steam pretty fast. Thankfully there is plenty to expand your game with and the content really gets better and better as you progress through the different expansion packs. More importantly though is as you expand the game it opens up new doorways to old quests that you might have trouble with. So as you expand, going back to old content becomes as interesting as starting with the new stuff. There are also a lot of really fun quests in there and everyone will eventually find their favorites that they love to re-play. For example for me The Murder at the Prancing pony is one of the best quests, a stand-alone expansion that I’m happy to replay over and over again. In fact, if you buy no expansions ever, get The Murder at the Prancing Pony because this quest alone is almost a self-contained game worthy of owning Lord of the Rings the Card Game. I personally think it should have been included in the core set, as it is newbie friendly, has some clever mechanics and manages to be fairly challenging but not impossible. It’s really fantastic
While replay-ability hinges on collecting, there is a lot to collect and if you really get into it, going back on old quests with new cards from different sets opens up new doorways to solving those quest puzzles you couldn’t manage to complete before. There is a sense of renewal of the entire game each time you add to your collection.
There are also many different ways to play the game and as such I think there is a lot of replay ability there. For example trying to beat an entire adventure cycle with the same three heroes, or with the same deck can be a lot of fun. For a real challenge you can link all the quests together into one long game and of course there is the campaign mode introduced in the Saga expansions and nightmare mode.
As far as replay ability goes I think Lord of the Rings has plenty, but you won’ get it out of the core set in the long run alone and for this reason this score hinges on the assumption that you are going to expand your game. If you don’t mind spending on a collectable game though which is of course the intention of Lord of the Rings the card game, there is a tremendous amount of content to keep you going indefinitely.
Conclusion
Lord of the Rings The Card game as far as I’m concerned is a hit and a big surprise to me because I would not have expected to like it as much as I do. It’s relatively simple to teach but difficult to master, it offers a wide variety of challenges both as a deck builder and as a game and it has a great adventure theme that any proper gaming nerd can get behind. I would highly recommend it if you love challenging deck builders and cooperative games and if you are looking for a solid solo game. As a Lord of the Rings fan I think you need to be careful because while your favorite theme is here, it’s really important that you like the genre and game play style here, the theme while fantastic and present in the game is not the core of the game. It’s not a story game despite all the questing and adventure, it’s a pretty tough deck building game.
In addition to adventure packs, deluxe expansions and saga expansions there are many stand-alone special quests from past events that offer a wide variety of unique challenges from moments in the books.
I don’t think I would recommend this game to casual players. I think the games difficulty is too high for casual players and they will likely find themselves playing a frustratingly difficult game they always lose. It really requires out of game thought, some personal commitment to understand and study the game to have a chance to win a few games. In addition, if you stop collecting at the Core Set, I think you will be disappointed, the core set is a beat shallow on content and oddly bi-polar in it’s difficulty range. For casuals I think this will be a much bigger problem then for card game veterans.
I think it’s a fantastic cooperative game but I think most cooperative gaming is by design created to be a lot more cooperative than this one. What I mean is that, for most games of Lord of the Rings while you can help each other out a bit, it really is a game about making your own decisions. Alpha gamers will be very frustrated with this game as helping someone make a decision is extremely difficult if you don’t know what cards they are holding and often what appears to be a big mistake is actually a good play because of the cards they are holding. So someone will often take an action and it’s like “oh shit you just lost the game for us”, then suddenly they whip out a card and you realize. “ah.. great move”. After a while you just realize with this game that you have to let people make their plays and sort of build up a cooperative trust.
This is a fantastic element of the game, but debunks a bit of that cooperative part.
Needless to say I have developed quite an affection for Lord of the Rings, I find myself playing it quite often and if this continues this will probably end up being one of my most played games of the year. I got into it kind of late, but I actually kind of love the idea that there is tons of content already available and I can pick and choose as my leisure. All of the expansions released today are still in print and available and FFG continues to release new ones.
When it comes to worker placement games there are lots and lots of options and lots of variations on the mechanic , proven by the countless designs that have flooded the board game market in the last few years. Worker placement games and games with worker placement mechanics have become practically a staple go too mechanic in design today, in fact there are so many that I will be doing a top 10 worker placement game list in the near future.
Russian Railroads definitely caught my interest very early on but I was very wary of the reviews of this game because while it scored high with most reviewers, the common underlining comment was that the game had virtually nothing to do with railroads thematically. Being a big theme guy, this really was a bit of a turn off but thanks to the wonders of digital platforms and the magic of Yucata.de I was able to play many games of Russian Railroads online and it’s now time to review this beast in all its glory.
It’s important to note however that this will be one of the first games I review based on digital (online) play only and while I personally think this makes absolutely no difference with the exception of discussions about component quality, some might differ in opinion about that so in the interest of full disclosure, well, there you have it.
Overview
Russian Railroads puts players in the role of a train company manager using a very classic and very standard worker placement mechanic. In fact, Russian Railroads as a game can be described without any extra wording as a worker placement game as this is what it is, nothing less and nothing more. To win you must score points, the abstracted representation of success and to score points you must wisely use the wide variety of worker placement spots to advance your railroad business. Whether its upgrading your trains, hiring engineers, building tracks or advancing your factories, most elements of a railroad business is represented here. Abstracted to be sure and without a game map commonly found in Railroad games, Russian Railroads is like many worker placement games, a race for victory points through resource management. Your main resource being of course your workers, the lose representation of your workforce and effort as a company. Sounds pretty thematic on paper, but does it hold up in play?
It looks like a worker placement games, plays like a work placement game and is a work placement game, no more no less.
Components
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: Colorful art work, streamlined easy to understand iconography.
Cons: The art work goes to waste on a game which fails to connect its theme and gameplay rendering the thematic art work pointless.
Again, since I did not ever hold the actual copy of the game in my hand, I can’t comment much on the quality of components here other than the art and aesthetics of the game. I have confirmed with several friends and colleagues who told me they were very satisfied with the components, calling them sturdy and built to last. No real surprise as component quality has become less and less of an issue with published games from well-respected companies like Z-man games.
I don’t ever place much emphasis on game components when it comes to worker placement games, typically you’re dealing with cubes and meeples and Russian Railroads is no different. What is absolutely vital for Russian Railroads is the art work, it’s vital because this is the only link to the Railroad theme the game has as many reviewers point out and I can confirm.
Its colorful and looks nice on the table, you can’t fault its aesthetic appeal, but like most Euro games its not going to blow you away.
The only real connection between game-play and theme in this game is the fact that the pictures on the components, depict, railroad stuff. You have engineer and train tokens, there are pictures of railway tracks and components that look kind of like railroad blocks. Suffice to say however while the art work is good, it’s insufficient to carry the games theme without the thematic connection to the gameplay which I will cover more in the theme section of this review. The important thing to note here is that the art is creative, colorful and the iconography clear and streamlined to relative simple identification once you get the jist of the iconography patterns. It doesn’t take long before you can easily identify the meaning of everything on the board and card and or deduce the meaning. In this regard Russian Railroad does a great job and I certainly give it credit for making this simple.
The components can be said to pass with flying colors and on par with what you can expect from a great company like Z-man games. I put very little weight in this part of the game reviewer and so its impact on the final score is very minimal but I’m very happy to see the days of Euro games with ugly artwork and flimsy components is well behind us.
Theme
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: Railroads are a cool theme that doesn’t scare off casual players.
Cons: The theme is just a ruse; this game has very little if anything at all to do with Russia or Railroads.
While again I would not place theme in the forefront of a worker placement game, when you choose a popularized theme like Railroads you are in essence banking on players choosing this worker placement game over others because of the theme. In a sense there is a bit of trickery here because Russian Railroads has about as much to do with the railroads thematically as a railroad themed deck of poker cards. Sure there are pictures of trains on the cards and game board, but mechanically speaking the game is so far removed from the theme it actually makes it feel a bit scandalous to use it.
Suffice to say this was a huge disappointment for me in particular since I love train stuff and I’m always on the lookout for an interesting take on railroad themed games. Russian Railroads is so focused on being a worker placement victory point puzzle that any element of the railroad theme gets virtually washed away and really even the game board itself from an artistic stand point is quite unclear what exactly the abstractions are supposed to be representing. You place workers on spots like 3 black spaces which allow you to move your black colored track, which I guess mean that you are building a section of the rail and the different colored tokens are different speeds or quality of rails? I don’t know, it’s all quite fuzzy even as an abstraction it makes little connection to the theme and even the manual makes little effort to explain or justify any element of that theme. Its a all business Euro, you put down meeple workers to score points, what anything represents has little explanation or point to it.
Since there was a grand total of ZERO Russian things in the original, I don’t really understand the point of adding a German railroads expansion.
At the end of the day, the theme here is almost completely non-existent, this game is a worker placement puzzle, you will not get to do any fun train stuff you might hope for given the cover and the claim on the box where “Players compete to build the largest and most advanced railway network”. Given that the extent of competition is that you are denied a spot to put a worker when someone else already put one there, its hardly a competition. Yeah ok, abstractions are abstractions, but I guess what I’m saying is that there is no sign of the economic, construction or chu-chu part of the railroad theme here. It’s a game about railroads because there are pictures of railroads on the game board and that really is the extent of the connection.
I think the disappointment comes mostly from the missed opportunities to leverage such a great theme.
Gameplay
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: There is considerable variation in how the game plays with different amounts of players remaining as interesting with 2 players as it is with 3 or 4.
Cons: Very bland and basic worker placement mechanic with very few dynamics or surprises.
One would hope that a game that lacks theme makes up for it with great gameplay, in fact as far as worker placement games go, traditionally this is the case. Unfortunately Russian Railroads is banking largely on the popularity of the mechanic so heavily it fails on every other level to innovate or even make use of more updated existing innovations of the mechanic. It basically takes the core concept from its earliest conception, placing workers on spots that score points and takes it no further.
Before I start bitching, the good stuff. This is a solid implementation of the classic worker placement mechanic as far as the options you get. It feels tight and every action you take really counts, so you are put to some fairly difficult choices at times, though this sense of tough choices is short lived. It is a puzzle and a fairly complex one, which offers players plenty to experiment with and explore, which in turn makes the first few games of Russian Railroads pretty interesting for fans of worker placement games in particular. In fact, this may be the most complex and involved victory point mash I have seen yet and while it fails to inspire a theme or innovate in its genre by adding something new to the table, it does what it does very well.
Unfortunately that is not enough to carry the game, it really landed very flat with me. In fact I think if you have played Voyage of Marco Polo, Lords of Waterdeep, Pillars of the Earth, Stone Age.. even Caverna, you will find the worker placement element of this game fairly bland and uninspired both from gameplay perspective and an objective design perspective. Sure it’s an interesting puzzle as all worker placement games generally are, but there isn’t a whole lot more to it, there is no dynamic or shifting options from game to game, what you see on the surface in the first game is all there is and all there ever will be. Once that puzzle is solved, there really isn’t much else to draw upon.
The game really does boil down to you placing down workers and collecting victory points, there is almost nothing else going on in this game. Worse yet is that there are obvious patterns of play every round, where one player will grab the first player spot, one player will grab the money spot and one player will grab the available engineer, elements of the puzzle you will catch onto quickly in particular when playing with experienced players that know what they are doing. This pattern repeats itself in a round robin circus as this is the one and only good opening move to make in almost all cases and your order in this sequence determines which of the three choices you will make.
Sure there is some variance, occasionally an engineer is not worth taking, or you might be better of grabbing one of the other spots over going first next round or taking money, but in as a whole there is a sort of sequence of uninteresting events that open most rounds. From there you’re really just grabbing whatever spots are available that enhance the strategy you chose pretty much at the start of the game. Which brings me to the other problem, in almost all games once you figure out what Engineers you will get based on the round robin sequence you can calculate in advance you will know what strategy you will go with to the conclusion of the game and in essence prioritize what spots you will take each round with your workers. The strategy really then becomes about trying to figure out what your opponents strategy is (or will be) and taking beneficial action when you can and taking action to deny your opponent beneficial actions when you can’t take one for yourself. I guess this is what qualifies as competition in Russian Railroads, but it feels less like a competition between Railroad Barons and more of a competition between two mathematicians.
Sure there is some interesting choices now and again and certainly when playing with experienced players this puzzle can become fairly complex and sometimes even dynamic. It isn’t enough to carry the game though, in particular since any choice you make will have some form of alternative so while you can sometimes slow opponents down you really can’t stop them. Experienced players will generally focus on simply finding the fastest route to their method of scoring and among experienced players the game really becomes more of a race.
This may draw some interest at first as you try to figure out the pattern in the novelty of it all, but after a couple of games you will have unlocked the puzzle and the game really becomes a monotonous game of choosing from many choices with one very obvious best option you must clearly make each time your action comes up. You feel neither like an operator of a railroad or like you’re making decisions and more like you are working according to a pre-ordained plan adjusting only when someone does something unexpected, typically when a less experienced player makes a mistake or a more experienced player catches on to your strategy and diverts his attention to blocking you rather than doing something beneficial for his own strategy.
If you really must try it, save yourself some money and try it for free at Yucata.de where you will find a great implementation of the game.
The novalty wears of quickly with Russian Railroads. It’s unfortunate that Russian Railroads did not leverage some of the more interesting worker placement mechanics that came before it like Lords of Waterdeeps quest cards and Lord cards which could easily be adapted in Russian Railroads as Baron cards and mission cards just as an example. Instead Russian Railroads went with the very stuffy and largely uninteresting ultra-simple worker placement mechanic with little else driving it or evolving through the course of play. Other than the very limited engineers you don’t unlock anything interesting, there are no deviations, or randomized elements to mix things up and for the most part there is kind of a packing order of devolving options, getting less interesting with each passing round. Very dry stuff.
One of the big failures of Russian Railroads as well is that it’s really tough to catch up and very unfriendly to beginners, if a player gets ahead on points, in particular on the points earned per round where its cumulative, a game can be effectively over halfway through. This is something that happens quite easily in particular when experienced and inexperienced mix making this a poor choice for mixed groups.
You ultimately want to play with already experienced players, but as you’re showing people how to play they are going to have to drudge through 2 or 3 games before the strategies kind of click into place and they can offer something that resembles competition for you. Worse than that though is that the game is not intuitive despite being very simple, so it takes a couple of games before you have any idea how the engine works and it’s easy to make a mistake that will take several rounds to correct by which time, again, you are so far behind that the game is effectively over.
In the end the conclusion is that pretty much every worker placement game I have played in the last 10 years has better game play than this one and no one is more surprised than me because this game rates so high with so many reviewers and gaming communities. I was really kind of hoping to have found a gem in the rough. In particular something coming out of Z-man games.
Replay ability and Longevity
Verdict: Tilt:
Pros: You can play it for free on Yucuta.de with a wide variety of opponents of different skill levels allowing you to explore replay-ability of this game to its fullest extent.
Cons: You discover the game has virtually no replay-ability and thank Yucuta.de for saving you some money.
Another huge fail in my opinion and as a worker placement game this will have the greatest impact on the game’s final score. In short, there is very little longevity here. After you have played this game 2 or 3 times there really is nothing of interest that will either surprise or delight you. I played this game at least 20 times to be sure, in fact I kept hoping that at some point I would discover some new strategy, some new puzzle piece or string to pull on but in the end it really is kind of a shallow game. I can’t recall a single memorable moment or a close game that wasn’t pre-ordained early on, In fact by round 2 or 3 I knew whether I would win or lose in most games and the final rounds where players largely just going through the motion.
I suppose the one nice element of the games replay-ability is that the game really changes a great deal when you play with different amounts of players. It’s a very different puzzle as the boards themselves are actually different for different player counts with 2, 3 or 4 players, so you could conceivably extend its life and explore the new challenges different amounts of players produce. In the end though, there just isn’t enough variation in the game to sustain multiple replays, given that there are so many wonderful worker placement games with innovative and interesting mechanics, a simplistic and straightforward variant like this really just doesn’t hold up.
Conclusion
Russian Railroads is a highly acclaimed and often well-spoken of game but like many Euro games I have a tough time explaining why that is. Like Settlers of Catan, Agricola, and Puerto Rico it just falls into that category of games where most people seem to love them and I just don’t. I really think as you read this review you have to consider the reviewer. If you love Agricola and Puerto Rico and don’t understand why someone doesn’t, Russian Railroads might turn out to be a great pick for you. I do think it’s worth pointing out however that there is a difference between disliking a game and objectively believing it’s a mediocre design. For example I do believe Agricola and Puerto Rico are or perhaps better to say were innovative designs for their time, If I reviewed them I would expect them, despite my dislike for them, to get good reviews from me. I guess the point I’m making is that I didn’t just look at Russian Railroads and decide I don’t like it and gave it a bad review, I think it really does lack the elements that great board games have. Whether I like it or not.
Russian Railroads is neither innovative, clever or interesting and I believe very objectively that it’s just not a very well designed game.
Sure it has good structure, it’s streamlined and balanced, but that’s not a selling point of a game in today’s world of designer board games, that is an expectation from every game. These are automatic. A great design must be innovative, must add something to the genre, must have some dynamics and cleverness to it. None of those descriptive terms can be applied to Russian Railroads, it is by very definition of the word a very status quo game, relying on the most basic elements of worker placement game design. Worse yet its implementation is so far removed from the theme, there is hardly a point of pretending that its somehow relevant to the game.
I can’t recommend this game, even to worker placement fans. The list of fantastic worker placement games is long and distinguished, Russian Railroads is just not among them.
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