Advanced Search

Jeff:





Matt Fantastic is exploding in furious wrath right now.

Through the Desert is definitely a good one. I had a copy for a while but literally no one else wanted to play it with me.

Ohh...I forgot Blue Moon. I asked about it previously, but I'll go ahead and re-include it here.

Blue Moon - Pokemon has cooled in our house (thankfully), but I do like ccg type games occasionally, so there's some interest in Blue Moon. I understand some folks feel the art is a bit risque, but what are we talking about here? Hyper sexualized? scantily clad? both? I'm not adverse to a little skin as long as it's tasteful, if it's just for sensualization I'll likely pass.

Ra is pretty good; it hits the fun/analysis mark almost perfectly.

Battle Line is really pretty fun, and as Nate said, it's better than Lost Cities because it doesn't have the onerous scoring maths.

Lost Cities can fucking die in a fire.

T&E is easily in my top 10 most overrated, boring, insipid, droll, and utterly fucking boring games of all time.

LoTR initially was a game I had, tried twice, and then literally threw it in the trash can. Then I played it about a year later with different people, one of whom owned it and played it often, and who kind of guided us all through "how to play". That was the missing factor - the rules are a bit hard to follow (for me, at least) and having someone explain it made it WAY easier to understand.

Kind of wish I hadn't shit canned it. I ended up getting another copy at one point, but never got to play it, so I traded/sold it.

Star Trek...well, I love it. Some people don't. It's a really fun game until you have played it a lot. If you are the "achievement" kind of person who chases scores, maybe it will play longer trying to get a perfect score, but after ~10 plays, I'm over it.

En Garde is actually a really fun little game. I think it's Special K's best simple design. I didn't like it at first but I had a summer of playing it with the wife and learned to like it.

Samurai is EASILY the best game he ever made, from design quality to depth.

Through The Desert is probably the second-best or third-best area control game ever. Even the pastel camels are awesome. Great, great, great game that sits proudly on my Forever Shelf.

Tower of Babel is something I never hear much about. It's a decent little game, but it's nothing all that special. I like the ~idea~ but I think Blue Moon CITY is kind of similar and is far better.

EDIT: NOT BLUE MOON, BLUE MOON CITY

Blue Moon is OK for a card game. I'm not a huge fan of these kinds of games.

Jeff White hasn't played Tigris & Euphrates? And this is after I already know you've never played Acquire. Man, those strike me as total Jeff games. Really tight, well-designed, and self-contained. And they're even older designs!

I haven't played Dragonland, Rheinlander, or Forumla Motor Racing. But since we're talking about Herr Doctor, here are my favorite Knizia games:

Ra - I figured out that the reason I don't like 7 Wonders is because it's like someone looked at Ra and thought the set-collecting was the most interesting part. Ra has my favorite auction of any game ever, and it's Knizia's best game.

Tigris & Euphrates - It came out 15 years ago, and there still hasn't been a game that's ever come close to approximating the feel of this one. It's a multi-player conflict game filtered through Euro design, and it's just terrific.

Lord of the Rings - I'm not as high on it as Barnes or Jeff are, but I do think it's really compelling. The downside is that I've found it only really becomes worth the time when you're really experienced with it. It's also been a very hard sell for my group. Most of plays have been solo. I really wish FFG would reprint the expansions.

Battle Line - I've thawed just a little on Lost Cities, but frankly Battle Line does all of the good things Lost Cities does, and it does them better. Just outstanding tension and brutally difficult decisions.

Taj Mahal - I've only played this one twice, and I'm not very good at it. But I remain entirely fascinated by the design itself. It's very much about playing the other players, learning when to push and when to hold back, all in about 90 minutes.

Split from the front page, I'm a fan and own a number of his games.

We play quite a bit of BattleLine, Kingdoms, LotR: The Confrontation, and Colossal Arena, but I also really enjoy Beowulf: The Legend (wish this was in a smaller box), Ivanhoe, and the occasional game of Lost Cities.

However there are three that I've sorta had my eye on for awhile and wonder if they're worth obtaining.

DragonLand - I understand to be a kids game, but is it a good one?

Rheinländer - I think it has one of the best box covers in boardgaming, but is the game itself any good?

Formula Motor Racing - We're looking at picking up Detroit/Cleveland Grand Prix. I played a ton of it back in college, and would like a copy. How does this Knizia game compare to Detroit/Cleveland?

Never played T&E...for some reason it doesn't seem to speak to me.

Also:

The scenario boards in the base game and Friends and Foes have lots of text on them. However, Knizia has said that it was not possible to put text on the Battlefields boards because, unlike the base game and the other expansions, Battlefields was a combined French/German/English edition.

If Battlefields had place names or chapter titles on the flowcharts, maybe the relationship between gameplay and the books' narrative would have been apparent. My understanding is that Battlefields needed more character tokens, too, so that you weren't required to do stuff like field Boromir in battles that transpire long after his death.

The production run on Battlefields was much lower than the other Lord of the Rings stuff, so such luxuries as English-language boards with explanatory text, or an appropriate selection of characters for each battlefield were probably not possible, economically.

That has to be it. The other expansions- even Sauron- are so refined and so exquisitely developed, and Battlefields is not. I can totally see how he toyed with incorporating this stuff, wasn't really feeling it, and shelved it. And I can totally see FFG saying "let's print that!"

Playing with it again recently, I didn't dislike it as much as when it first came out but it's still definitely the weakest element of the entire set. If it were just a LITTLE more obscured that the "battles" are flowcharts, it would have helped.

Michael Barnes wrote: I have always suspected that Battlefields was never really finished. It just doesn't feel completely integrated to me, and the whole thing with the flowcharts feels very prototype-y. Remember that this was an expansion that came out WAY after the others, kind of out of nowhere. I've always suspected that Knizia never really felt like it was done, and eventually it just got published anyway- probably due to contractual obligation.

Years ago, before the publication of Battlefields, but after the release of Friends and Foes and Sauron, Reiner mentioned in a BoardGameSpeak interview that he had done work on a third expansion but decided to leave it in its drawer because he didn't think it quite worked.

Unlike the base game and the other expansions, Battlefields was not developed by Kosmos. I've wondered in the past whether Battlefields came about because someone at Fantasy Flight heard that same interview and specifically requested Knizia's "lost" Lord of the Rings expansion.

Or maybe Battlefields is completely different from the "lost" expansion. Someone should ask Reiner.

Has FFG said one way or the other whether some version of the old expansions would be reprinted or redone for the Silver Line edition? I kind of figured that would be a no-brainer, but then again I also recall numerous holiday sales that had the first two expansions for something like $5, so maybe the market's saturated and anyone wanting to play with them should just pick up the old set instead or in addition.

I have always suspected that Battlefields was never really finished. It just doesn't feel completely integrated to me, and the whole thing with the flowcharts feels very prototype-y. Remember that this was an expansion that came out WAY after the others, kind of out of nowhere. I've always suspected that Knizia never really felt like it was done, and eventually it just got published anyway- probably due to contractual obligation.

It also feels, as Grudunza pointed out, like a more detailed implementation of some of the concepts of F&F. And as much as I like that you've got the rest of the Fellowship more "present", it does shift the focus off the Hobbits and some of the game's core thematic values.

You know, it really kind of makes sense...Battlefields is the parts of the story that Knizia didn't think were essential to the themes he wanted to bring out, all the mass battle War of the Ring-type stuff.

I'd say that Friends and Foes is the only expansion you really need. I hardly ever play without that one.

The other two were ok for the novelty value at first but I never use them now.

wkover wrote: Battlefields is my least favorite expansion. I don't own it, and I can't really recommend it.

The others are both good.

I have the opposite opinion... I think Battlefields is the best expansion and adds a really interesting and more dynamic aspect to the game. Yeah, the flowchart layout of the boards is lame... the same essential thing could have depicted actual battlefields, though they were obviously trying to conserve the size of the boards... but in terms of something happening, I think it's a lot more interesting than Friends & Foes, the new mechanic of which is just a line of cards. And for me it completes the LOTR experience better because now you're not just moving the Hobbits in the game, but Aragorn and Gimli and Legolas and Boromir and Gandalf are also doing their thing on the side.

Btw, I don't think of any of the expansions as essential. They're all nice to have, but the base game still holds up on its own.

There's a copy of the original with Friends and Foes in a local math trade I'm in. I think it'll be near the top of my wantlist.

Battlefields is my least favorite expansion. I don't own it, and I can't really recommend it.

The others are both good.