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.

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.