One of my bugbears about this game, and its a hangover from first edition. Is the whole Lannister sucks, because greyjoy can thump them on turn one thing. For a long time, people talked about this. And how Baratheon would win most games. And not connect the two things. Second edition makes that opening a lot harder, but it was almost always a bad move for Greyjoy in the end. A greyjoy/lannister alliance is incredibly strong for both players. So who's played this, and what are you takes on Lannister as the weakling of the game.
One of my group's favourite games. We play this fairly often, and the MoD expansion really opened up a lot of strategies (negotiations are now a lot more interesting too). Love playing as Lannister. Prior to the expansion, working with Greyjoy was a necessity. That, or you had to devise a strategy to put Greyjoy behind in the first 3-4 turns without the other houses troubling you (possible, but tough as hell - which is why negotiations are so important).
I agree, this is good to know on replay games. Playing with the same friends a second and third time will begin to force you to utilize new strategies as we begin to understand weaknesses & strengths. Starks are possible winners if you go about it tactically, innovatively, and are willing to play dirty. A Stark must always stay in the North; I've capitalized on early wins by immunities & bribes, then sudden strikes, best with Stark plays (harder to make moves the more South you go). I won as a Stark last game by purposely leaving an opening to save me from conquering the entire North and buy time to quickly eliminate the Greyjoys or a closer threat (kill them fast; the more time they have to dominate the seas, the less breathing space). Make an alliance early on & plan attacks early on. Weaker house or Lannister or Baratheon; just make as many as you can behind the scenes, but never with a currently dominant house as thats endgame enemy (possibly Greyjoy). We've had 6 hour games on multiple occasions, so theres lots of room for innovation xd
Late to the party, but couldn't agree more. Lannister/Greyjoy alliance will almost certainly see one of them win. There's just too many strongholds and CP lands there.
Playing as Lannister made me appreciate the need for negotiation and alliance making. As other factions you can play on your own and have a chance at doing well. As Lannister, you won't survive if you don't make peace with one of your neighbors.
Can't recommend this game too much. With five players, it's a wonderful game of strategy, diplomacy, resource management, and intrigue. Everything from trying to forge alliances, stabbing your friends in the back, sending resources to the north to fight wildlings, and building armies and waging war feels great.
You are right about baratheon. I saw its potential, but ultimately made some first turn blunders and ended up like the greyjoys you mentioned. I've gotta say, being stuck on an island surrounded by navy sucks, but was totally my own fault. Cannot wait to play again to rectify those mistakes
15 years ago or so, i was very sick, spent a year basically unable to work. I played 6 player Game of Thrones by myself at home a bunch just to occupy my brain. Its certainly doable if your can compartmentalize well. But its not an official solo mode ;)
Played this game a bit when first acquired. Current gaming group is 4 members, and unless playing this game with more than 4, it turns into stopping Baratheon from an easy victory (they have the best advantage to capturing 7 cities if there is no one playing Tyrell or Martell). Once we realized every 4 player game would come to this, we have not played it in a while. Just picked up the Mother of Dragons expansion and will be giving it a go soon, especially since it requires the use of all of the houses (afaik).
I Believe that is true for MoD. I've also heard it makes lower players counts much more interesting. I always found GOT lacking at 4 player, even in first edition where the board didn't have Martel, so the lower areas were more spaced out and less valuable. Martel was added as an overlay board only used when playing 6 player.
This was 1st Modern board game I played. I think having this as my intro twisted my taste in games a bit. I've cooled on the game since Inwas first obsessed with it, but it still hold a nostalgic place for me.
I bought the expansion and pulled this game out for the first time in a long time. We played a couple games slowly adding in more of the expansions each game. We had a lot of fun. We haven't played with the iron bank yet but it seems neat. My biggest hang up with this game is that you pretty much have to play with at least 6 players or it just doesn't work as well. The expansion helps with that but it doesn't completely solve it. If the Lannisters can keep the Raven and control the middle of the board swapping consolidate power tokens for support or defence when needed it helps and we've had them win a few times but if the iron isles focused on them it can be frustrating. I've found the game Fief scratches a similar itch, is a bit quicker to play, and has a lower player count and is a great alternative if you have 4 or 5 players.
I've found the greyjoy/lannister alliance super strong for both players. Highly recommend giving it a go, boosts both factions, which rank towards the bottom in win percentage, quite a bit.
The bidding on the influence tracks is fun and all, but it happens way too often in the game. It's hard to pull any move off that require more than one turn because of the influence thing. Games can be really frustrating for all players if mustering cards keep appearing but a supply card hasn't popped up in a while. I like the tides of battle. Often conflicts are avoided because you can calculate your opponents strength before marching in. Tides of battle means that more players are inclined to give it a go and be more aggressive. Most games play out the same, turtle turtle turtle then a mad push at the end
I wonder if a fix to this could be a new order, that updates supply for the player it could even be a Sea Order token like the three that MoD gives us.
Great review. I love you are responding to recent comments. I played this at a con. I lost horribly. I was caught in analysis paralysis what I can do as Starks to even be competitive. I ended up holed up just defending like Risk players in Australia the whole game.
I’ll start by saying that I really do enjoy this game. It captures the betrayal and intrigue of GoT to perfection. And with the right group of 6P can lead to a very memorable and exciting evening. That said, there can be a really steep curve in the swing of the game. It’s entirely possible to be essentially eliminated from any real contention by the last third of the game and you can be forced into playing a spoiler role or even worse not even factor in to that. Not a lot of fun spending the last hour just sputtering along, trying to muster a few meager troops for what equates to nothing more than fish heads and rice. It’s a crummy feeling especially if you sink the time investment of a 3-4 hour game.
Agreed. Which is why I hate playing it with new people. Played a game a while back, and someone who hadn't played, ignored advice and just kept attacking people at random for "fun". As Lannister, the unbalanced the game totally and Tyrell, who allied with them early, just kept rolling and won easily. Such a bad few hours.
Mostly agree. I mention my thoughts on balance and skill in my vid "great games at 6 players". Best Lannister defence against Grejoy, an alliance. A Lannister/greyjoy alliance is very strong.
Hey, I didnt expect that you would reply. Love your content! And for your comment: You assume that the greyjoy wants the alliance with lannister, but from my experience, thats rarely the case. Cause as greyjoy, it is much more easier to just attack lannister and if you get mustering, u basically cannot lose. But yeah, my best games were when greyjoy and lannister allied, and funny enough, it was usually lannister who won in that scenario
I found, that if Greyjoy goes hard at Lannister, Stark or Baratheon normally win. It's a poor percentage play unless everything goes right and Stark, Baratheon and Tyrell let it happen. The danger for everyone though, is if Lannister get the stony sept formation going. That formation can give them complete control of the center of the board until they are tough enough to blast out end game. PS. I reply to pretty much everything as i love chatting about games :)
Before this came out, there was a fan made Diplomacy map of Westeros, so it’s pretty obvious where the inspiration came from. This version streamlines a lot of the complexity of Diplomacy created by simultaneous move order, also since it de emphasizes the diplomacy phase, the turns are shorter. However poor balance in Diplomacy is balanced by people who know which sides are weak (and diplomacy itself), GoT the board game is missing this and has the one sided start rounds that Axis and Allies used to.
I think that comes from poor play though. The greyjoy opening in particular doesn't improve greyjoys chances of winning. I think WAY too many people saw that as a flaw, rather than as assymetry. It's like AH in diplomacy. Sure, you can crush them early, but is that the best move?
3 Minute Board Games I agree. My thinking is if GoT had as many playthroughs as Diplo, people wouldn’t do early game strategies that wipe out weak starting players. Sure the Starks can take Kong’s Landing pretty easily, but should they? I’d imagine GoT would be pretty intense with seasoned Diplo players. Fun fact: After playing Diplo throughout college, I won seven straight games of Risk in grad school by playing Risk like it was Diplomacy. After our seventh game, two of our classmates swore to never play the game with me so I bought a Sony PlayStation (it was 1995) and we switched to beating each other in Soul Blade.
Have played this game 3 times now with 5 people and as overwhelming as it is we managed to fill a whole day with it almost always. Baratheon has won the game all the time but there are some buts. We were messing about in the first game, where 1 friend had played before and he was teaching us he played lannister. So in order for us to have fun the greyjoy and tyrel player destroyed him. Further on i as stark saw the potential with boats and managed to pressure alot but then everyone sided against me and baratheon got the free win. We also failed to comply with all rules because it was hard. Last time i played lannister and had an alliance with greyjoy but i held him back with having the water around him and he backstabbed me. So i realised after that game those 2 should maybe side with each other but let greyjoy roam the waters and kill others i guess. I also still wonder if its possible to support over seas. Like the stronghold of baratheon filled with knights and siege engines with a support order. If you have ships in all those adjacent seas and attack with a march order to something thats connected to the stronghold by ship would those then be able to support? Because that seemz overpowered.
Yeah, it's a polarizing game. Not one I actually recommend to most people, or if i do, i give them fair warning about how it plays. For the right group, its amazing. But for many groups, it falls flat.
Cheers Thomas. Reviews are voted on by patreon for the most part. I'd probably do memoir 44 over battlelore if i was doing those games though. Nothing wrong with battlelore, i just think memoir is a fair bit bigger and the systems are close enough.
@@3MBG Understandable. I do enjoy Memoir and they are similar games. I like battlelore better because it has a few more elements to the game play, but I look forewards to a review on either of them!
I've had amazing sessions with this, plus one of the 5 worst game sessions of my life with it. So yeah, not surprised. It's so very group dependent for one thing.
One of my bugbears about this game, and its a hangover from first edition. Is the whole Lannister sucks, because greyjoy can thump them on turn one thing. For a long time, people talked about this. And how Baratheon would win most games. And not connect the two things. Second edition makes that opening a lot harder, but it was almost always a bad move for Greyjoy in the end. A greyjoy/lannister alliance is incredibly strong for both players.
So who's played this, and what are you takes on Lannister as the weakling of the game.
One of my group's favourite games. We play this fairly often, and the MoD expansion really opened up a lot of strategies (negotiations are now a lot more interesting too).
Love playing as Lannister. Prior to the expansion, working with Greyjoy was a necessity. That, or you had to devise a strategy to put Greyjoy behind in the first 3-4 turns without the other houses troubling you (possible, but tough as hell - which is why negotiations are so important).
I agree, this is good to know on replay games.
Playing with the same friends a second and third time will begin to force you to utilize new strategies as we begin to understand weaknesses & strengths.
Starks are possible winners if you go about it tactically, innovatively, and are willing to play dirty.
A Stark must always stay in the North; I've capitalized on early wins by immunities & bribes, then sudden strikes, best with Stark plays (harder to make moves the more South you go).
I won as a Stark last game by purposely leaving an opening to save me from conquering the entire North and buy time to quickly eliminate the Greyjoys or a closer threat (kill them fast; the more time they have to dominate the seas, the less breathing space).
Make an alliance early on & plan attacks early on. Weaker house or Lannister or Baratheon; just make as many as you can behind the scenes, but never with a currently dominant house as thats endgame enemy (possibly Greyjoy).
We've had 6 hour games on multiple occasions, so theres lots of room for innovation xd
Late to the party, but couldn't agree more. Lannister/Greyjoy alliance will almost certainly see one of them win. There's just too many strongholds and CP lands there.
Also, I love playing Lannister. Unforgiving, but very strong if played right. They have three of the best cards in the game.
Playing as Lannister made me appreciate the need for negotiation and alliance making. As other factions you can play on your own and have a chance at doing well. As Lannister, you won't survive if you don't make peace with one of your neighbors.
I played a 7 player game with the expansion, and it is probably one of the most fun times I ever had playing board games. Amazing game imo.
That ~3 minutes video is better than the show's last season
Brutal!
Can't recommend this game too much. With five players, it's a wonderful game of strategy, diplomacy, resource management, and intrigue. Everything from trying to forge alliances, stabbing your friends in the back, sending resources to the north to fight wildlings, and building armies and waging war feels great.
You are right about baratheon. I saw its potential, but ultimately made some first turn blunders and ended up like the greyjoys you mentioned. I've gotta say, being stuck on an island surrounded by navy sucks, but was totally my own fault. Cannot wait to play again to rectify those mistakes
Yea first-timer games as Greyjoys will wreck you. They are a winning choice for veteran players.
Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
"There's no solo mode."
Me, who constantly play UNO solo: Challenge accepted.
15 years ago or so, i was very sick, spent a year basically unable to work. I played 6 player Game of Thrones by myself at home a bunch just to occupy my brain. Its certainly doable if your can compartmentalize well. But its not an official solo mode ;)
@@3MBG What it felt to be Petyr Baelish all those years ago?
Played this game a bit when first acquired. Current gaming group is 4 members, and unless playing this game with more than 4, it turns into stopping Baratheon from an easy victory (they have the best advantage to capturing 7 cities if there is no one playing Tyrell or Martell). Once we realized every 4 player game would come to this, we have not played it in a while. Just picked up the Mother of Dragons expansion and will be giving it a go soon, especially since it requires the use of all of the houses (afaik).
I Believe that is true for MoD. I've also heard it makes lower players counts much more interesting. I always found GOT lacking at 4 player, even in first edition where the board didn't have Martel, so the lower areas were more spaced out and less valuable. Martel was added as an overlay board only used when playing 6 player.
It mentions when 4 players are playing, house Tyrell and Martel cannot be chosen.
This was 1st Modern board game I played. I think having this as my intro twisted my taste in games a bit. I've cooled on the game since Inwas first obsessed with it, but it still hold a nostalgic place for me.
I bought the expansion and pulled this game out for the first time in a long time. We played a couple games slowly adding in more of the expansions each game. We had a lot of fun. We haven't played with the iron bank yet but it seems neat.
My biggest hang up with this game is that you pretty much have to play with at least 6 players or it just doesn't work as well. The expansion helps with that but it doesn't completely solve it.
If the Lannisters can keep the Raven and control the middle of the board swapping consolidate power tokens for support or defence when needed it helps and we've had them win a few times but if the iron isles focused on them it can be frustrating.
I've found the game Fief scratches a similar itch, is a bit quicker to play, and has a lower player count and is a great alternative if you have 4 or 5 players.
I've found the greyjoy/lannister alliance super strong for both players. Highly recommend giving it a go, boosts both factions, which rank towards the bottom in win percentage, quite a bit.
And yeah, 6 or bust. In some ways first edition was solid at 5, because the martells were an add-on board.
Do you have recommendations on which houses to omit if you only have 4 or 5?
The bidding on the influence tracks is fun and all, but it happens way too often in the game. It's hard to pull any move off that require more than one turn because of the influence thing. Games can be really frustrating for all players if mustering cards keep appearing but a supply card hasn't popped up in a while. I like the tides of battle. Often conflicts are avoided because you can calculate your opponents strength before marching in. Tides of battle means that more players are inclined to give it a go and be more aggressive. Most games play out the same, turtle turtle turtle then a mad push at the end
I wonder if a fix to this could be a new order, that updates supply for the player it could even be a Sea Order token like the three that MoD gives us.
I so want to play this game but you got to have the right gaming group for it. That's why I hold on to my copy
Absolutely. This game, more than most, is really group dependent.
The biggest sticking point by far. Having 6 (fairest odds for everybody) dedicated strategy gamers available for 5 hours and more is sooo hard😌
Great review. I love you are responding to recent comments. I played this at a con. I lost horribly. I was caught in analysis paralysis what I can do as Starks to even be competitive.
I ended up holed up just defending like Risk players in Australia the whole game.
Do you have a recommendation of which houses to omit if you only have 4 or 5 players?
Martell, then greyjoy.
I’ll start by saying that I really do enjoy this game. It captures the betrayal and intrigue of GoT to perfection. And with the right group of 6P can lead to a very memorable and exciting evening. That said, there can be a really steep curve in the swing of the game. It’s entirely possible to be essentially eliminated from any real contention by the last third of the game and you can be forced into playing a spoiler role or even worse not even factor in to that. Not a lot of fun spending the last hour just sputtering along, trying to muster a few meager troops for what equates to nothing more than fish heads and rice. It’s a crummy feeling especially if you sink the time investment of a 3-4 hour game.
Agreed. Which is why I hate playing it with new people. Played a game a while back, and someone who hadn't played, ignored advice and just kept attacking people at random for "fun". As Lannister, the unbalanced the game totally and Tyrell, who allied with them early, just kept rolling and won easily. Such a bad few hours.
I love this game
Nice game but its only balanced in 6 players of equal skill, in 2-2-2 alliances, and the lannister must know how to defend against greyjoy
Mostly agree. I mention my thoughts on balance and skill in my vid "great games at 6 players". Best Lannister defence against Grejoy, an alliance. A Lannister/greyjoy alliance is very strong.
Hey, I didnt expect that you would reply. Love your content!
And for your comment: You assume that the greyjoy wants the alliance with lannister, but from my experience, thats rarely the case. Cause as greyjoy, it is much more easier to just attack lannister and if you get mustering, u basically cannot lose.
But yeah, my best games were when greyjoy and lannister allied, and funny enough, it was usually lannister who won in that scenario
I found, that if Greyjoy goes hard at Lannister, Stark or Baratheon normally win. It's a poor percentage play unless everything goes right and Stark, Baratheon and Tyrell let it happen.
The danger for everyone though, is if Lannister get the stony sept formation going. That formation can give them complete control of the center of the board until they are tough enough to blast out end game.
PS. I reply to pretty much everything as i love chatting about games :)
I was just thinking it sounded a lot like Diplomacy!
When it came out, years ago, it was called a "diplomacy killer" by a fair few people.
Before this came out, there was a fan made Diplomacy map of Westeros, so it’s pretty obvious where the inspiration came from. This version streamlines a lot of the complexity of Diplomacy created by simultaneous move order, also since it de emphasizes the diplomacy phase, the turns are shorter. However poor balance in Diplomacy is balanced by people who know which sides are weak (and diplomacy itself), GoT the board game is missing this and has the one sided start rounds that Axis and Allies used to.
I think that comes from poor play though. The greyjoy opening in particular doesn't improve greyjoys chances of winning. I think WAY too many people saw that as a flaw, rather than as assymetry. It's like AH in diplomacy. Sure, you can crush them early, but is that the best move?
3 Minute Board Games I agree. My thinking is if GoT had as many playthroughs as Diplo, people wouldn’t do early game strategies that wipe out weak starting players. Sure the Starks can take Kong’s Landing pretty easily, but should they? I’d imagine GoT would be pretty intense with seasoned Diplo players.
Fun fact: After playing Diplo throughout college, I won seven straight games of Risk in grad school by playing Risk like it was Diplomacy. After our seventh game, two of our classmates swore to never play the game with me so I bought a Sony PlayStation (it was 1995) and we switched to beating each other in Soul Blade.
Have played this game 3 times now with 5 people and as overwhelming as it is we managed to fill a whole day with it almost always.
Baratheon has won the game all the time but there are some buts.
We were messing about in the first game, where 1 friend had played before and he was teaching us he played lannister. So in order for us to have fun the greyjoy and tyrel player destroyed him.
Further on i as stark saw the potential with boats and managed to pressure alot but then everyone sided against me and baratheon got the free win. We also failed to comply with all rules because it was hard.
Last time i played lannister and had an alliance with greyjoy but i held him back with having the water around him and he backstabbed me. So i realised after that game those 2 should maybe side with each other but let greyjoy roam the waters and kill others i guess.
I also still wonder if its possible to support over seas.
Like the stronghold of baratheon filled with knights and siege engines with a support order.
If you have ships in all those adjacent seas and attack with a march order to something thats connected to the stronghold by ship would those then be able to support? Because that seemz overpowered.
Support from oceans works, so yeah, a big support order in a sea are + a big march from an island is a strong attack,
I really didnt enjoy this game. I like strategy games and I loved the books but I tried quite a few times to have fun playing this and never made it
Yeah, it's a polarizing game. Not one I actually recommend to most people, or if i do, i give them fair warning about how it plays.
For the right group, its amazing. But for many groups, it falls flat.
Review Battlelore next!
Also huge fan of your channel; love the concept.
Cheers Thomas.
Reviews are voted on by patreon for the most part. I'd probably do memoir 44 over battlelore if i was doing those games though. Nothing wrong with battlelore, i just think memoir is a fair bit bigger and the systems are close enough.
@@3MBG Understandable. I do enjoy Memoir and they are similar games. I like battlelore better because it has a few more elements to the game play, but I look forewards to a review on either of them!
Honestly this is worst board game I have ever played
I've had amazing sessions with this, plus one of the 5 worst game sessions of my life with it. So yeah, not surprised. It's so very group dependent for one thing.
Thanks,but I'll just stick to the show