Trashdome - Warrior Knights vs A Game Of Thrones

WELCOME TO TRASHDOME!

This is the fifth in a series of bloody matches to the death. Show support for your favorite game so it will do better in the fight. You can support it by writing why you think its the better game and more importantly by betting on it. End your first post in this thread with the title of the game you're placing a bet on (i.e. voting for) so its clear to me when reading it later. You have until Friday when I tally the bets and declare the winner. The winning game may return for future matches, the loser will be dead. I will reserve my vote for any tie-breakers.

Although you should be familiar with both games, there is no rule that says you have to have played both of them. The only rule in Trashdome is this;

Two games enter! One game leaves!

Without voting yet, are we including any expansions in the Trashdome, or is it base games only? Or am I thinking too hard about this?

clockwirk wrote:

Without voting yet, are we including any expansions in the Trashdome, or is it base games only? Or am I thinking too hard about this?

You're thinking too hard about it. Include whatever you want.

Warrior Knights!

Vote: Warrior Knights

I explained my reasonings for this twice already in lengthy words on this site. Use the search function.

Game of Thrones!

Vote: WARRIOR KNIGHTS

I've only played AGoT once and I didn't like it, just didn't seem a game that I fitted with. I've enjoyed playing both editions of WK so that's an easy vote for me.

Game of Thrones.

But fuck me they are both great!

Game of Thrones!

Warrior Knights!

Vote: A Game of Thrones

Though neither one excites me much.

I'm really enjoying each poster's analysis of these games.

I was just thinking that.

I've only played Warrior Knights once and though I liked it, the people I play with found it overly fiddly and a bit lacking of story. AGoT on the other hand is easy to learn yet hard to master. The rock-paper-scissors aspect of house cards can be downright nail biting (though it gets a bit silly in A Clash of Kings), you need lots and lots of cunning while bidding, and there's even an element of chance - do I dare use all my power and risk the wrath of the wildlings? Furthermore I love the books and I think the game captures the feel of A Song of Ice and Fire quite well. And even if you don't like the stories, there's more to the story of the board game than the generic "medieval times" of Warrior Knights.

I'm not saying WK is a bad game - it's just no match for the awesomeness that is AGoT.

Hmmm...both have real problems without their respective expansions:

Warrior Knights has a broken combat system out of the box that boils down to "draw the most victory cards, and nothing else really matters". This is fixed by the expansion deck with its better balance of damage-to-victory cards. Buy two sets of the expansion, though, and you can make that combat system sing!

A Game of Thrones has a broken levying system out of the box that boils down to "will the randomly reshuffled Westeros deck ruin our game or not?". This is fixed by the expansion with special orders and a partially exposed Westeros deck which allows for real planning to take place.

On the positive side, everything else about WK is awesome; the assembly, fate deck, even the gambling mini-game is cool. AGoT too has a lot of really cool shit and a richer (and more integrated) theme.

AGoT has a "luckless" combat system, which for some weird reason a lot of people think is magical awesomeness. However all that luck was just taken from where it should be (combat) and dumped where it has no reason being (levying). This un-thematic fundamental design decision gets a band-aid in the expansion for good reason.

WK has a random movement order determined by card draws - you know everything in deck A will come before deck B, but no idea who will pull a card first from the given stack of order cards. Again for some reason a lot of people think this is "just too random" for them, even though some of those same people have no problem with going a whole game of AGoT with the possibility of not getting to raise troops even once.

I have to give it to Warrior Knights by a hair: it's chaos is in the right place and isn't trying to hide it in the Westeros deck. It also has an old-school legacy and even bestows some ancient wisdom from the long-dead "king of games": Kingmaker.

WK leaves the ring bloody and alive, but looses both eyes and a testicle to AGoT.