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Knizia's LotR and Beowulf: The Legend

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07 Dec 2012 20:45 - 07 Dec 2012 20:46 #139086 by Mr. White
While we're talking LotR, let's chat up its relationship to its sibling... Beowulf: The Legend.

These two share a lot of similarities (designer, artist, abstraction, publisher, etc) and came out around the same time. One is highly regarded by several on the Fort, but I don't think there's but one or two that care for Beowulf.

Now, I know Beowulf came out at a time when folks were getting sick of euro games and their influence on the early days of BGG, but I always felt this game didn't get a fair shake. Sure, you can't _be_ Beowulf, but it's a multi-player game so that wasn't going to happen. I think being part of his party and 'proving' yourself to take his place is a fine compromise.

Let's look at these two games though. Do you like one, but not the other? How did one work while one 'failed'?
Last edit: 07 Dec 2012 20:46 by Mr. White.

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07 Dec 2012 21:58 #139090 by Michael Barnes
If somebody wants to give me a copy of Beowulf, I'd try it again. I hated it back in '04, but I would be interested in seeing it again.

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07 Dec 2012 22:06 #139092 by wadenels
They initially felt very similar to me, especially in how cards, symbols, and hand management played a role in each game. We found LotR to have more staying power; however, mostly because the cardplay is always so damn painful and tense (and if it isn't, then it's easy to ramp up the difficulty). We kept LotR and got rid of Beowulf for mostly superficial reasons:
  • The LotR theme is/was more appealing to us.
  • My wife likes cooperative games, I do too, and I think LotR is one of the best in the genre.
  • Beowulf just wasn't an attention-grabber, and we rarely got it off the shelf. I had fun when we played it, but usually when someone suggested Beowulf it got kind of a 'meh' response and we played something else instead. Not being well-versed or really that interested in Beowulf lore we found that our Beowulf games, while fun, were mostly mechanical and lacking in Beowulf-y-ness. We dig Tolkien and never had that problem with LotR. Personally I think it would have gotten more play if it just would have had a less specific and more fun theme like, "Vikings: Pillage the Shit out of Everything!"

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07 Dec 2012 23:06 #139095 by dave
I suspect part of it might be theme. If the LotR design had a Beowulf theme, and the Beowulf design had a LotR theme, how much impact would that have on the two games' reception?

Besides the theme, LotR has the upside of being a relatively simple game among the co-op genre. At the game, I thought the game was a bit dry and suspectible to the alpha-dog syndrome (although the home traitor variant helped address these). More than anything, it pissed me off that one hobbit's ability (Sam?) where you ignore the color of the card, which greatly curtails the hand management problem, which is the really only interesting part of the game.

Beowulf has the problem of being a complex and fussy design for what you get out of it, but I thought it was a great hand management game, and that's one of my favorite game mechanisms.

I'd pick Beowulf over LotR primarily on LotR being the kind of group-puzzle co-op I don't care for (see also: Pandemic)

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08 Dec 2012 03:17 - 08 Dec 2012 03:54 #139104 by Mr. White
Beowulf first caught my eye when I read Chris Ferrell's 10 rating at BGG. Truth be told, he and Barnes were the original two reviewers I followed when I first started lurking at BGG and Barnes gave Beowulf a 2, but I always assumed he was lashing out at a culture at the time. I could be wrong though...you know assumptions... It also came out in what was my golden age of FFG. This and the first of the two GW remakes (WK and FoD) had me really stoked about the company at the time.

I wouldn't say Beowulf is one of my top 10 games, but I do enjoy it. It puts me in a particular mood that no other game seems to...the mood to drink dark beer. I'm not a super big drinker and prefer pale lagers (live in Texas), but when it comes to playing Beowulf I have to have a dark, heavy drink. The beautiful Howe art and a strong drink really puts me in the mindset. I also like Beowulf as a theme though.

It's also a game that I sorta group in with crayon rail games...great to hang out and shoot the breeze over while casually playing.

About the game itself, I feel the theme enough to say if 'my geat' is ready to commit to a particular episode based on how much of an impact he'll provide vs the risk of taking an injury or more importantly be too spent to battle well and get the lion's share of a later, greater reward.

I wonder if this game woulda been helped if each player had a minis that represented them instead of just the numbered disk each episode. Sorta like what this dude did:
boardgamegeek.com/article/10214378#10214378
LotR at least had the hobbit minis and I'd guess that'd help players be interested in Beowulf as well. Though with minis, those looking at adverts might assume it's a Talisman like game...
Last edit: 08 Dec 2012 03:54 by Mr. White.
The following user(s) said Thank You: dragonstout, Gregarius

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08 Dec 2012 05:01 #139106 by dragonstout

Jeff White wrote: Beowulf first caught my eye when I read Chris Ferrell's 10 rating at BGG. Truth be told, he and Barnes were the original two reviewers I followed when I first started lurking at BGG and Barnes gave Beowulf a 2

Me too! And one of the things I liked about following the two of them on BGG was that 10/2 split they had, that they came at games from wildly different perspectives and had very different insights.

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27 Sep 2014 02:15 #187757 by Calandale
Dunno the LotR one, but Beowulf's problem is that the board
is a fixed pattern. That works fine for telling a story, but
it cuts into the potential replay of the thing. Given the focus
on game mechanism anyhow, I can't see the story in this one being
important enough to drive a design decision that reduces replay variability
in this way. It really feels very abstract even with the fixed board.

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28 Sep 2014 08:21 - 28 Sep 2014 08:24 #187793 by wkover
The 'Risk' mechanic in Beowulf completely tanks the game for me, big time.

Some people really like it, but it makes the entire game an enormous crap shoot.

Edit:

As much as I enjoy Chris Farrell's game analysis (it's often amazing), when it comes to Knizia he is clinically insane. He's the fanboy to end all fanboys, and I'm not sure why. Knizia can do no wrong in his book, and even his weakest designs get an 8-9 rating from Farrell.

There might be a few exceptions, but not many.
Last edit: 28 Sep 2014 08:24 by wkover.

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