Wallace-A-Thon: Games *NOT* Played
Dec. 31st, 2008 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aHere's some discussions of the games not played during my Wallace-a-Thon in 2008.
First, the games not played from my personal collection, which are the most damning omissions, since they'd have been easy to play:
Runebound: This adventure game is overall a very non-Wallacian release. I'd classify it with the light games that he designs for other publishers (like Toledo) if it weren't for the fact that it were so frickin' long (which is its biggest sin). It's got beautiful color and a fun ramping up of characters, but not only do you have long gameplay (45-60 minutes per player), but worse you have considerable downtime in between turns. Compare it to all those Warfrog releases where you get an action per turn, and it's obvious how slowly things go as you work through movement and skill rolls.
It's funny, because I respect this game in some ways, as a nice entrant to the adventure genre with some pretty fully featured game systems--but I can't imagine inflicting its 3-4 hour play during a game day, ever. (Playing it with my RPG group would be a whole different matter, but it'd be tough to offer it up in comparison to the superb Descent.)
Struggle of Empires / Conquest of the Empire: I'm absolutely certain that I would have gotten this to the table if I'd had the nice, compact release by Warfrog. However, the Eagle version, with its requirement for a huge game table and its (beautiful) plastic figures which sadly just muddle the gameplay is sufficiently overdone that it didn't enter consideration over the course of the year. If I played one more Wallace game in 2008, it'd nevertheless be thus.
Second, the Warfrog games, which I was making a concerted effort to play all of:
Age of Steam: It's ironic that I said that the overproduced Conquest of the Empire discouraged me from playing the Struggle of Empires system, since I didn't play Age of Steam, but I did play it's big-box cousin Railroad Tycoon. Mind you, this is partially because I got a review copy of Rails of Europe early in the year. I also like the fact that the Rails games are more forgiving and more colorful ... but I think I do personally like the components of the smaller box Age of Steam design.
In any case, I didn't see any need to play Age of Steam because Rails is sufficiently similar.
Empires of the Ancient World: Eric and I tried to get this to the table a couple of time, but its long playing time kept us from doing so with some frequency, and on the few occasions when we felt we had enough time, we couldn't convince anyone else to join us, because it looked too wargamer-y. A pity, as I pretty much don't remember this from the one time I played.
Tempus: Eric and I tried to get this to the table two or three times, and again we couldn't convince anyone because there were enough players with bad memories of it. I don't know if that's because of disappointment over the (inaccurate) Civ-Lite label or just because they didn't like the gameplay. I'll acknowledge being disappointed in my two or three plays, but I was willing to give it another shot, hoping it was solely the inaccurate-label factor.
Having played through so much Wallace in 2008, I can now list a couple of games that I'd dearly love to get the Warfrog copies of: Struggle of Empires, Liberte. I'd also like to get Tempus, through probably not $60 like.
First, the games not played from my personal collection, which are the most damning omissions, since they'd have been easy to play:
Runebound: This adventure game is overall a very non-Wallacian release. I'd classify it with the light games that he designs for other publishers (like Toledo) if it weren't for the fact that it were so frickin' long (which is its biggest sin). It's got beautiful color and a fun ramping up of characters, but not only do you have long gameplay (45-60 minutes per player), but worse you have considerable downtime in between turns. Compare it to all those Warfrog releases where you get an action per turn, and it's obvious how slowly things go as you work through movement and skill rolls.
It's funny, because I respect this game in some ways, as a nice entrant to the adventure genre with some pretty fully featured game systems--but I can't imagine inflicting its 3-4 hour play during a game day, ever. (Playing it with my RPG group would be a whole different matter, but it'd be tough to offer it up in comparison to the superb Descent.)
Struggle of Empires / Conquest of the Empire: I'm absolutely certain that I would have gotten this to the table if I'd had the nice, compact release by Warfrog. However, the Eagle version, with its requirement for a huge game table and its (beautiful) plastic figures which sadly just muddle the gameplay is sufficiently overdone that it didn't enter consideration over the course of the year. If I played one more Wallace game in 2008, it'd nevertheless be thus.
Second, the Warfrog games, which I was making a concerted effort to play all of:
Age of Steam: It's ironic that I said that the overproduced Conquest of the Empire discouraged me from playing the Struggle of Empires system, since I didn't play Age of Steam, but I did play it's big-box cousin Railroad Tycoon. Mind you, this is partially because I got a review copy of Rails of Europe early in the year. I also like the fact that the Rails games are more forgiving and more colorful ... but I think I do personally like the components of the smaller box Age of Steam design.
In any case, I didn't see any need to play Age of Steam because Rails is sufficiently similar.
Empires of the Ancient World: Eric and I tried to get this to the table a couple of time, but its long playing time kept us from doing so with some frequency, and on the few occasions when we felt we had enough time, we couldn't convince anyone else to join us, because it looked too wargamer-y. A pity, as I pretty much don't remember this from the one time I played.
Tempus: Eric and I tried to get this to the table two or three times, and again we couldn't convince anyone because there were enough players with bad memories of it. I don't know if that's because of disappointment over the (inaccurate) Civ-Lite label or just because they didn't like the gameplay. I'll acknowledge being disappointed in my two or three plays, but I was willing to give it another shot, hoping it was solely the inaccurate-label factor.
Having played through so much Wallace in 2008, I can now list a couple of games that I'd dearly love to get the Warfrog copies of: Struggle of Empires, Liberte. I'd also like to get Tempus, through probably not $60 like.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-31 08:15 pm (UTC)I think AoS is greatly superior to Railroad Tycoon, to the point that I have no desire to ever play RT again. I did get to play AoS several times this year and am very happy about that since it is still one of my top 10 games of all time.
I keep wanting to get Struggle of Empires to the table but you really need at least 5 for it to shine, and we never have that at home. Maybe at Lone Star Game Fest this weekend?
Never tried Empires of the Ancient World. I suppose I should try to rectify that sometime.
I still like Tempus after many plays but Jason wasn't too keen, so not sure I'll get to play it much.
I really look forward to getting Steel Driver though, it's quick and simple, very un-Martinish but still very good.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-31 08:39 pm (UTC)On Steel Driver, you can read my review, posted today:
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14112.phtml