From: "derk" Subject: [spielfrieks] Re: GMT's Medieval --- In spielfrieks@yahoogroups.com, Josh Bluestein wrote: > (Anyone played it yet?) I played about an hour of it the other day, and frankly I'm glad I didn't buy it at either the MSRP or the P500 price. It's got some interesting concepts, like a map system straight from Blue and Gray, but it's a big ol' randomfest, IMHO. The disaster cards are far too common, and had little effect in our game, in fact, the general effect must-play cards are far too random to be good. The mechanism which bothered me the most was that I could own the country's territory but I didn't actually get to defend it decently or draw income from it without also drawing out the corresponding card, and in the hour I played I didn't draw a single country card (aka, total BS). I would characterize this game as a light multi-player wargame for heavy wargamers, and I won't play it again if I have a choice... derk. From: "Dave Bohnenberger" Subject: Re: [spielfrieks] GMT's Medieval I've played a few games and I like it. Don't be put off by the rulebook, the game is really not that complicated. It is certainly simpler than Wallenstein, for instance. It DOES take 2 hours, though. This is a game of war, diplomacy and extortion. The game is best if players remember that ANYTHING is tradable/negotiable (well, almost anything - the "must-play" events aren't) The game can be a little random, but players who get the best cards tend to become targets. The main problem is that there sometimes aren't enough control markers. You may have to cannibalize another game. From: "Dave Bohnenberger" Subject: Re: [spielfrieks] Re: GMT's Medieval On 12 Aug 2003 at 22:14, derk wrote: > The mechanism > which bothered me the most was that I could own the country's > territory but I didn't actually get to defend it decently or draw > income from it without also drawing out the corresponding card, You do get income from it. Income is per province, not power. On the other point, I have to mention that both times I played it, we played "wrong" - players were allowed to purchase militia in conquered provinces. I guess this doesn't make sense, but I wonder if I won't end up preferring it that way. Not drawing any power cards can be a bitch but I'm not sure what can be done about it. At least it is possible to conquer a power and get the card, but this is tough to do without help. From: Doug Orleans Subject: [spielfrieks] Re: GMT's Medieval Josh Bluestein writes: > So, I just received my copy of Medieval in the mail from GMT. It's > very pretty, but I'm really glad that I paid the P500 price for this > rather than the current MSRP of $45.00. GMT's page claims it's $29 retail: http://www.gmtgames.com/p500/mdvl_p500.html > The box contains two sheets of color counters, another sheet of > cardboard money, and 110 (admittedly very pretty) cards. (And a few > printed bits, like the rules and a page of charts.) Yep, the counters kinda suck-- we used Vinci tokens instead (which worked fine). The cards are quite well-designed, though, and the money tokens are serviceable. > With a 15-page rulebook and an estimated 2-hour playing time, it will > probably be a little while before this game hits the table. However, > I'm definitely looking forward to trying it out. > > (Anyone played it yet?) I just played it tonight, in a 5-player game that took about 3 hours (not including 30 minutes going over the rules). The end condition didn't happen until the last action card was drawn, though, so it was nearly the longest the game could have gone (if there hadn't been a power card in the final draw, that player would have had one more turn). The rules are quite fiddly and somewhat unclear in places, but the guy who owns the game is very good about learning the game ahead of time (and researching the errata) so it went pretty smoothly. As for the game itself-- I would pretty much agree with what Derk said, lots of randomness, mainly in the card draws but also the dice battles, which don't happen quite often enough for luck to really even out (on the order of 30 battles in our game, I'd guess). You can spend money before a battle to improve your chances, so experienced players (or just more canny wargamers) might have been able to conserve their money and know exactly which battles to spend it on. But because everything is open to negotiation, there is a whole lot of leader bashing, and we ended up being at parity through most of the game. I ended up winning because the game ended after my turn, and I managed to gain final control of Hungary, a country in the middle of the map with high value and low defense (which changed hands on each of the last four turns). It's not really my type of game (2-3 hour abstract multiplayer wargame) but it's not bad for what it is. I'd rate it a 5 on the BGG scale. Nothing particularly exciting in the mechanics, except maybe the way the Mongols slowly obliterate pieces of the map (which sort of reminded me of the desert mechanism in Settlers of the Stone Age), but it did have more chrome than games like Vinci or Wallenstein if you're into that. And there's plenty of room for negotiation if you like that aspect too. --dougo@ccs.neu.edu From: Josh Bluestein Subject: Re: [spielfrieks] Re: GMT's Medieval Reply-To: spielfrieks@yahoogroups.com > From: Doug Orleans > Josh Bluestein writes: > > So, I just received my copy of Medieval in the mail from GMT. It's > > very pretty, but I'm really glad that I paid the P500 price for this > > rather than the current MSRP of $45.00. > > GMT's page claims it's $29 retail: > http://www.gmtgames.com/p500/mdvl_p500.html That was the anticipated price. If you look at their News and P500 Updates, you'll see that the game was more expensive to produce than they thought it would be and they've raised the MSRP up to $45. Still, for $20 (the P500 price), it looks like fun. I've been over the rules at this point and am looking forward to giving it a shot. It's certainly better bang for the buck at that price than, say, Munchkin ($25 for a box of cards and a d20). Josh From: "derk" Subject: [spielfrieks] Re: GMT's Medieval --- In spielfrieks@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Bohnenberger" wrote: > On 12 Aug 2003 at 22:14, derk wrote: > > The mechanism > > which bothered me the most was that I could own the country's > > territory but I didn't actually get to defend it decently or draw > > income from it without also drawing out the corresponding card, > > You do get income from it. Income is per province, not power. On the > other point, I have to mention that both times I played it, we played "wrong" > - players were allowed to purchase militia in conquered provinces. I guess > this doesn't make sense, but I wonder if I won't end up preferring it that > way. I stand corrected. We played the game correctly, but I misspoke (funny, considering how few words I actually wrote). You can draw the income, if you desire, but can't properly defend the territory. In fact, your total lack of an ability to defend it was the problem I had with it... > Not drawing any power cards can be a bitch but I'm not sure what can be > done about it. At least it is possible to conquer a power and get the card, > but this is tough to do without help. Yeah, drawing power cards is key to the game, I think. I thought I was doing well early, but my inability to draw these cards (mostly at the expense of drawing disasters) really affected my performance. I can appreciate why people might like this game, but I shall not be counted among them... ;) derk. onathan Arnold - 01:58pm Aug 14, 2003 PST (#4848 of 4848) Medford, MA - OTT: Ignorant Armies (S&T #215), Granicus (S&T#214). XBox: Morrowind & Baldur's Gate We played Midieval the other night, and had a good time of it. There were 5 players, and I got there about 8:30. David was about 1/2 way through the rules explanation (none had played it before), but I caught on pretty quickly. I imagine we really got started right around 9pm and finished a little short of midnight, so playing time was about 3 hours. I'm sure that could be cut back at least 1/2 hour with experience, maybe as much as an hour. I picked 4th. I think the choices went England, Holy Roman Empire, France, Venice then Russia. I forget the exact choices after that on the second go round, although I picked Spain for my second one. I liked the artwork and the cards well enough, although I would've liked brighter colors. It was hard to see where the empires map cards were with so many people, as I had the map upside down. Venice esp. was hard to figure out where its various tiny provinces were:-) The first crusade, played by me, generated plenty of money, but after that they were pretty low budget. I think the last one generated 4 or 5 for each, as well (the first one was 8, I think, after the play of a Knights card). We were all pretty nice to each other, and only as the game got towards the second half did we start forming sides. It was very hard to figure out who was in the lead, for better or for worse. It might be nice to have a running total of worth to see at a glance who was leading. Hungary seems like an important little country, being worth 5 and all. It traded places pretty rapidly in the beginning, then settled down for a while. However, the last round had it going to the active player each time, and in the end turned out to be the margin of victory. No one who took it seemed to have enough money to keep it, and the game went to the last draw. The Mongols stayed away for a while, then came in bunches. But the last region card didn't come up until the last card, so it went almost as long as it could've, as if there is no region card after the last Mongol, the player taking the last card gets to finish his turn, while the game ends immediately if a region card is drawn. The Mongols were beaten two or three times, as they tried to take central Europe, with its large intrinsic defense. So Russia got lucky and lost hardly any lands, but still didn't win, coming in a close second. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, Hungary was the margin of victory, I think even the last place player may have won had he been able to hold onto Hungary, we were all that close. All in all, a fun time, although it seemed to be a little too finicky the first time played. Perhaps the next time, some of the cards and processes will feel smoother. I think it felt harder than it should've been because the cards don't all clearly specify everything they do, so there's a lot of "What does this card do again?" and flipping through the rules, which obviously would get better as you play it more.