A Game of Thrones board game: first play

July 16th, 2007

Last weekend, I finally got to give the Game of Thrones board game a try. (I’m only just now getting to write about it because it’s been a darn busy week of utterly un-fun work.)

I played with my wife and another couple, so we had to play a four-player game. The game is specifically designed for five players, so this meant turning House Greyjoy (one of the competing sides) into a set of neutral forces. I suspect that the game is still not perfectly balanced, but with a game like this, that can be part of the fun. How well you do as a losing house can, for the right player, be even more interesting than winning as a house with an advantageous starting position.

Once we figured out the rules, the game ran very smoothly. Because (as is always the case) I was the only person who read the rules, we had at least one or two major rules questions every turn.

Because of these rules questions, everyone made major flubs every turn. For instance, one player gave support orders to her units thinking, for some reason, that they would let her move the units.

Most confusion centered around how controlling areas of water allowed a player to treat different land regions as adjacent. When I read the rules, I found I understood this feature quite easily, but either I explained it poorly or it isn’t as intuitive as I thought. I said, paraphrasing from the rulebook, “If you control an area of water, you can treat two landmasses as if they’re touching, as long as they border that area of water. And you can extend it, in theory, as far as you can control water areas.” Or something close.

But it didn’t stick. One player, twice, gave a ship marching orders because he wanted to move units to The Arbor, when it was his units on the mainland that needed the marching order.

I think part of the confusion is that the physical shape of the regions makes for some surprising connections by water. The connection between Widows Watch and Crackclaw Point via The Harrow Sea may be one of the most strategically important things for the Starks, but the Stark player in our game didn’t realize the connection existed until everything was almost over.

Despite the inequalities, the game played fairly well. Lannister didn’t do too well, but even she might have made a comeback if we’d finished the game. We only got to the end of turn Six, though, when my two-year-old daughter decided to wake up from her nap. The game does allow for comebacks, I think.

The random element—the order in which cards come up—is just heavy enough that a player could conceivably be victimized by a series of bad draws. But it’s light enough that this is very, very improbable. I wouldn’t consider removing the random element. I very much like the feel of uncertainty it brings, and if I want to play a pure strategy game, I’ll opt for chess, go, or dvonn.

We played without any alliances, backstabbing, or vendettas, because we were busy getting a feel for the rules. I wonder what it will be like once everyone really knows the rules . . .

In any case, the others weren’t too gung-ho to revisit the game when my daughter went to bed, so I didn’t get to try it again. I’ll be bringing it on my two-week vacation in August, though, and I have a feeling there are enough geeky adults that I’ll get to try it a bunch more times.

Entry Filed under: Board Games