Barnes on Games- Barnes' Best GOTY 2016

That's really the MO of GF9's design team though. Sons of Anarchy didn't feel like a specific episode of the show. You're not putting up with Gemma's bullshit and trying to keep your toddler from being captured by some high school dropouts, you're running a gang and trying to wrestle turf out from under the next leather-clad mob.

In Homeland i'm not dealing with a bipolar agent who can't keep her shit together or attempted assassinations in the streets. I'm running agents and orchestrating a greater war effort.

Spartacus isn't about hanging out in the baths and proving yourself in a training courtyard. It's about running the Ludus, achieving fame, and spilling blood. All with a grin on your face.

By not recreating specific events, and instead going for the thematic overtones of a grander picture, these games allow you to forge your own stories that feel apropos to the fiction at hand.

100% correct Charlie - but then so is Shellhead when he says it doesn't feel like an episode and he doesn't like it - so like everything in life it's 'horses for courses', no one requires you to like it if it is not what you're after but that doesn't make it a bad game because it isn't for you.

The Sons of Anarchy game was pretty dull to me. Find the spaces that convert 1 thing into 3 things. Protect them. Play your opponents off each other. Profit.

If I want to sell drugs I could just go for Puerto Rico, right?

I like the Sons of Anarchy game on a mechanical level, but a different design could have nailed the feel of show more closely. All the main characters had personal agendas, but often came together to face threats against the whole club. Lies with good intentions often caused a lot of trouble. And the bodycount on the show was much higher than in the game.

Spartacus the game actually captured a lot of the spirit of the first season of the tv show.

I had a couple of Sons of Anarchy players who really didn't like pretending to be drug dealers. The rules just say 'contraband'. I'd tell them to pretend they were bootleg CDs, fake Nike T-shirts, whatever.

Jexik wrote: The Sons of Anarchy game was pretty dull to me. Find the spaces that convert 1 thing into 3 things. Protect them. Play your opponents off each other. Profit.

If I want to sell drugs I could just go for Puerto Rico, right?

I can see it playing that way, but with the right group there's tons of brinksmanship and teaming up on the perceived leader. Calling favors and making deals is a big part of it when we play. I also love the drug trafficking mechanism where you can flood the market and reduce profit per piece of contraband.

Sons of Anarchy is a good game, but just an okay Sons of Anarchy game.

Yeah, much like Bootleggers, I can see it being group dependent to get the right mood. I played with the table of slightly older guys that normally stick to heavier Euros (they're in love with Terraforming Mars at the moment), and they all ignored me because I wasn't the perceived threat and I quietly pocketed a ton of money. They're more heads-down kinds of guys (and I am too if you don't bring it out of me) so it was sort of quiet and the efficiency questions weren't as nuanced as the ones asked in a game like Power Grid. 1 for 3? Yeah, duh!

I found SoA to be a boring game. Based on a bad show. But Spartacus is still top notch.

hotseatgames wrote: I found SoA to be a boring game. Based on a bad show. But Spartacus is still top notch.

I agree. BUT, SoA is a game dependent upon the dynamics of your group. If everyone isn't into negotiation and diplomacy type treachery, then the game is boring. The negotiation offers the chaos that glues it all together. I've found it's the same thing that causes Cosmic to backfire too when you play it with the wrong crowd.

I wasn't aware so many people disliked SOA here. It's still my favorite worker placement game, easily.

RobertB wrote: I had a couple of Sons of Anarchy players who really didn't like pretending to be drug dealers.

Just out of curiosity, did you play Spartacus with them and if yes, how did they feel about being slave owners?
Man, I liked SoA because drugs and guns, I only wish it was based on Breaking Bad instead and the duffel bags were blue.

Sons of Anarchy is a very tepid worker placement* game on a purely mechanical level- leverage the best spot to get this or that resource to exchange for victory points. What elevates it is the player interaction, and that is not guaranteed. Compare that to a game like Argent: The Consortium, where the cogs and gears of the worker placement machinery directly contribute to the interaction (and by extension, "fun") in ways that SoA barely scratches.

Guilds of London I think is very close to SoA; capable of similar amounts of negotiation/diplomacy, only the flavour of the game (a kind of inoffensive cardboard/vanilla) doesn't immediately inspire it. Even so, "I won't mess with you on that tile if you don't mess with me on this one" debates are there, as is the unspoken (sometimes spoken) threat of the neutral workers (nee: hit-men). You could re-skin that game pretty nicely into a gangster kind of game for sure. It might even make for a better SoA game.

*Or Area Control if you prefer to see it that way.

Every time that I have played Sons of Anarchy, there was plenty of interaction (throwdowns and pile-ups) but very little deal-making. It turns out that most people are somewhat resistant to making deals after getting attacked.