Fantasy Flight Games was having brisk sales on the new A Game of Thrones boardgame. The same box size as the Lord of the Rings game, the $40 product pits 3-5 players against each other in a… um… game of… thrones… uh, yeah. Not only could gamers take control of one of the houses in the boardgame, the new Ice & Fire set for the A Game of Thrones CCG offered a starter for each house and 240 cards, 200 of them new. Of the starters, House Lannister sold out by early Saturday.
For the d20 inclined, Legends & Lairs: Cityworks is the latest installment for the hardcover D&D resource line. Written by Mike Mearls, Cityworks goes into great detail on setting up those urban centers of commerse your thief wants to visit so bad. Also a new d20 release, Redline is the first of FFG’s new mini-games line, in the general style of Polyhedron. To bring Mad Max to the d20 Modern game… well, ya gotta admit, that’s a no brainer.
Finally, an oversized promotional box for Warcraft: The Boardgame was on display behind the counter in the middle of FFG’s booth. Due this fall, all I know about it is that FFG’s Greg Benage said “It plays like a tabletop version of the computer game.” I hope it’ll have something more than that going for it. Seems like everyone has a new adaptation of a PC game these days.
“I hope it’ll have something more than that going for it. Seems like everyone has a new adaptation of a PC game these days.” – I have to take exception to that. WarCraft has better gameplay than most games released in the past decade, computer or otherwise; if FFG can pull off what they say they can, they’ll have one of the best board games of the year. And who cares if everyone’s adapting PC games for the tabletop right now? That doesn’t mean the games they end up with will have *anything* in common. It’s not like adapting a novel from a movie, or even like adapting a game from a movie – it’s about gameplay.
Greg’s words were “It plays like a tabletop version of the computer game.” Yes, gameplay will be somewhat different merely due to the constraints of the tabletop medium. But if I wanted to play WarCraft, I’d fire up my PC and get it done in 1/3 the time the boardgame will take. I suspect the average gamer will agree. What I want to see is the WarCraft game expanded upon, or a cool new game system extrapolated from it. Otherwise, it’s just taking the computer out of the game, which is nifty and all, but not likely to get me to buy it.