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shannon_aOver the last week I've played two new-to-me Wallace games.
Byzantium. This got played last Saturday after my normal RPG on Saturday fell through. The core conceit is pretty neat: there's a war going on between the Byzantines and the Arabs, and you simultaneously control armies on both sides, trying to (somewhat) balance your points between them. It was quite a good game; I'm glad I picked it up even after a general non-committal response from the board game world. To a large extent, it's a pure game of efficiency: you try and get the optimal points per turn. It's also got a decent amount of fighting, but in some interestingly constrained ways.
Among the elements I liked: the trademark Wallace alternative victory condition (here, a special Arab win if Constantinople falls); a very strategic resource management system, involving cubes and coins; and a fun combat system that let you empire build across the map.
I'm hoping to play it again relatively soon to get a better feel for it.
Tyros. Eric has been bringing this to Endgame for a while, and we finally got it to the table today. It's a trading and card management game as you build cities in trading empires, struggling for majorities in the most valuable empires.
I didn't have any problem with it, but I wasn't wildly excited either. This may partly be because we had a somewhat unbalanced game, involving (among other things) the other two players fighting, to my pure advantage. I asked Eric afterward what he liked about the game, and he said that it was a pretty unique Wallace German/abstract and that he liked how the game developed (meaning empires expanding and cities getting built, I expect).
This was published through Kosmos, not Warfrog, and it's the Warfrog games that I've liked best.
Byzantium. This got played last Saturday after my normal RPG on Saturday fell through. The core conceit is pretty neat: there's a war going on between the Byzantines and the Arabs, and you simultaneously control armies on both sides, trying to (somewhat) balance your points between them. It was quite a good game; I'm glad I picked it up even after a general non-committal response from the board game world. To a large extent, it's a pure game of efficiency: you try and get the optimal points per turn. It's also got a decent amount of fighting, but in some interestingly constrained ways.
Among the elements I liked: the trademark Wallace alternative victory condition (here, a special Arab win if Constantinople falls); a very strategic resource management system, involving cubes and coins; and a fun combat system that let you empire build across the map.
I'm hoping to play it again relatively soon to get a better feel for it.
Tyros. Eric has been bringing this to Endgame for a while, and we finally got it to the table today. It's a trading and card management game as you build cities in trading empires, struggling for majorities in the most valuable empires.
I didn't have any problem with it, but I wasn't wildly excited either. This may partly be because we had a somewhat unbalanced game, involving (among other things) the other two players fighting, to my pure advantage. I asked Eric afterward what he liked about the game, and he said that it was a pretty unique Wallace German/abstract and that he liked how the game developed (meaning empires expanding and cities getting built, I expect).
This was published through Kosmos, not Warfrog, and it's the Warfrog games that I've liked best.