Thread to actually discuss MEQ

Figured we need a new thread to discuss Middle Earth Quest since the last one became a train wreck.

Yeah, I was part of that. There's a half way decent session report on BGG right now.

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/432458

Sounds like fun to me and it sounds less scripted then most LOTR games because of the timeline being between the stories we know so well.

I'm still totally boners for it. And still won't be getting any time soon. Bummer.

I guess I'm a Ffg shill/whore/payola recipient because I fucking loved it.
I'm sure it's just the free game talking, but there's some really brilliant
stuff going on in it, thematically and mechanically.

I guess I'd better give it a bad review or lose all my credibility.
That's too bad, because I think it could be the next great AT game

Barnes you whore!

Anyway, I'm glad it turned out as good as it sounds.

I still kinda wish it had used a license that hasn't been done to death, but hopefully it will breed further games of with these ideas.

Hey Barnes... prove its not the free copy... mail that one to me and go out and buy a new one

-M

I guess I'm a Ffg shill/whore/payola recipient because I fucking loved it.
I'm sure it's just the free game talking, but there's some really brilliant
stuff going on in it, thematically and mechanically.

I guess I'd better give it a bad review or lose all my credibility.
That's too bad, because I think it could be the next great AT game

Brilliant mechanics mean nothing.

It is a game not a science project.

The only thing that matters is FUN FACTOR

Well, Steve, I hate to break it to ya, but this one has brilliant mechanics AND is a shit-load of fun too!

He already said he loved it. You should be able to translate that to "he thought it was fun".

Of course the only thing that matters with a game is that it's fun. It is possible though, to have a critical discussion about how the mechanics of a game contribute to the fun.

OK, I have time to write more about it now.

First off, I think the only thing I'm going to wind up chafing against is actually the Tolkien theme. It's fine, it works, and the mechanics of the game DEFINITELY represent concepts and narrative elements from the source material. You get to see the Shadow spread, corruption take root, and the actions of heroic individuals steadfastly turning the tide. That all happens, and as a sort of "side story" to the events in LOTR. However, the fact that Gandalf, the Shire, Ringwraiths, and all that are there does make me feel a little "Tolkein fatigue". I'd rather the game have been a new setting. I mean, all fantasy is influenced by Tolkein anyway, so changing out the names and places wouldn't have affected the game that much.

However, the game is, at least on one play, pretty awesome. It TOTALLY breaks the stranglehold of existing adventure game design templates. like Bulwyf said elsewhere, it very much stands on the shoulders of giants, and you can definitely see the influences of FFG's past top-shelf titles (the tough decisions of BSG, the cooperation and coordination of AH, and the combat of STARCRAFT in particular) with some more subtle elements from NETRUNNER and MAGIC REALM.

It really is two games- the Sauron game is completely different than the hero game. It's quite compelling to see how the two games interact and interfere with each other.

The combat system is STARCRAFT but refined. At first, I thought it was simplistic but there's a HUGE tactical element that affords the cards a lot of versatility. The looming threat of exhaustion adds an awesome sense of pressure and desparation. Having to use cards to pay for movement and then fight creates a lot of difficult decision points, and the use of the cards as the measure of player life is brilliant.

That's really a good way of summing up the game, actually. For the heroes, it's all pressure and desparation. The game runs on a very, very tight schedule. For the Sauron player, it's all about butting up against restrictions that gradually strip away over the course of the game or that require certain coordinated actions to overcome. The sense of fighting a rising power is palpable. And the feeling that bad choices in the short term have long term ramifications, particularly for the heroes, is constantly present.

We had a blast with it. It's a new take on the adventure game genre, and one that has a lot more depth and strategy than I expected. This is not TALISMAN, TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, or ARKHAM HORROR.

I think it could challenge WAR OF THE RING as the top Tolkien game. As it stands now, after one play mind you, I'd play it in a hearbeat over WotR.

Thanks for the impressions.

Someone over on BGG stated that he didn't feel there was enough variety in the cards out of the box. What about replayability?

It's weird that there's only three items in the game but it's not a game about getting loot anyway. It may turn out that there isn't enough disparity between the character action cards but that's going to take several games to feel out. As for the encounter cards, you almost always draw several and use the one based on priority number or location, but a lot of times you don't get a playable card so it's a "no event" kind of thing. I can see why they'd say that, but it seems like to me that there are mechanics in place to sort of generate variety rather than by having variety by way of 2000 cards.

I almost think that it's a smart evolutionary idea...I mean, look at ARKHAM HORROR. It's got HUGE variety, but at the expense of having those 2000 cards on the table and the fact that some combinations will _never_ turn up. You might play AH 100 times and never see a percentage of the cards. With MEQ, I wonder if one of the design goals was to move away from that kind of design. You can see too that they're trying to get away from having spaces on the board that do specific things- the character pieces sort of generate that, but they can move and turn up in various places.

How long did the game actually take? Do you think the number of players would affect that pretty strongly?

We did a two player game, but I didn't use their two player rules modifications. Instead of that, which basically has the hero player taking two turns for every Sauron turn, I just ran two heros.

Our game was about two and half hours, but that was _with_ rules explanation (Billy didn't read them) and setup, and a 15 minute or so interlude where I showed Billy a couple of iPhone games. Now, I do think our game was shortened by the fact that I had no clue what I was doing and the story tracks shot up without any inteference so we got to a finale without a story marker ever moving backwards or being blocked.

I'd feel comfortable in saying that it's 45 minutes to an hour per player. Once it starts flowing, it really moves. And the game is on a timer, so it's not likely to spiral off into 6/7/8 hour anomalous sessions. I thought the one-on-one tactical combat would slow things down, but the fights are short and quickly resolved.

I keep seeing people worrying about replayability and the number of cards or the fixed number of turns or whatever, but it seems to me that if it's got a lot of tactical decisions throughout, then that's what will provide replayability. Is MEQ perhaps more like a game like Twilight Struggle or 1960, where the turns are somewhat fixed (definitely in 1960) and the same essential cards will come up every game, but there's enough tactical depth to keep it interesting on repeated plays? Of course it's nothing like those games in terms of mechanics or theme, but for some reason when I read the MEQ rules I got the impression that it might have a similar feel or style to those games, in some way, at least.

AH definitely has the chrome factor, where there are so many different things that may or may not be a part of any particular game... for one game, you might never have any arrests or bank loans or curses or whatever, but for another game you might have all of those things. In that sense, MEQ seems like its more deep than wide. I think we all expect adventure games to be very wide, but as you say, this is not a typical adventure game.