Boardgame Spins On Computer Strategy Games Rated

Thanks to GamerDad for its article discussing some of the most recent strategy videogames to get boardgame conversions, including the Age Of Mythology, Civilization, and WarCraft boardgames. The author notes: "In much the same way that it is sometimes necessary for a good movie to stray a bit from a good book, a board game can sometimes play better by not trying to exactly emulate its computer predecessor. Regardless, all three of today's games provide a new way to experience a favorite computer game setting." He goes on to rate the AOM ("a very pretty game... [with] the fatal flaw of its combat mechanics"), Civilization ("quite complex and involved, but... possible to play and finish in a single long session"), and WarCraft ("succeeds in creating a slower paced, simplified version of the computer game") adaptions.

Comments

Frag

[bobo the hobo]

A favorite game of mine is Frag, the first-person-shooter board game. You can even play capture the flag!

Re: Frag

[OOO0000OO0O0]

In other news, there is a Doom board game in development (seriously)!

More info...

[Iscariot_]

You can find frags website here:
http://www.sjgames.com/frag/

And the rules and some pictures are here:
http://www.sjgames.com/frag/fragrules.pdf

New Poll Idea

[Twintop]

Favorite RTS Board Game? -Risk -Stratego -Scotland Yard -WarCraft -Age of Mythology -Civilization -Board Game? Is that a new tileset for Cowboyneal 2.0?

Civilization Originally a Board Game?

[wambaugh]

Didn't Sid Meier base the original Civilization computer game on Avalon Hill's game of the same name (albeit a British spelling)? (See, for instance: http://www.lilback.com/civilization/ah/board.html. ) I never played it, but I wonder how similar the gameplay of the original version is to the new board-game-to-computer-game-board-game version. At any rate, I call dibs on adapting the new board game into a computer game.

Re:Civilization Originally a Board Game?

[A Big Gnu Thrush]

Yes and no. Avalon Hill sued Hasbro (The Borg) over their computer game. The Borg responded by buying Avalon Hill and shutting them down, killing the RTS board game industry, though it was mostly dead already. Later, The Borg resurrected some titles, regurgitating their assimilated, sanitized version to Wal Mart consumers.

Re:Civilization Originally a Board Game?

[hapycamper]

Umm, to my knowledge, there are no RTS board games in existance. (I wrote the aforementioned article.) There are a number of real-time card games out there. Speed is played with normal cards, Blink is similar with a special deck, and then there are a number of other card games as well. I hope to cover them in a future article. Except for the RTS part, yes Civilization (I prefer Advanced Civilization) has some minor similarities to the computer Civ game, but not that many. This board game is far more reflective of the original. (Oh, and regarding "Frag!", yes its pretty much a PC game gone board game, but there isn't currently a computer or console game called "Frag". There is an upcoming Doom game, though.)

Re:Civilization Originally a Board Game?

[YetAnotherHoopyFrood]

(Tangentally on-topic)

The loss of Avalon Hill was truly a great one for the strategy board gamer. Their Dune game is one of my favorites. It was incredibly balanced (although that made playing with less than the full number a players a little trickier), and every now and then the Bene Gesserit would predict the winner, giving everyone a story to tell for the next few days/weeks.

Diplomacy was also very good; its complete lack of anything random made for interesting gameplay.

Now, to be fair to "The Borg," I thought that I had played a re-released version of Diplomacy, and it certainly wasn't lacking in any way. However, it is also possible that I am merely thinking of the sort of "going-out-of-business" sale that AH had at one point.

Risk 2210 is also listed on the box I've seen as an AH product, but I don't really know the story behind that, either.

Re:Civilization Originally a Board Game?

[hibiki_r]

Hasbro is using the Avalon Hill brand on all of their latest strategy board games. This includes Risk variants like 2210 and Risk Godstorm.I wish they released a good strategy game, as opposed to the dicefests they release nowadays.

Re:Civilization Originally a Board Game?

[Colazar]

Heck, I'm still mourning SPI, which TSR shut down just to reduce (almost non-existent) competition from DragonQuest to to D&D.

Now Hasbro owns both of them, and publishes almost nothing. I'd love to get some of their back-catalog.

But yes, Dune is an *excellent* game. It's almost as good as Titan. But unlike Titan, it will actually end before 3AM.

Re:Civilization Originally a Board Game?

[YetAnotherHoopyFrood]

If you really want old Avalon Hill games and other such things, you could look here: http://gamersalliance.com/. However, you won't find the good stuff cheap. Also, there is a membership fee required to get access to the catalog. They have Avalon Hill, TSR, and others, depending on their supplies at the time.

So, really, I suppose that site is only good if you have quite a bit of extra money to throw around, but it is the one I found. eBay is often a better (and cheaper) alternative, though.

No, the original board game was very different

[Xtifr]

The original board game had almost nothing in common with the original computer game. The board game had no combat whatsoever, and mostly involved trading commodities. It did have city-building and technology development, and some would argue that Sid must have "borrowed" these elements, but the argument is circumstantial, and I find it unconvincing.

Avalon Hill's Civilization-the-board-game was my favorite board game for many years. And, perhaps coincidentally, Sid Meier's Civilization-the-computer-game was my favorite computer game for several years. I will say, however, that my brother recently got Sid Meier's Civilization-the-board-game, and it's a pretty good game too.

Re:No, the original board game was very different

[KevinKnSC]

There was some very limited combat in the original Civilization board game, although nothing to write home about. It was basically just alternating who took pieces off the board, until the number of pieces in an area was below the limit for that area. You could succeed with a military strategy, especially in the Advanced Civilization add-on, but the point of the game was definitely to grow your own civilization, rather than tearing down the others.

As an aside, Civilization and Advanced Civilization have the best-writting instructions of any complex board game I've seen. They are laid out in "outline" style, according to the turn order, and until you've learned the rules you can just follow along in the rule book on each turn, and the rules you need are in exactly the order you'll need them. This is contrasted with the poorly written rules for the new Civ board game, which requires you to jump around in the rule book a lot until you've got the hang of it.

I only know of one RTS board game

[Russellkhan]

It's called Icehouse, and I highly recommend it.

Re:I only know of one RTS board game

[Annoying]

Wow, I just looked over that site it's a neat concept. Universal pieces and many games instead of unitasking game pieces. The homeworlds game rules looked like fun too. Seems like most anything could be used in place of those tokens which makes it even better.

Re:I only know of one RTS board game

[Russellkhan]

Yes, it is a great concept - the creators intend the pieces to be like playing cards, able to handle any number of games. The two most popular games for the pieces are Icehouse (my personal favorite) and Zendo, which is a much more accessible game, very popular on game night. For Icehouse, you really want pieces of the right proportions (though I do know guys who have really nice homemade pieces, so they don't have to be the ones you buy) but I'm sure Zendo could easily be adopted to pieces of other shapes and sizes.

I haven't tried Homeworlds, but will check it out.

AOM Board Game

[odellp]

I recently bought the AOM board game at a whim, since I simply wanted to see if a PC game could convert successfully. The answer for me was ..

Sort of.

My friends and I had to make a few changes that we felt would improve the game and also make it more tied with the PC version.

We felt the age advancements were pointless since the only real benefits were 1 new hero to purchase and some extra resources. On the first turn you could buy the strongest myth unit and attack, making it hard for the other person to ever get a foothold against this tactic if they chose to spend the resources on something other then thier strongest myth unit.

Well to cut things short we made some adjustments that only allowed certain buildings and units to be purchased when you reached a certain age. This seemed to make the game more interesting.

I do want to know if the warcraft board game is worth purchasing?

Re:AOM Board Game

[Lithium_Golem]

I own all three of the games in question and have to say that the CIV board game is the best, followed by AOM and then Warcraft.
Although it looks cool from the box, it gets really boring and redundant quickly. All you do is gather wood, gold and pump out military units.

Stay away from it. But get CIV instead :)

Sid Meier's Civilization boardgame

[ggwood]

So I own this game and like most strategy boardgames it takes a long time to play, similar to the "original" civilization board game. It is fun and the rules are relatively easy to learn. However, there are exploits in the rules which allow a pair of players who totally trust one another to trade technology back and forth and buy up new technologies very easily, and cause the ages to go by very fast and effectively end the game extraordinarily quickly (IIRC cost is effectively proportional to the number of technologies you own, thus by trading away some you can buy others very easily). We could find no elegent solution to prevent this without neutering the trade system, and thus no longer play.

If anyone has a solution, or a link to a cite with alternative rules please reply!
__________________________________________ _____

Computer game of original board game exists

[Finkbug]

"The board game had no combat whatsoever" Wish I'd been playing you. I'll take the easy victories any day! It is accurate to say combat was not the focus of the game but going 100% peace will get you stomped by anyone with half a brain. (Waging a full blown war is also a sure way to lose.) The key use of combat is grabbing cities for one turn to break up sets of trade cards or stall someone on the AST. There was a computer version of the Avalon Hill boardgame. [1996, DOS, might be a Mac version] It's not terrible either. Trade is slightly changed and the AI is not going to seriously hinder a competent human but it's still fun to blow through a round every now and again.