Trashdome - SW: Queens Gambit VS SW: Epic Duels

WELCOME TO TRASHDOME!

This is part of 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. Counting expansions or not is entirely up to you just as playing with them or not is. I will reserve my bet 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!

*chuckle chuckle guffaw guffaw*

Queen's Gambit

Probably one of the best games I've ever played.

On paper, Queens Gambit looks like my kind of game. Big, complex, ambitious in scope, rich with theme, and lots of dude-killing. Unfortunately, that theme is tied directly to a bad movie, the turning point where the Star Wars franchise went terribly wrong. I don't even want to think about Phantom Menace, let along spend hours playing it. And this game crosses an intangible line in the toy factor that I don't feel like crossing... instead of just lots of bits and pieces for a big game, Queens Gambit looks some kid is playing with his plastic army men in Malibu Barbie's Beach House. The rest of the board is also kind of an eyesore, absolutely cluttered with details. From what I've read, it looks like only one of the four subgames really matters, and that one is particularly random and non-strategic.

Normally I have little use for filler games, so I was prepared on sight to dislike Epic Duels. So I was very surprised to find that I really liked Epic Duels. Yes, it's short and simple, two things that I'm not usually looking for in a game. But the simplicity is all in service of streamlining the game into fast and furious combat. FRAG tried to do the same thing, but Epic Duels pulls it off so much better because the theme is in the cards and the nicely-sculpted and painted miniatures. The resulting game hits a sweet spot in between CCGs and tactical miniatures combat. Plus there is the fun of pitting characters from the original trilogy against characters in the modern trilogy.

I vote for Epic Duels.

Queen's Gambit


Epic Duels is awesome but it's a fuckin' featherweight comparatively speaking.

OMG MACE WINDU FIGHTING DARTH VADER!

And EPIC DUELS still goes down- even though QUEEN'S GAMBIT is about EPISODE I and features piles and piles of gungans.

Don't get me wrong, EPIC DUELS is a cool, accessible, and pretty fun game...but compared to the accomplishment of QUEEN'S GAMBIT in terms of providing one of the biggest (literally) marriages of conceptual and executive theme ever in board gaming, EPIC DUELS just looks awfully small and minor.

EPIC DUELS really could have been about anything...it doesn't strike me as STAR WARS specific beyond all the executive stuff. Plus, it feels very much like a precursor to HEROSCAPE, and HEROSCAPE did everything better.

I don't think this is going to be a blowout, I expect to see most folks vote for EPIC DUELS because more have played it. But bear in mind that if you vote EPIC DUELS, you're doing it wrong.

QUEEN'S GAMBIT.

I have QUEEN'S GAMBIT but have not played EPIC DUELS, I'm always on the lookout for it but at the same time am a bit hesitant. E-D looks/sounds a great game but I worry that the aspect of just duelling another player may wear off quickly.

Q-G is very thematic (to me) purely because it has four elements from the movie in four different games - admittedly Anakin's journey is really just a timer and the winner of the Jedi/Darth battle can seal the game, but all four together works enough for me to have it as a favourite. If the game consisteded of just one of them then I don't think it would stand a chance. Plus the battle dice system is pretty damn good and ups the appeal by itself - AND I love the size and detail of the miniatures ... sheer luxury especially when compared to those in another great SW game, RISK: Star Wars Original Trilogy.

Vote: Queen's Gambit

www.videosift.com/video/Nissan-GI-Joe-st...e-classic-commercial

Vote: EPIC DUELS

Queen's Gambit is more thematic, I'll give you that. Problem is, it takes 2 hours to play, while Epic Duels takes fifteen minutes. This wouldn't be a problem if not for the ridiculously few important decisions that need to be made in QG: all that time is spent because you play a card that says "move and attack with three droids" or whatever. So then you do some almost COMPLETELY pointless movement (I know, the positioning isn't exactly all that exciting in Epic Duels either, but Queen's Gambit has the most boring lack of positional tactics I've ever seen in such a game: positioning is actually TOTALLY IRRELEVANT in the LIGHTSABER DUEL, of all places!), and then you roll a single die, as does your opponent. And then you roll another single die, as does your opponent. And then you roll another single die, as does your opponent. YAWN.

It's just too damn incremental for me. Rolling the dice one at a time just kills me, as does the basically static board (I'm aware that there's a tiny little bit of positioning, so don't go "OMG the palace windows need to be blocked!").

We played Epic Duels 12 times the first night I got it.

Both of these games really suck.

But if you held a gun to my head and made me play one, I'd play Queen's Gambit. It sucks less than Epic Duels.

Epic Duels is best I think when you're controlling more than one group of allies, or you have a number of people throwing down at once. Just doing a "duel" between Vader + lackeys and Yoda + Lackeys is not so exciting. Crowding the board a little bit is where it's at.

The other cool and thematic thing about ED (insert cialis joke here) is that every group gets its own battle deck, and the decks are built in a thematic way. Yoda's deck is very defensive, Darth Maul's deck emphasizes speed and attack, Leia can kick ass if Luke is wounded...I think that's right. Point being, it's not totally removed from the theme.

QG's biggest problem is that it basically boils down to who wins the lightsaber fight. The whole point of the naboo battle is to get bonus jedi cards, and even if you're able, as the naboos, to hold up in the throne room, if Darth Maul beats the Jedi with some life to spare, you have no chance.

I personally would like it if one of the Jedi could leave the battle and start taking out droids or establishing a defensive position before Darth Maul was defeated. That would make jedi movement and positioning actually matter. As it stands, It's all about the lightsaber fight.

VOTE: EPIC DUELS

Vote: Clash of the Lightsabers

Hell,

Vote: Game of Life - A Jedi's Path

QG is an okay game, but that's a lot of rules to sit through and a lot of setup for not much game.

ED has the benefit of being quick to learn and play, and has EP 4-6 stuff in there as well. That didn't stop me from selling my copy long ago.

Vote: Epic Duels

I played Epic Duels a lot when it first came out but haven't played in years. clockwirk nailed the key points in his post, so I won't repeat them all here. I'll just say that on the theme front you can't take much away from Epic Duels, and the beef of it is in the customized decks, which really comprise the core of gameplay; if that's not conceptual theme I don't know what is. If the fact that the fighting in Star Wars is really not all that different from the fighting in other potential settings disqualifies it from having true conceptual theme, then there are few games out there that do qualify.

VOTE: EPIC DUELS

Haven't played either, would very much love to since they both get loads of praise. However I believe Shellhead nailed it when saying that QUEEN's GAMBIT is about a movie that's bad in so many ways I can't even describe it. Yes, it may be the king (queen?) of conceptual theme, but if that theme sucks ass, I'm not buying it. Or, actually I would if I could only afford it - the basic premise of having four different mini games tied to each other sounds very cool.

But still, I do believe the movie is worse than Ultraviolet - a movie I could only stand watching 15 minutes of. And come on, pitching different SW character against each other in duel is just about as ameritrashy as it gets.

My vote: EPIC DUELS

Admit it...you guys are piling on to the pile here--against one of the greatest fucking games of all time--just to keep my losing streak alive.

I hate each and every one of you ornery bastards.

I for one stand united with Ken "Loveable Loser" Bradford against the rising tide of lockstep conformity and "me-tooism" that is already starting to poison the well that is this Trashdome. I do not see anyone coming in here and saying "YES, EPIC DUELS IS AN AWESOME GAME THAT I WILL TAKE A HUMAN LIFE TO DEFEND." It's all half-assed, "uh, well, I guess EPIC DUELS is OK." Then you've got Clockwirk saying that he wants QG to do all of this stuff that he wants it do short of spanking his ass and calling him Charley. Then you've got Mads bringing in _outside terrible movies_ to support his claim, as if EPISODE I wasn't bad enough.

Why, in another thread about WoW:TBG, you've got F:ATties rhapsodizing about the gumball machine miniatures in that game when QG has almost literally countless plastic figures and pretty darn cool ones at that, all those bobo tanks and gungan water balloon slingers or whatever the hell they were called could be painted up and sold as a child's toy. The EPIC DUELS figures are cool and all, but they should have come in a plastic bubble and cost 25 cents a piece. And there's no shortage of shitty prequel characters in it either- Zam Wessel?

I really think that whole "OMG MACE WINDU VS. DARTH VADER!" thing has clouded the minds of many padawans here, if you know what I'm saying.

And finally, for those of you that still get tickled about seeing Yoda fight (which is one of the most shameful and embarrassing things in the SW canon, as represented in EPIC DUELS)...WHODAMAN? YODAMAN!