War of the Ring: Battles of the Third Age, Times Square
Hey, your guess is as good as mine!
Unlike most people I suspect, what ultimately
enabled me to pull the trigger on buying the new War of the Ring expansion was
not to get at the new bits for the main War of the Ring game, but the new
"operational" game they included using many of the same bits as the core game.
Sure, I'm glad to have the upgrades for the core game, but since I wasn't a huge
War of the Ring fan I figured the maximum upside for me was modest: it would get
War of the Ring onto the table for a few more plays. If there was any way the
expansion was going to justify its non-trivial price tag for me, it was with the
operational game.
First, let me say
that anyone out there who was hoping that Nexus might have learned from the many
graphic design foul-ups in War of the Ring (indistinguishable sculpts,
ridiculously tiny font sizes, indistinct icons) will be disappointed. The design
here is every bit as breathtaking in its blithe disregard for functionality or
reason. Icons are tinier, less illuminating, and even more indistinguishable.
For reasons that defy all logic recruitment counters specific to good guys and
bad guys are all the same color. Relevant terrain on the board is still
indistinct. The rulebook manages to make a game of just modest complexity almost
completely incoherent. It all really is an amazing sight to behold, especially
since the actual look of the board and many of the illustrations is so
well-done. All that can be said is that the board itself is much more useable
than War of the Ring's, with spaces that are large enough for the units that
will occupy them.
Anyway, enough with
that already, how does the game
play?
With possibly one big honking
exception*, I rather like the core system of the Battles of the Third age game.
In the main, the game plays very similarly to the core War of the Ring game (and
for that reason if no other I think fans of the base game will find something to
like here): you roll dice to see what actions are available to you (move,
muster, draw cards, attack, etc.), combat involves rolling up to 5 dice with
leader re-rolls, you've got some flavor provided by various dual-use event
cards, you've got characters, armies, and so on. A number of complexities of the
full game (Diplomacy, mainly) are gone, replaced by some more tactical concerns:
the different types of units now have different flavors (finally!), damage in
battle is more nuanced and can be repaired through rallying before units are
actually lost, and the Shadow Player can select his "attitude", from build-up
(which allows recruitment and slows the pace of the "fate" clock which times the
game) to a neutral position through all-out-offensive (which enables more troop
movement but accelerates the clock).
Sounds interesting, right? Sure!
Unfortunately, in actual play, this mix of stuff turns out to be bewildering,
because there is almost no way for you to get any intuitive sense of what you
should be doing. Should I be building up? Attacking right away? Trying to mix
recruitment and offense? Who is going to be more effective, the Isengarders,
Dunlendings, or Mordor Orcs? What is going on here, exactly? So much of the
landscape of the game is hidden by the decks of event and action cards, the mix
in the muster chits, and the expected mix of die rolls and fate tile draws, that
it's impossible to formulate a reasonable approach to the game without knowing
the exact mix of cards and having a detailed knowledge of complex
probabilities.
As a result, our games
saw the Shadow Player soundly thrashed. These were not just garden-variety
beatings, but total stuffings. Not just once, but back-to-back. Imagine ending a
game of Settlers of Catan with 3 points, and that showing would feel more
emotionally satisfying than what the Shadow Player has gone through in our
games. The problem with a beating that bad is that it often leaves you with no
comprehension of what has gone wrong, and that was the case
here.
In the end, War of the Ring:
Battles of the Third Age felt like a lot of American-style games: while there
are lot of different options presented to the player, there is really only one
way to play the game.** You need to figure out what that one way to play it is.
Then it boils down to who can execute the pat strategies the most efficiently.
The War of the Ring base game had similar issues, but it seemed less extreme: if
you pursued some avenue other than what the game designer intended (or what the
game design demanded) you would lose, but it at least it wouldn't be the
humiliating experience we have here.
As
a result, this is one of the most incomprehensible and opaque games I've played
in some time. I don't think it's exactly a bad game – I find many of the
individual elements interesting in and of themselves, and many of the tactical
decisions have some tension when viewed in isolation – but when taken as a
whole the game is simply far too confusing for what you're likely to get out of
it. For what should be a fun roll-the-dice and mix-it-up game with obviously
limited replayability, I don't want to have to spend my first 3 games (at 3
hours or so each) just figuring out what the heck is going on. To me, it's just
not that interesting.
Now, War of the
Ring: Battles of the Third Age may be incomprehensible and opaque, but designing
such a game is child's play when you're willing to use 24+ pages of rules not
written in the designer's first language, a hundred cards, and one metric ton of
plastic. Designing an incomprehensible and opaque game with one page of rules, a
small board, and a simple deck of cards with no text is the work of a true
master.
I admit to having no idea of
what's going on, game-wise, with Reiner Knizia's Times Square. The basic idea is
that you have various figures on the board: Sue and her two Bodyguards, Hal, and
Deb. The pieces all have a matching suit of cards which move them in different
ways and with different restrictions and have various effects on the other
pieces. You're trying to get them into your (sort of sleazy-looking) bar. You
play through the deck twice, some stuff happens, and the game
ends.
I can only imagine it's Reiner's
further experiments in theories of game theme, as demonstrated dramatically by
Beowulf. These characters actually have slightly more descriptive names, and
they sort of behave in appropriate ways: Sauced, er, Saucy Sue staggers back and
forth between the two bars, always surrounded by her bodyguards; Dancin' Deb
flits back and forth and allows the player who's bar she is closest to to
influence the motions of all the other pieces; and Handsome Hal moves in a more
leisurely manner, and can attract other individual pieces to him. It all sort of
makes sense in a thematic way that is sort of interesting, if still a little bit
too abstract to be actually
engaging.
The underlying game-play
itself though is very strange, and I have yet to determine if there is any
tension, any resource management, or any tactics. I've played about half-a-dozen
times and I am suspicious that there is not – you just play whatever cards
you've got and pick up some new ones. But, I say to myself, this is Reiner
Knizia, not Michael Schacht. There must be
something
there. It's rated as a "12 and up" game, for heaven's
sake!
As I say,
bewildering.
---
*
So what is that exception anyway? I've come to the conclusion that the real weak
link in War of the Ring (and, by extension, the Battles of the Third Age
expansion) is the action dice system itself. It is a fairly clever in concept,
and I usually like dice, but when viewed in a holistic way I think they are
ineffective here. They serve to constrain rather than enable. You have some idea
of a strategy you want to pursue, but tactically you are too straightjacketed by
what you end up rolling. Combinations of dice don't suddenly open up interesting
options that weren't available before, although many combinations will prevent
you from doing what you want. If they enabled uncertainty or excitement or an
ability to bluff, that might be something – but they don't, all dice rolls
are open and can be seen by both players, so your opponent knows exactly when
you have a lousy roll and how to hammer you for it. The Fellowship knows how
dangerous it is to move, and can calculate the odds exactly, which seems very,
very wrong.
In a large part because of
this core system, both War of the Ring and Battles of the Third Age end up
feeling to me like you're wrestling with the game system, not with your
opponent, which for me is not a good
thing.
** For the record, the way to
win as Saruman in the Rohan scenario appears to be the hyper-aggressive one. Use
the "buildup" attitude for one turn, maybe two if you want to push things, then
go all-out. locking into the "attack" attitude and never shifting. Any other
approach appears to be dead on arrival, as we
discovered.
*** Sorry for stealing your
gimmick, Joe.
Posted: Monday - August 28, 2006 at 05:54 PM