I played hookie from roleplaying today to go over to EndGame for their bimonthly GameDay.
On Wednesday I'd chatted with Eric V., and we'd agreed to get together for a copy of his Struggle of Empires, if we were able today. Fortunately, the fates shined, and we were indeed able. Players were: me (Russia), Eric V. (France), Alex (the wargmonger, Britain), Sam (Prussia), and David G. (Austria).
The game started off with an hour of rules explanation. After having played the game I think it's actually much simpler than that, but Eric V. had never played before, so given the usual horrid quality of Warfrog's rules, I'm not surprised it took us so long to get going.
Struggle of Empires is, at heart, a war game with scoring based on majority control. There are a couple of different interwoven factors in the gaming, but unlike Heart of Africa which I played on Wednesday, I thought there were the right number of interwoven elements, and they worked well together.
You build troops (which takes population) and use them to engage in war (which takes money). When you lose troops you gain unrest (which could cost you victory points), while when you win battles you get control markers in territories (which could give you victory points). At the end of each war (there are a total of three) you gain money for control markers and population, but must pay for troops. Then you look at the control markers in each territory, and total them to determine majority control. There are 2-3 winners for each territory, with each getting a decreased number of points, as you would expect from a majority control game.
One additional (and very unique) factor is the alliances. Each war all of the players are divided into two alliances, with an auction helping determine who goes where.
In addition, there are a bunch of special-power tiles in the game which can be purchased with money, population and/or discontent for various beneficial effects, some one-time, some continuous, and some once a war; they give the game a lot of its color and longer term strategy.
At the end of the game whomever has the most victory points from majority control wins, except that if you have too much unrest you can lose points.
As with many majority control games, I found this one somewhat opaque. At the start of the game I played really conservatively, shoring up armies before doing attacks, and defending my starting control markers as well as I could. I was somewhat surprised when, after the end of the first war, I ended up tied for first. After that I knew I just had to hold my position, and better it a little if I could, especially by taking points from other leading players, which I did (and I ended up winning by 5 or 6 points). The opaqueness comes from having to look at all those territories worth all those different points and trying to figure out how well everyone is doing; it's largely impossible, but I'm usually OK with that.
With future games I have some concerns about teaming up on the leader, thanks to the alliances, but here we didn't take enough advantage of that (lucky for me).
As with most Martin Wallace games, this one is about an hour too long, and has a gazillion fiddly rules too many. I really wish he was doing more work for other companies because, as with many other indy designers, I think a developer without a stake in the project would improve the games a lot. The movement rules were the ones that really got me here. You can, for example, move a land unit to an adjacent space or to a space which you have any sea unit adjacent to or to a space in Europe where you have a control marker or to a space in Europe where you have an adjacent control marker. Which all goes to say that can move a unit just about anywhere, except you have to have a boat to move to a colony. A rule that said that you could move a land unit anywhere in Europe or to any colony with a boat would have been much simpler to understand, would have taken 5 minutes off the rules explanation, and wouldn't have changed the game a lot.
I look forward to seeing what happens to Martin Wallace's games when Eagle starts publishing cut-down variants of them, as I think they could go from good to great.
In case it's not obvious, I did like the game. I'll play it again, but due to its length (about 1 hour explanation + 4 hours play for 5 brand new players) it's unlikely to ever be more than a 2- or 3-play a year for me, nor is it likely to go on my own buy list.
But before I finish I have to add a big ugh on the board, whose colors for the varoius players and colonies don't match any of the tiles or counters and which doesn't actually show the interconnections between some countries and oceans. Again, a development problem that an outside developer could have easily resolved.
The second game of the day was Bohnanza.
Ironically I think this game shares some characteristics with Struggle of Empires, because I think it's too long (with 90-105 minutes being average, where I think 60 would have been right; I'm always tempted to pull beans out) and because the scoring is opaque (I can never tell how anyone is doing, except an occasional big loser) before the end of the game.
Nothing too exciting here. One of our players was a very stubborn trader, often refusing a trade or giveaway to spite someone else, and I thought he was being dumb. Toward the end of the game, however, I realized that we were giving away a few too many free beans to him. He ended up winning with 22 points. (I had 21.) I suppose there's something to be said for stubborness in bean land.
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