Trashdome - SW: Queens Gambit VS SW: Epic Duels

QG conceptual theme falls apart when you realize that the Jedi battle heavily influences determines the outcome of the game.

Fixed.

Haven't played either, but I wish QG was reprinted because it looks ace, and I've never really had any interest in the Epic Duels line.

So a vote for the apparent underdog here: Queen's Gambit!

Avery beat me to it---but Epic Duels does have special powers for the characters (Boba Fett being able to fly around after attacking, etc) that are thematic. Its not a total paste-on issue. Sure--you can adapt it--but then the cards and powers have to be adapted, too.

I have NOT played Queen's Gambit, though---but I'm looking to get it! Still trying to tempt Barnes with mint, in shrink, We the People for Queen's Gambit (offer open to all! Have Bonaparte at Marengo or Dune, too)!

VOTE: Epic Duels

Merkles wrote:

Avery beat me to it---but Epic Duels does have special powers for the characters (Boba Fett being able to fly around after attacking, etc) that are thematic. Its not a total paste-on issue. Sure--you can adapt it--but then the cards and powers have to be adapted, too.

I have NOT played Queen's Gambit, though---but I'm looking to get it! Still trying to tempt Barnes with mint, in shrink, We the People for Queen's Gambit (offer open to all! Have Bonaparte at Marengo or Dune, too)!

VOTE: Epic Duels

Christ, if I didn't already own WtP and a proper original B@M map [turning Nappy's Triumph into a great big B@M set], I'd be on that trade like flies on dog turds...

As someone who played the shortest ever game of Epic Duels [as Yoda, against Steve "Darth" Avery; *2* cards. It took me longer to read the 3x5 notecard of rules than to play], I have to go Queen's Gambit here.

ED's bonus is that it can be customized to anything; and there's no question that it's better for groups of folks...but I can't get past that feeling it's just a gussied up game of War. The Transformers "Battle Card" Game does this just as well without the toys.

QG feels like a real game. I agree that it does, however, need a house rule or two to lessen the impact of the lightsabre battle... People house-ruled Betrayal at the House on the Hill into a fully playable game, so why isn't this one eligible for a few minor tweaks to at least throw a few switches onto the rails? It needs a hell of a lot less work to tweak than Betrayal did.

Vote: QG...

A comparison of the "theme" of Queen's Gambit and Epic Duels straight up will not work because it ignores the vastly different genres of the two games. Queen's Gambit is a large scale strategy game, while Epic Duels is a fast and furious combat game. To expect the same sort of theme from the two games is silly. Within its strict generic constraints, Epic Duels is incredibly thematic, for reasons that others have well enumerated.

But the thematic intent of two games differs even more deeply. Queen's Gambit is trying to recreate the entire last act of a movie. From this aim it is almost inevitable that the game, as many have charged, will appear "scripted," since it is trying to reproduce, in game form, the experience of a medium, like film, which always turns out the same way. Epic Duels, on the other hand, offers the players a framework within which they can not only recreate individual scenes from various movies, but also recombine elements from all over the Star Wars universe to create original scenes. The thematic structure of Epic Duels will definitely therefore appear more malleable, but it is a mistake to call it pasted-on because it is flexible. If the game seems like it could support other settings, we should rather consider whether Star Wars combat is really that different from the fighting in those settings, and not assume the theme to be irrelevant and pasted-on.

The conceptual theme of two different games might very well appear identical if their themes were identical in concept.

SO?

Queen's Gambit

Never played either, but QG sounds like more fun to me, as one of the few people who actually likes the Star Wars prequels.

I've only played SW:QG so that's m'vote!

Michael Barnes wrote:

SO?

totally irrelevant

A comparison of the "theme" of Queen's Gambit and Epic Duels straight up will not work because it ignores the vastly different genres of the two games.

Not true. They're both Star Wars games, and while the source material has breadth, it's perfectly legitimate to consider which game uses the more appropriate concept to translate the source material.

Hypothetically, an Agricola-esque game about moisture farming on Tatooine could be very thematic, but I don't think anyone here would say it was a very good use of the Star Wars license.

QG doesn't simply capture the events of the movie accurately, it also capitalizes on one of the series' signature features; the fact that the last act of each of the movies has a bunch of different conflicts going on simultaneously, while the audience gets to view a bits of each one in rapid succession. So, it's not simply a matter of them being two different types of game, one theme is closer to what we see in the movies than the other.

The thematic structure of Epic Duels will definitely therefore appear more malleable, but it is a mistake to call it pasted-on because it is flexible. If the game seems like it could support other settings, we should rather consider whether Star Wars combat is really that different from the fighting in those settings, and not assume the theme to be irrelevant and pasted-on.

Well, I've never had any first-hand experience with either Jedi or Transformer combat, but from what I've seen, they're pretty different things. ED's theme isn't pasted on, but it is purely executive. Yes, there are different powers for the different characters that more or less represent what they did in the movies, but that's exactly the kind of thing we're pointing at when we talk about executive theme. You can use those exact mechanics to represent both Luke Skywalker and Optimus Prime. Do we really need to ask ourselves whether or not those two characters' adventures are all that different?

Where Barnes makes his mistake is that he's starting to go down the conceptual=good, executive=bad route. Conceptual theme is great, but it's not necessarily a determinant of whether or not the game is any fun to play. Choosing one game over the other simply on that basis is almost as ridiculous as picking the with the better components.

Just finished a game of SW:TQG tonight and it was a good play, I grabbed it at the end as the Trade Federation by finally removing the last of the palace guards (the fake queen was already gone).

But this game was quite different in that the Jedi/Sith battle ended in a third possible outcome - Darth Maul had dispatched Qui-Gon but had taken quite a few wounds, but he played a recover card before he and Obi-Wan started a massive stoush, it got down to Maul on his last health point and Obi-Wan still with a couple, but Maul played the next attack card and in a viscious last effort scored 5 hits on Obi-Wan, all sorted thought the Trade Fed player, except Obi-Wan in his desperate defence threw a riposte dice and took a vital hit on Maul with his dying movement and sent the Sith to his death.

So we played out the rest of the game with me trying to get enough droids up to flights of stairs to take out the guards while my mate desperately tried to get Anakin through the star fields ... the droids made it.

Two and a quarter hours but a great game.

So, this trashdome has officially ground to a halt. And it's only Wednesday! I thought we were gearing up for a major war, here.

So, this trashdome has officially ground to a halt. And it's only Wednesday! I thought we were gearing up for a major war, here.

This is probably the first Star Wars thread on the internet not to hit at least 100 posts.

Mad Dog wrote:

So, this trashdome has officially ground to a halt. And it's only Wednesday! I thought we were gearing up for a major war, here.

This is probably the first Star Wars thread on the internet not to hit at least 100 posts.

Again, it's another case of two OOP games going up against each other.

I haven't played either, but scripted gameplay with only one viable choice per turn=bad Euro. (I already have Candyland, thanks)

That was easy. Though before this thread I would have voted differently because the premise of 4 mini-games that affect each other is really interesting.

Epic Duels