![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viktor_haagThis last weekend was likely the last Old Huron Redoubt gathering for a while, thanks to scheduling around the sports monstrosity that is the Stooper Bowl. We had four attendees, and we played two games: the new release of Shogun from Queen/Rio Grande, and Antike.
Shogun puts you in the position of a warlord in feudal Japan attempting to enlarge your holdings and contribute to the glorious infrastructure of the Shogunate (you get points for having a wide area under control, but also you get points for building/controlling castles, temples, and theatres).
Antike puts you in the position of a bronze-age civilization that grows, acquires resources, and builds infrastructure. You get points for meeting infrastructure goals faster than other players (and some of these goals involve smacking down the infrastructure of your opponents).
Shogun is really Wallenstein with some slight adjustments and a new map configuration thanks to the re-themeing. The map this time is long and thin rather than square-ish, and this seemed to have a strong effect on the game. In Wallenstein, conflicts can tend to "circle" around the map, keeping everyone in balance and biting at everyone else's tail. In Shogun, though, our game produced isolated conflicts at either end of the island. One player was able to expand his holdings in the middle of the island without much resistance from other players, as they were too busy with their own problems to chew away at his central holdings.
The map also produces some interesting choke points that aren't necessarily there in the Wallenstein map. Some of the outlying provinces are connected through sea routes to other outlying provinces. Accordingly, if you have garrisons on either end of this sea route, it's much easier to defend the end points against superior forces arrayed around them - the equivalent of standing in a doorway. In Wallenstein, these kinds of defensible positions are really only afforded by the edge of the map-board; with Shogun, you have edge provinces, but you also have these interesting bridges with "doorways" at either end. The lack of sea forces in the game basically turn these sea routes into wormholes: the path between the doorways cannot be interfered with, so the doorway provinces can bolster each other's backs unmolested.
The only other difference from Wallenstein is the addition of "special event" cards (which amount to Peurto-Rico style "roles" conveying mechanical advantages). During the second phase of the season where you are choosing your province's actions for the upcoming turn, you also dedicate a card to bidding for turn order. The card will either be a province card (meaning you can't perform an action in that province for the turn), or a "bid" card where you pay an increasing amount of money to improve your chances of choosing your turn-order-position in the upcoming turn. High bidder gets to choose their turn position and associated special event card for the upcoming turn.
As with Wallenstein, the game lasts between two and three hours, with lots of inter-player conflict. And, like Wallenstein, there's a maddening amount of randomness: in the cube tower that decides the results of battles and revolts, in the cards that come up for players to select their starting provinces, in the cards that determine special conditions or rice losses every turn, and in the order in which the action cards are revealed. A strong position can easily lay fallow, while a weakened position can be protected, by the ordering of event-card drawing. A battle can go horridly wrong because of the way the army cubes filter through the cube tower.
Shogun is a pleasing enough game, as its predecessor was; however, you must be prepared for the random element; it can be very frustrating. This game has some of the trappings of a traditional war-game, but the sheer amount of chance that shows up in this game is much more akin to the German-style game school. Shogun (and Wallenstein) is a game about coping your best with chaos and trying to win despite the horrid twists of fate that beset you. And of course, chortling gleefully when fate works in your favour. However, it seems to be the nature of games like this that you really don't remember the moments when things work in your favour -- far more memorable are the horrible moments when your plans get hosed by a bad card draw.
Antike by contrast has no randomness in it at all. Everyone's starting position and resources are pre-determined and from the word go, you can only blame your choices and the choices of the other players for how the game progresses. The first three quarters of the game are filled with amassing resources and building infrastructure. You can acquire points by fulfilling goals, especially if you fulfill them before other players. Unlike many games, Antike provides the group with a limited number of victory points, so fulfilling a goal rewards doubly: you get the points, and someone else does not. It's very important to realize this, as many other German style games provide the group with a limitless supply of victory points.
In the game we played, there was almost no inter-player conflict until about 80% of the way through the game. We all had convinced ourselves that it was cheaper to improve our own position than to knock down someone else's. However, in retrospect, if we had truly considered the double nature of the victory point awards, I think we might have approached the game differently.
As it was, in the endgame, each player had a strongly different chance of winning the game: two players had a good chance, one player had a poor chance, and one player had really no chance at all. This despite the fact that were all either one or two VPs away from the game end.
I was not enthusiastic at all about the end-game in Antike. However, I'd be willing to play this game again with a different mindset. It's important to realize how the VP allotment in this game works -- the game seems to encourage you to play a certain way (build your stuff first, then raid other players), but if you get seduced by this seemingly sensible notion (sensible because so many other games also work this way?), then chances are you could find yourself in a position at the end of the game with no possible way to win. Raiding other players may hinder the growth of your own infrastructure in this game, but it's important to realize the constrained environment you're working in.
I suspect, as well, that it's important to play a few times to really understand what board positions are useful ones, and which ones are not. As with Go, for example, it's important to carve out large territories behind your defences, as you'll depend on them to back-fill into during the later part of the games. If you build a "small but strong" position, you'll lose opportunities to claim VPs later in the game, which will conversely hand them to other players.
Antike is a decent game, but it's not a great one. I'm not sure I'll keep this game, as there are just so many other similar games in my collection (at least two or three) that I enjoy more than this.
Shogun puts you in the position of a warlord in feudal Japan attempting to enlarge your holdings and contribute to the glorious infrastructure of the Shogunate (you get points for having a wide area under control, but also you get points for building/controlling castles, temples, and theatres).
Antike puts you in the position of a bronze-age civilization that grows, acquires resources, and builds infrastructure. You get points for meeting infrastructure goals faster than other players (and some of these goals involve smacking down the infrastructure of your opponents).
Shogun is really Wallenstein with some slight adjustments and a new map configuration thanks to the re-themeing. The map this time is long and thin rather than square-ish, and this seemed to have a strong effect on the game. In Wallenstein, conflicts can tend to "circle" around the map, keeping everyone in balance and biting at everyone else's tail. In Shogun, though, our game produced isolated conflicts at either end of the island. One player was able to expand his holdings in the middle of the island without much resistance from other players, as they were too busy with their own problems to chew away at his central holdings.
The map also produces some interesting choke points that aren't necessarily there in the Wallenstein map. Some of the outlying provinces are connected through sea routes to other outlying provinces. Accordingly, if you have garrisons on either end of this sea route, it's much easier to defend the end points against superior forces arrayed around them - the equivalent of standing in a doorway. In Wallenstein, these kinds of defensible positions are really only afforded by the edge of the map-board; with Shogun, you have edge provinces, but you also have these interesting bridges with "doorways" at either end. The lack of sea forces in the game basically turn these sea routes into wormholes: the path between the doorways cannot be interfered with, so the doorway provinces can bolster each other's backs unmolested.
The only other difference from Wallenstein is the addition of "special event" cards (which amount to Peurto-Rico style "roles" conveying mechanical advantages). During the second phase of the season where you are choosing your province's actions for the upcoming turn, you also dedicate a card to bidding for turn order. The card will either be a province card (meaning you can't perform an action in that province for the turn), or a "bid" card where you pay an increasing amount of money to improve your chances of choosing your turn-order-position in the upcoming turn. High bidder gets to choose their turn position and associated special event card for the upcoming turn.
As with Wallenstein, the game lasts between two and three hours, with lots of inter-player conflict. And, like Wallenstein, there's a maddening amount of randomness: in the cube tower that decides the results of battles and revolts, in the cards that come up for players to select their starting provinces, in the cards that determine special conditions or rice losses every turn, and in the order in which the action cards are revealed. A strong position can easily lay fallow, while a weakened position can be protected, by the ordering of event-card drawing. A battle can go horridly wrong because of the way the army cubes filter through the cube tower.
Shogun is a pleasing enough game, as its predecessor was; however, you must be prepared for the random element; it can be very frustrating. This game has some of the trappings of a traditional war-game, but the sheer amount of chance that shows up in this game is much more akin to the German-style game school. Shogun (and Wallenstein) is a game about coping your best with chaos and trying to win despite the horrid twists of fate that beset you. And of course, chortling gleefully when fate works in your favour. However, it seems to be the nature of games like this that you really don't remember the moments when things work in your favour -- far more memorable are the horrible moments when your plans get hosed by a bad card draw.
Antike by contrast has no randomness in it at all. Everyone's starting position and resources are pre-determined and from the word go, you can only blame your choices and the choices of the other players for how the game progresses. The first three quarters of the game are filled with amassing resources and building infrastructure. You can acquire points by fulfilling goals, especially if you fulfill them before other players. Unlike many games, Antike provides the group with a limited number of victory points, so fulfilling a goal rewards doubly: you get the points, and someone else does not. It's very important to realize this, as many other German style games provide the group with a limitless supply of victory points.
In the game we played, there was almost no inter-player conflict until about 80% of the way through the game. We all had convinced ourselves that it was cheaper to improve our own position than to knock down someone else's. However, in retrospect, if we had truly considered the double nature of the victory point awards, I think we might have approached the game differently.
As it was, in the endgame, each player had a strongly different chance of winning the game: two players had a good chance, one player had a poor chance, and one player had really no chance at all. This despite the fact that were all either one or two VPs away from the game end.
I was not enthusiastic at all about the end-game in Antike. However, I'd be willing to play this game again with a different mindset. It's important to realize how the VP allotment in this game works -- the game seems to encourage you to play a certain way (build your stuff first, then raid other players), but if you get seduced by this seemingly sensible notion (sensible because so many other games also work this way?), then chances are you could find yourself in a position at the end of the game with no possible way to win. Raiding other players may hinder the growth of your own infrastructure in this game, but it's important to realize the constrained environment you're working in.
I suspect, as well, that it's important to play a few times to really understand what board positions are useful ones, and which ones are not. As with Go, for example, it's important to carve out large territories behind your defences, as you'll depend on them to back-fill into during the later part of the games. If you build a "small but strong" position, you'll lose opportunities to claim VPs later in the game, which will conversely hand them to other players.
Antike is a decent game, but it's not a great one. I'm not sure I'll keep this game, as there are just so many other similar games in my collection (at least two or three) that I enjoy more than this.
