FFG making Game of Thrones version of Cosmic Encounter

I normally love rethemes, but this one misses the mark I think.

I rethemed CE a few years ago to fit into the lovecraftian universe. The game was unchanged mechanically. You play as a GOO using cultists to infiltrate cities that other GOOs control. The intrigue and such fit the lovecraftiani theme because it is just some hammy pulpfiction stuff. Nothing to take seriously, just like in good ol normal sci fi CE.

aGoT however, I think misses that fine point because it is something to take seriously and many people do.

I do hope they can pull it off though, as a good intrigue game aligned with aGoT with simple rules is much needed. Id actually be able to play CE more frequently if they can actually convincingly pull this off. I'm skeptical, but hopeful.

This topic makes me wonder about the avalon hill version of CE. Often mocked because it had only 20 powers, and the biggest failing is that it lacked flares.

For this to be really successful, they'll need to have a flare analogue, and be able to bring in a ton of power analogues. I wonder if those house cards represent tech or flares?

I hope this is well received. Because ffg's track record for retheming games to westeros style hasn't gone over too well historically.
The opening day of the ffg event center, peterson announced the "new game" at the time to be a reskin of battlelore, "battles of westeros". Because, you know, so many people talk so often about wanting to relive the famous battles of westeros...
The sound of crickets tumbleweeds and confusion from a few hundred people present at the "big announcement" he gave was deafening.
Seriously embarassing. It must have been a humbling moment to realize that just because you have a high dollar license to use, that your ideas to use it are what is going to sell well enough to justify the money you spent on battlelore and westeros. But then again, there isn't much about petersons ego that resembles humble.
At least this time the retheme hits the reason why people like agot. The intrigue. So there's hope it could be great.

Maybe the flares will represent specific characters. When you run out of encounter cards and need to dump the rest of your hand, those lost flares will be considered dead characters.

Got a play.

It's really good. It is and it isn't Cosmic Encounter. Same basic engine with a different skin. The theme works and the powers, of which there are 25 in the box, are suitably thematic. The turn sequence, which is still essentially Cosmic, feels a little bit cleaned up. There are no issues with card timing.

Basics are that each House has five character discs, of which a randomly chosen one will be the Leader. The Leader is essentially your power. Leader character disc goes back in the box, so you've got your Leader and four characters to start the game. Each character has Power represented by crown tokens that it contributes to encounters, and there are ways to move Power back and forth between your Leader and your characters. If a character loses all its Power then that character is dead and is effectively removed from the game.

Each player has their own deck of cards and they'll never share a card pool with another player. Besides normal value and truce cards each deck has 10 character cards -- two for each character in that House -- that are similar to one-time-use flares that make up 2/5 of your deck. Played in an encounter they're "zeroes", but played according to their timing means you get to use the text effect. The catch is, to play a character card for its effect it must match your Leader or you must have that character currently committed to the encounter. Cards for dead characters are just plain old zeroes.

The moving about of Power and committing characters so that you can use their character cards while keeping them alive is good and fun. This game puts more emphasis on your House and all its characters than just your single power (Leader). I played as Tyrells, and all their character cards are set up to give me bonuses when I have lots of allies/supporters in an encounter. I set up two of my characters with as much power as I could to the detriment of my other two characters. I used my powerful characters to lure allies when I was the attacker or defender and I tried to get my weak characters into one-sided encounters, all so I could use my character card abilities to keep me strong in the long run. Ultimately my weaker characters died, which really hurt when at one point I was holding three of their now zero-value cards in my hand. I did not win with this strategy, but I wasn't far off either.

There are no really crazy powers, and no kickers or reinforcement cards (yet?).

There are also Hostages, which is just taking cards from other players and keeping them face-down in your play area. You can trade them back or torment them. Tormenting character cards can be pretty devastating; tormenting a player's characters moves power off those characters and back to their leader, and tormenting their leader removes power tokens on that Leader from the game. There are several ways to get Hostages, but the best way is when you're up against nearly everybody else at the table. If you play a Truce card to their value/attack card, you lose and that's a bummer but you also get to take a Hostage from every player on the winning side. I did this early on and was able to use the Hostages I took to keep the table from ganging up on me like that again.

Overall it feels less wild than Cosmic, but not in a bad way. This game moves the Cosmic needle a little bit more towards Intrigue levels of negotiation, which I'm completely happy with. It would be a mistake to judge this game as a Cosmic sequel or Cosmic replacement. The two games have different strengths. I might enjoy this game a little more than proper Cosmic, but I can't say for sure until I get more plays in.

Thank you, I think I'll be getting this. This looks like a perfect gateway game, since almost everyone is into GoT but not everyone is into good boardgaming. And this is a real classic in vulgar and socially acceptable skin.

This mashup is so obvious for FFG we all should have predicted this game years ago.

Does this mean we're finally at Peak GoT saturation?

I kinda wish they had rethemed Dune to be GoT instead of this and instead of using TI theme (Rex) for that purpose. I think Game of Thrones woulda made more sense on Dune engine than a Cosmic-like game. Though that is basically pure fantasy -- I know that was unlikely since their actual AGoT board game kinda tries to do the same thing as Dune already -- but their AGoT board game is pretty dry and basically squanders the Game of Thrones theme so I would have liked to see a proper AGoT board game.

Oatmeal wrote: I kinda wish they had rethemed Dune to be GoT instead of this and instead of using TI theme (Rex) for that purpose. I think Game of Thrones woulda made more sense on Dune engine than a Cosmic-like game. Though that is basically pure fantasy -- I know that was unlikely since their actual AGoT board game kinda tries to do the same thing as Dune already -- but their AGoT board game is pretty dry and basically squanders the Game of Thrones theme so I would have liked to see a proper AGoT board game.

A card driven game a la HERE I STAND set in the Game of Thrones universe would rock.

I'm probably the perfect audience for this game, because: A) I'm always intrigued by GoT IP enough to at least investigate further, and I'm not fond of Cosmic Encounter.

Having played both, I felt that Iron Throne curbed the zany randomness of CE and made something of a strategic game out of it. Many of the changes are more thematic and better design. That being said, it still felt a little flat. I'd like to play it again with meaner people and see if it shines a bit more in the company of assholes (as many games do). 25 potential leaders is underwhelming when compared to the wide array of races in Cosmic Encounters and its endless expansions. They are likely more balanced in Iron Throne, and if it sells well enough, there is certainly room to expand with additional houses.

Msample wrote: A card driven game a la HERE I STAND set in the Game of Thrones universe would rock.

Or, more streamlined, SWORD OF ROME. The Others would come from the North like the Gauls....

Played it today. It looks like a cheap show tie-in (those crowns are not anywhere as pleasant to look and and touch as the stacks of UFOs, and the imagery taken straight from the show is as pleasing to the eye as one would expect). And I am not sure I like how the influence works, it's like your typical VP, and feels very disconnected from the rest of the game, although I suppose it is easier to track on the first glance.

But, the game itself was very enjoyable. On one hand, because everyone was familiar with the show. Conversation was flowing, silly jokes were made, characters were badly imitated, the whole shebang. The theme fits pretty much perfectly - threats, fragile alliances, expected and unexpected deaths (everybody cheered when Geoffrey bit the dust), and my favorite aspect is taking hostages (with the possibility of torturing them, or even better, threatening the other player with torturing them). Just that made it feel more GoT than the GoT boardgame.

I completely agree with Unicorn in that the game felt way more strategic and less random than a regular CE session. It is still a pretty light game, nowhere close to Dune. And I didn't get at all that sense of wonder and "holy shit, this power is so game-breaking I don't think the game works at all" and then "oh wow, things like these are why I love this game!" So if you're not fan of GoT and enjoy CE for zaniness and unpredictability, you probably shouldn't bother. I'm definitely interested in playing it more.

Vlad, I think you've hit the nail-on-the-head. For me, the appeal of CE is about fun, wacky, goofy, zaniness. Can the feel of the GoT be described as anything but brutal, depressing, low, vice-pandering, Machiavellian, with small sprinkles of humanity; GoT has a worldview that wears upon me and it isn't escapist. I'd be afraid to associate GoT with the CE experience that I know--it might ruin it. As an owner of CE, I'd pass on this GoT variant. On the other hand, a CE reboot for something like Guardians of the Galaxy might be a good fit?

So, this morning my wife and I talked about strategies of the last night game. We never talked about strategies in CE.

Which made me think that, quite possibly, GOTIT is a very different beast from CE. The hostage mechanic is wicked. It is thematic, and adds a layer of both short and long-term strategy. In a way, it is similar to Dune's traitor mechanic, in that the character you send into encounter may be someone's hostage, and get executed. And we also had a lot of cajoling and negotiation around hostages (like, join me or I will execute Tyrion, or help me and I will release hostages, etc). Another big difference is crown-management. In Cosmic, the UFOs on a planet are only useful when defending it against invasions. In GOTIT, you also use your character (planet) to attack, so the crowns represent both their health and power. And flare cards are now character-associated. So you will be interested in buffing some characters in favor of the others, but your opponents can also damage specific characters with the hostage mechanic (even if they're not part of the encounter).

So, my first impression is that this is not a reboot or re-skin of CE, but rather a different game (albeit, with a very similar central mechanic).

I don't find GoT (show, I never read the books) to be that depressing. Real middle ages were depressing. GoT is just a soap opera in a fantasy kingdom.

We were discussing strategies after playing also. I think that if you can afford to lose an encounter that playing a Truce card against a Hostility card just to take hostages from all the victors is a good tactic in the early game. Especially for Tyrells, whose house cards are so dependent on supporters they need every bargaining chip they can get.. Each House plays differently though, so I might change my stance on this.

Vlad wrote: It looks like a cheap show tie-in (those crowns are not anywhere as pleasant to look and and touch as the stacks of UFOs, and the imagery taken straight from the show is as pleasing to the eye as one would expect). And I am not sure I like how the influence works, it's like your typical VP, and feels very disconnected from the rest of the game, although I suppose it is easier to track on the first glance.

The show tie-in artwork is done pretty well. I'm generally in favor of illustrations over TV/film imagery or even CG graphics, but the show artwork in this game is about as good as you're going to find.

Influence I explained as being a way of getting your machiavellian hooks into other Houses to the point where you become, for all intents and purposes, the political victor of the game.

The crowns aren't great and they don't stack the best. Thinking about getting mini poker chips along these lines if I come across something on the cheap: