Age Of Mythology Gets Boardgame Treatment

Thanks to OgreCave.com for their first look at the Age Of Mythology board game, as Ensemble/Microsoft's popular RTS title follows the trend of videogames like Warcraft, and gets translated into a tabletop game courtesy of Eagle Games. The writer sees parallels to another popular new boardgame, saying "Given how much people talked about Puerto Rico's similarity to real-time strategy games when it came out, it just seems a little... strange to me that it and its designer aren't mentioned here", but overall, reckons this newly-released game "...looks like it'll be a blast to play."

Comments

Where's the overlap?

[chromie]

The trend of publishing board games based on video and computer games seems to be pretty limited. I don't think it necessarily holds that a good video game will translate into a good board game, even when the 'franchise' under discussion is a strategy or war game. Furthermore, I don't think that enough video gamers are also tabletop gamers for there to be any real spillover enthusiasm. Where's the overlap? Maybe at one point there was a significant overlap between tabletop gamers and video gamers; now that's not necessarily so.

In my experience, video gamers tend to be post-tabletop addicts, recovering or otherwise.

So what's going to sell a AoM or Warcraft boardgame? For the first season, and in a limited capacity, brand recognition, spillover artwork and design, etc. After that, though, many board games fail, and do so because of their own lack of merit -- fancy way of saying that they just aren't fun, or have limited replay value, or aren't flexible.

Unless the designers make fun, worthwhile, and not entirely derivative board games, they'll flop. My money says not to expect too much.

Re:Where's the overlap?

[misuba]

Unless the designers make fun, worthwhile, and not entirely derivative board games, they'll flop. My money says not to expect too much.

Well, hey, how about that: bad board games don't sell even if they have a good license. Plenty of people are making good board games, though, so why don't you expect much?

Further details

[misuba]

I posted the OgreCave post, and I've now played part of a game of AoM (the board game) and will probably post about it on OC once I get another try done. We played with four players, two playing Norse and two Greek. The important bit is that all these people were Puerto Rico fans and fans of the German stuff in general, rather than fans even of the more mildly grognardy stuff like Axis and Allies.

I think you have to be an Axis fan, or a potential Axis fan, to enjoy this game. Our group found its array of details frustrating to stumble through for the first time - the first (and sole) combat of the game had a giant on each team and no giant-killers on either. The giant that had one more die to roll won the first roll and killed the opposing giant, and from there the combat was just a dice-rolling exercise. (It didn't help that the losing player was particularly pissed at the game and wouldn't retreat.) It comes down to which units you've built and send into battle - very like an RTS, but not fun for Puerto Rico players.

For my next game, I think I'm gonna try two things: 1) let players in their first Age draw one additional card per turn; 2) if I'm still playing with people unlikely to be fans, forgo the rolling of dice altogether during combat, merely comparing unit stats instead, and see how that goes.

This all sounds like gobbledygook to most of you, but it might also give some impression of what's going on. I'll either post in more detail on OgreCave or have a full review the next time I play.

Re:Further details

[AvitarX]

I accidently modded this redundant. oops.

Played this weekend

[flibbidyfloo]

We had a good time overall. Its similarities to Puerto Rico are pretty major, but the mechanic is different enough to warrant a separate game. For one, it's got the combat, which adds a level of player interaction that PR sorely lacks.

We'll play a few more times and see if it becomes a regular like PR has.

My only gripe is that it seems to reward grunt rushing, just like many RTS games. One of the players was very aggressive and increased their army on the first round. The second round she attacked and decimated my army then ransacked my resource stores. That put me behind for the next few turns and I never quite caught up again. However, spoilage is the great equalizer, and in the end, someone besides her won.

Puerto Rico is like a RTS?

[MilenCent]

Er, how? I've not played it yet (Statesboro isn't exactly a hotbed of physi-gaming activity, unless you count the local Games Workshop infestation), but everything I've seen points to a very *non* RTS-like game. I mean, there's no units or combat at all. The players have to produce buildings to win, but that's a stock play mechanic that predates RTSes I'm pretty sure.

Oh, and also the game isn't played in real time, completely unlike, say, Cheapass Games' inventive Falling.

Re:Puerto Rico is like a RTS?

[misuba]

PR got compared to an RTS because of all the RTS elements besides units and combat. This is an imperfect analogy, but imagine what an RTS would be like if all the units you had were non-combatant gatherers. In Puerto Rico, you have a lot of decisions to make about what to build (crop fields or buildings, and what kind), and how many people to staff them with to achieve maximum benefits.

And yes, both Puerto Rico and AoM: Boardgame are turn-based, but they both use a mechanic (invented in Puerto Rico) wherein certain choices of what to do on your turn mean that all players will get to do that thing on your turn. Not real-time, but it changes the turn-based dynamic a bit.

You could call Puerto Rico an RTS simulation, only less of the RT and more of the S. Really, "real-time strategy" is a misnomer: most RTS games include a great deal of tactics as well as strategy. The tactics are in the unit placement and combat. Falling and other real-time card games are all tactics, unless they offer deck construction ahead of time, which is tricky.