Location: Yoda's House
Players: Yoda, Steve, MichaelU
Ah, Kingmaker. A game of kings. A game of nobles and titles. A game of stamina and endurance.
Knowing that it was a long game and with minimal experience in its play, we started straight out. With the starting cards, Steve established a dominating position in the north. Yoda became the Welsh strongman. That left the south for Michael. Everyone grabbed a king or an heir forthwith and consolidated their nobles into large piles and waited for something untoward to happen to someone else. In the beginning, this consolidation process involved solo nobles scurrying from one town or castle to the next as they headed toward the bulk of friendly forces. (about the only time anyone bothered to stay in a town or castle since that's where plagues happen.) Steve proceeded to conquer towns on roads so that he could move long distances quickly. This turned out to be not so bad a plan since he forever was getting yanked back north by special event cards so that he could deal with those unruly Scots.
Morning turned to afternoon. All nobles titles and everything got distributed. An occasional fight would happen where someone would die and get recycled. Michael hid in France with his heir. Yoda lay waiting for someone to be foolish enough to wander into Wales. Steve roared around the board like a toothless lion. A parliament was called and favors were handed out. More death, more recycling. Steve cornered Michael's claimant and killed him off. Another parliament was called, with a different power broker. Steve made someone else be the guy who got jerked north to dance with the Scots. Slow attrition whittled away Steve's forces and grew Yoda's. Round about 18:00, endurance failed, and everyone agreed to end the game without declaring that anyone would win.
Of course, given that Yoda had 3/4 of the forces in the game at his command, the eventual result should be obvious. Unfortunately, Kingmaker isn't that kind of game. Any particular battle can cause either side to lose horrible things they don't want to lose. It doesn't matter how much of a force advantage you have, because even though you can be sure that you have a big enough margin that the other guy will lose, the card which is drawn to determine the 'victor' may dictate that half your force dies along with them. This can have the effect of making one rather reluctant to attack at all... Especially when the other person is the one who will get to hand out all the special goodies when he calls parliament again... Thus the stalemate...
No one is anxious to repeat this game.
Showing posts with label Kingmaker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kingmaker. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
February 7, 2009 - The Voyage Continues
Location: Yoda's House
Players: Yoda, Steve, MichaelP, MichaelU, Nick
Ah, Munchers - a good way to start the day...
To start the day, Steve demoed his two new game acquisitions - Kingmaker and Talisman. Everyone perused the game boards and paraphernalia, asked questions both answerable and unanswerable, and agreed both looked interesting for future sessions.
Next, we started Iron Dragon. Yoda laid out the game and explained the rules (most of them at least : ), prior to getting started. Everyone else was a newbie to this game. This became apparent relatively quickly when a couple of people found themselves in the situation of not being able to deliver a load. Due to inadequate explanations and demonstrations, MichaelU didn't realize that he only got to make each specified delivery a single time and was stranded pretty quickly when he didn't have enough money to build track to make a second delivery. At this point, he became a source of a stream of disasters, as he would throw away his cards every turn and get new ones. Disasters eventually pushed Nick (and very nearly two others) into the same situation. Steve was the only player not to have a very close brush with complete disaster. Eventually MichaelU did get a card which allowed him to deliver something and was able to claw his way back into active play. Nick got money from someone using his track and became active again, so no one was forced to sit out for a really extended period. Networks extended, money came and went, and a remarkable amount of cross-track usage fees changed hands.
The first game ended up lasting until 16:30, as learning such a game leads to much discussion, as well as longer planning and replanning activities as events unfold. By the end of the game (Yoda winning), everyone except MichaelU had connected seven major cities with a network. Everyone understood the mechanics of the game much better by the end, and during cleanup there was a lively discussion of things learned and what different strategies to employ next time. Expect this one to make more appearances in the future.
Unfortunately due to short time remaining, not even a short game was able to be fit in post-Iron Dragon.
Once again, photos courtesy of Steve (this time with a real camera!).
Players: Yoda, Steve, MichaelP, MichaelU, Nick
Ah, Munchers - a good way to start the day...
To start the day, Steve demoed his two new game acquisitions - Kingmaker and Talisman. Everyone perused the game boards and paraphernalia, asked questions both answerable and unanswerable, and agreed both looked interesting for future sessions.
Next, we started Iron Dragon. Yoda laid out the game and explained the rules (most of them at least : ), prior to getting started. Everyone else was a newbie to this game. This became apparent relatively quickly when a couple of people found themselves in the situation of not being able to deliver a load. Due to inadequate explanations and demonstrations, MichaelU didn't realize that he only got to make each specified delivery a single time and was stranded pretty quickly when he didn't have enough money to build track to make a second delivery. At this point, he became a source of a stream of disasters, as he would throw away his cards every turn and get new ones. Disasters eventually pushed Nick (and very nearly two others) into the same situation. Steve was the only player not to have a very close brush with complete disaster. Eventually MichaelU did get a card which allowed him to deliver something and was able to claw his way back into active play. Nick got money from someone using his track and became active again, so no one was forced to sit out for a really extended period. Networks extended, money came and went, and a remarkable amount of cross-track usage fees changed hands.
The first game ended up lasting until 16:30, as learning such a game leads to much discussion, as well as longer planning and replanning activities as events unfold. By the end of the game (Yoda winning), everyone except MichaelU had connected seven major cities with a network. Everyone understood the mechanics of the game much better by the end, and during cleanup there was a lively discussion of things learned and what different strategies to employ next time. Expect this one to make more appearances in the future.
Unfortunately due to short time remaining, not even a short game was able to be fit in post-Iron Dragon.
Once again, photos courtesy of Steve (this time with a real camera!).
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