Friday - Age of Mythology Review
We spent Friday evening with my wife's friend and her boyfriend playing Age of Mythology (board game) and drinking vodka.
We arrived at 7:00, but didn't really get started playing until almost 9:00. Most of that time was spent in rules explenation and just general disruption. Finally we got the game started. There were four of us, me, S (the wife), T (the friend) and M (the friend's b/f). M and I (me) ended up with the Nordic culture and the girls ended up with the Greeks...yay! boys vs. girls! This was the first time I've seen anyone play the Greeks, though I admit this is only the second time I've played the game with 4 people).
I started the game as 1st player and things were pretty calm that first round until M decided to liven things up with some early combat. He decided to go after S and her city. S retreated after some sharp dice rolling and let him destroy two of her buildings (he had the Siege Engine Workship)...she lost a house and something else. So that was the start of the game, and I forget the details as I was drinking.
S ended up getting beat up on early by both M and me, but by the later stages of the game had built up a fairly impressive army. Still I don't think she was in any position to try and win the game. This is one of my complaints about AoM, that if you get beat up on it's really hard to stay in the game and this makes a four + hour game a real beat down. However, S did manage to extract some revenge on M and while he put up a gutsy defense he lost and let his army get whittled down to 2 mortal units. I stayed strong militarily the whole time and got lucky on the die roll / unit match ups and managed to not loose a battle. All-in-all there wasn't a lot of building...i think this is a portion of the game we may have ignored too much.
We finally called the game off around 3:00 AM, though we were close to getting to the end it looked like the game could have gone another hour. Partly the length, I like to think, was that we had several distractions during the game and I think all of us lost focus of advancing in ages. There wasn't a lot of combat, and I didn't feel like it pulled the game down, though the luck factor seems out of context with the rest of the game.
I felt I was in a strong position to win the game, as I had the largest army and already had 3 VP from winning battles...but T thought she would have won, claiming strategy to build the wonder. We'll never know. Despite the game taking forever to play, everyone claimed to have a good time (I think the vodka helped a little) and we are planning on trying a second playing this Friday. Though I may try to push Puerto Rico on them instead...some similar concepts...and not as much direct confrontation...so no one gets their feelings hurt.
I want to like this game, but both times I've played it its taken far to long to play. The combat is ovelry luck based and for a game this long I'd rather have more control...though *I* felt I did, I don't think anyone else did. Right now my gut feeling is this game could get better if you have experienced players.