Initial Impressions

[Smash62]

I didn't see a better place to post this, so I'll try here.

Positives:
(1) It's great that this game finally came out!
(2) I love the Ent figures and the brown trebuchets, seige towers and Corsairs. (The Balrog and WitchKing are great too, but they look too much like each other with just a cursory glance.)
(3) The cards to be added into the old decks appear to match well in terms of color.
(4) The components are generally of very good quality, like the base game. (Except it relys on too many tokens in my view--more on that below.)

Negatives:
(1) No Gollum figure. Fantasy Flight was giving this figure away for free for a while--why not have put it in the game instead of forcing us to use a token?
(2) Only four cards were added to both sides for the base game. (And three cards were swapped out.) I was bummed about this. I was hoping for maybe another 24 cards per side, enough so that fewer of the cards come up each game, permitting greater variety, and perhaps giving more combat card options.
(3) Darker plastic was used for the pieces, so they don't match. It's distracting while playing, and I don't have the time or skill to paint them all.
(4) In general, the base game seems to have been expanded very little, which is disappointing for me because that's the only part of the expansion that really held great interest for me.
(5) So far, the two "battle" games feel a bit fiddly. There are lots of tokens on the map: damage chits, leadership tokens (why tokens for this?), control tokens, Recruitment tokens, yuck. You also have cardboard rings about some of the figures--which gives them a huge footprint, and two colors of army units (light and dark) and two colors of leader figures (light and dark gray). And resolving battles seems confusing to me: many things to compute and compare. (I've only played a little, and right now it feels kludgy.)
(6) I wonder why the company didn't print extra Recruitment tokens on the blanks. They could have been used for home rules or to replace lost counters. As is, the extras are useless.

Some of the negatives above are minor, I admit. I'm plunging ahead and intend to give both battle scenarios some play, so my initial impressions may change.

[mrweasely]

I agree with most everything you say.

I broke down and spray-painted my figures, and I'm glad I did.

The huge footprint on the Champions is good because they're the aircraft carriers at the core of the carrier battle group. As a Shadow player, I fear them.

I've played the base game, and saying that the changes are minor is significantly downplaying them. There's plenty to explore here, witness that 60% of strategy articles for 3rd Age are for Twilight. In particular, the siege engines are fun for the SP and stressful for the FP. That's good because the SP needs the help all of a sudden.

[Smash62]

I'm glad the gameplay of the main gain is enriched, I just think it could have been enriched so much more, that's all.

I think there's rumors of having a second expansion that features other battles such as the Battle of the Five Armies. If so, I don't think I'll be at all interested. What I would be _very_ interested in would be a "Silmarillion" game more along the lines of the main "War of the Ring" game, with the Elves trying to gain control of the Sil Marils, and Melkor trying to wipe out the Elves. That'd be way cool.

[Veldrin]

Unfortunately the Silmarillion is not included in Nexus' license.

[glow=green,2,300]Veldrin[/glow]

[Smash62]

Bummer. Is there any chance of (or interest in) Nexus being able to apply to obtain that license?

[Smash62]

I've played more of the Rohan scenario and I'm afraid I haven't grown to like it. My reasons:

(1) The scenario rules for handling various actions are frequently at odds with the base game rules, making it confusing for me. (It's far easier for me to remember the rules to two completely different games than to remember two sets of rules using the same pieces in conflicting ways.) Examples of conflicting rules:

(a) Ent activation and mustering.
(b) Elites are no longer elites.
(c) The attack from an adjacent area / the 5-unit army limit / the whole attack process.
(d) The different uses of the action dice.
(e) Different characters have different abilities.
(f) The scenario rules are spread across five areas! (The main scenario rules, the specific scenario rules, the reference cards--FP and Shadow having different information on theirs that isn't elsewhere, and finally all of the character cards.) You have to check _all_ of these to make sure you're not forgetting something, ugh.

(2) Mechanics:

(a) The difficulty of damaging Shadow armies is deflating. Damage tokens can be removed with the next action dice by Rallying, and there are numerous Shadow cards that add units to armies in situ. (In the base game, you basically see what you're up against, and you can whittle away at the opposing army. And dead is usually dead.)

(b) The action dice system seems more realistic for the base game--Sauron can only focus his Eye in so many directions, most of the Free Peoples being reluctant to enter the war seem apply handled by the action dice system. What works at the strategic level, however, feels more artificial at the tactical level. In the book, Sauron's armies were unleashed in one giant horde, whereas in the scenario he has to flip recruitment tokens and send them out in waves. Not being able to move more than a couple of the FP armies at once (instead of issuing the order "everyone run to Helm's Deep!") feels unrealistic.

(c) There's much randomness: what units will be recruited, which action dice will be rolled, what combat tile with the opponent choose, what combat card will be played, what special ability will be available, how many damage counters will be rallied away, how many ents will the FP player have to attack with, etc. I know many of these are in the base game, but there's more here.

(d) The battle mechanics feel fiddly. I don't get the sense that I'm fighting a tactical battle, I feel like I'm gaming an abstract system.

(e) I'm not a fan of the mixing of counters and figures on the same map.


Okay, that's it for my negative posting. I absolutely love the base game, and am eager to try out the new elements for it! I just don't think I'll be playing the scenarios, which is a bummer, cause the maps are beautiful.

[Veldrin]

I have heard your "complaint" from others and I tend to answer:

The Gondor/Rohan game are for those who:

1. Like Wargames
2. Don't mind counters
3. Don't mind that the rules for the two game systems are simliar but different enough to cause some slight errors in the beginning.

Here at my place my wife alikes the base game and we play it quite often (she aslo dunks the Ring against me quite often). The Gondor/Rohan games she detests.

She simply isn't a wargamer, that is why she prefers the FP side in the base game I guess.

[glow=green,2,300]Veldrin[/glow]

[Smash62]

<Grin> I can see how you arrived at that inference. It so happens, though, that I play Advanced Squad Leader too, so wargames and counters don't at all put me off.

Rather, it's the hybrid mixing of counters and figures that I dislike (the figures tending to block your view of the counters). Also the battle mechanics feel, well, Age of Mythology-like, a bit too abstract for my tastes. (IMHO, I think the designers simply pushed an excellent game mechanic into a realm where it's ingenuity and advantages don't shine as much.)

[mrweasely]

smash62 said:

I think the designers simply pushed an excellent game mechanic into a realm where it's ingenuity and advantages don't shine as much.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Smash.

Also, in the op games I feel they went for an overly literal and plodding interpretation of the books. They both follow the same basic pattern:

1) Shadow onslaught
2) Deus ex machina rescues Free at the end (maybe).

Given the rarity of divine intervention, its mechanisms should be more subtle and more random. For example, in the Gondor game, Rohan always always shows up, the FP can count on it. Denethor always always is useless. The SP can count on it. Aragorn always always shows up, and in basically the same location - the FP can count on it. Bormomir never, ever shows up - the SP can count on it. About the only randomness in the Deus ex Machina is how fast the fate track goes up, and that's not so very random either. It just doesn't seem like too creative a game to me.

I like it fine. I'll certainly play it more. But it definately isn't on the same level as War of the Ring.

Now I feel that the base game has been greatly expanded. There were already rich subtle interactions in the base game. Adding just three more systems produces a combinatorial explosion of possiblities. They added nine new systems (loosly counting the new cards as a system). I think that's a huge addition, and frankly I'm a little skeptical that the playtesters could possibly have covered the event-space of possiblities.

Now is that worth $50? For me, two "ok" strategic games (which some of my friends actually like more), plus Twilight, yeah, for me its easily worth it, and getting a good review.

[mrweasely]

Another example is the absence of elves from Rohan. Yes, I know, Kindred of Glorfindel showing up in the movies was complete cheese, not in the least because Rivendell was besieged, but it was totally within the realm of a cardplay.

Similarly, The Gray Company should have made a better appearance than "none at all".

Not to say these things should happen every game - that's the point. When you sit down to play a new game, you should have confidence that its going to be completely and utterly different from the last games you played. Instead, its a squestion of "do I send 2 armies at Cair Andros and three at Osgiliath, or four at Osgiliath and one at Cair Andros?". Yawn.

[SevenSpirits]

mrweasely said:

smash62 said:

I think the designers simply pushed an excellent game mechanic into a realm where it's ingenuity and advantages don't shine as much.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Smash.

I was going to say the exact same thing. For me, the action dice and event cards work really well at the strategic level, and not so much at the operational level.

The action dice work because there are many areas of the game where you can spend them, and get somewhat closer to victory. But in the tactical game, it feels more like you are locked in a single life or death struggle, and here the randomness is less welcome. For example, Gondor can try to heavily defend Osgiliath, but then if the SA gets a lucky attack in, the FP are left with 2 options: cede the river and have only a couple guys left, or fight it out - and if they lose have NO guys left. So they stay, because if they retreat they're screwed, but now they lose the battle and get even more screwed.

It's like in the base game, everything happens in parallel, and in the operational games, everything happens in sequence (everything depends heavily on what happened before). Think about that.