A friend once betrayed me in a game of risk (or whatever the nuclear war equivalent is), my vendetta followed him all night and it was particularly in Goldeneye that he learned his stern lesson.
Itās quite good, but I have never been able to find six people willing to sit through the 5+ hours it takes to explain the rules and play the first game. It also suffers from the same problem common to most strategy war games - once you start losing, itās a long, painful slog 'til the end.
Itās worth mentioning that with four or five players, thereās a bunch of unoccupied territory in the south, that can be easily captured by anyone close, giving them an early lead, itās a lot more balanced with six players.
In your first game, get used to using boats as stepping stones to allow your armies to move large distances and youāll be able to surprise your opponents by threatening a straight-forward attack, and then hitting them in the rear as they move troops to defend against your feint. Very fun to pull off, although Iāve never got close to winning.
Based on Diplomacy? And here I thought Kingmaker would be a more appropriate inspiration, just as the Wars of the Roses inspired Game of Thrones. Yeah, getting six people together to play a complicated, all day game is difficult. We used to manage every once in a while for Civilization or Advanced Civilization, but Iāve only managed to get people together to try and tackle Republic of Rome twice.
make a digital version so I can play on my PC!
games are frequently organized through the /r/AGOTBoardGame subreddit.
were you at least able to save rome from carthage?
I adore this game. Definitely one of my favorite strategic board games. It bears noting that there is a 4 player expansion for the game that shortens game play time considerably. I have also found that early leads for the Baratheons and Martels equalize pretty quickly. I, for one, have found the Greyjoys to be a fun family to play.
I just canāt get past the fact that it CLEARLY should have been called A Board Game of Thrones.
Or āGameĀ² of Thrones.ā
I think I made the one time I played end early when in reply to a plea for help was well I can tell I am not going to win so may as well make sure you donāt win either to the player who till that point had been a major pain.
Umā¦thatās pretty much what the Mad King Aerys tried to do.
Never did figure out who to fear more: The Carthaginians or Scipio.
An awful lot of calls āFor the Good of Romeā, where at least 2/3rd of the players were forgetting to pronounce the first two letters of the last word.
A fine game, but in a dozen games, Rome has only once made it out of a first age both alive and a Republic.
Maybe this is just my neurosis talking, but Iāve seen several games of various types based on āA Song of Ice and Fireā, and each time I find myself puzzled at the idea of a game based on an incomplete story. In particular. how do you have a game about the competing factions, when much of the tension in the story revolves around how we arenāt sure of what all the factions are, or even what the factions we do know of are doing?
Iāve played this a couple times; and the author is right about the length of games. Granted, we were going a bit slowly as we didnāt know exactly what we were doing, but the games ended up being around six? seven? eight? hours. The gameās not bad, but I canāt help but feel that it suffers from a little too much complexity.
I see two good ways.
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Make it a prequel, based on known āhistoryā.
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Shrug and donāt worry so much. As an interactive medium, itās never going to 100% meet canon anyway so embrace the wrongness in the name of fun. (Civilizationās āGandhi with Nukesā approach).
I donāt feel its the complexity that is its downfall, but the ending criteria.
Without a mechanism to accelerate the chance of taking over (think cards in Risk, etc.), thereās too much of āBring down anyone close to winningā.
I enjoy the game, but I think it needs an ending rule. Typically, these are something like:
After n (2-3?) hours, at the end of each game turn, roll a pair of dice. On a 12, the game ends and determine the winner. The next turn itās an 11. Then a 10ā¦, and so on.
Means that you donāt know when the game will end so you canāt make a 1 turn rush. But puts a time limit on the game.
Thatās a good point and a good idea, although I assume you mean that on an 11 or above, the game ends. Itās definitely true that whoever is close to winning gets stomped on. On the other hand, the cards mechanism in Risk is what seems to be its most complained-about āfeature,ā as it makes everyone hold onto their cards as long as possible to get the max number of armies. That said, I havenāt played enough Risk to know whether this really damages the game or not.
Youāre over-thinking it. These games are never (rarely?) based on canon, but more of an āwhat-ifā interpretation of the game. The Battlestar Galactica board game allows any character to theoretically be a cylon, regardless of what actually happens on the show.
