WAR OF THE RING- To Hell With Balance!
So I'm reading a post over at another popular board gaming site (not BGG)...there's a post on there discussing the in-the-works Collectors' Edition of WAR OF THE RING, one of the best games in recent memory. The extensive post represents a "modest proposal" to the designers of WAR OF THE RING that steps be taken in order to correct a supposed balance issue in the game- it seems some folks take objection to the fact that the Shadow player is the odds-on favorite while the Fellowship player is the underdog.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?
If I recall the story of LORD OF THE RINGS, Morder was pretty much kicking ass and the Free Peoples were losing hope quicker than a Hasbro Avalon Hill brand manager holding out for a promotion. Every victory won by Rohan, Gondor, and the Fellowship was a longshot, million-to-one odds sort of thing. You know- heroic last stands, defying notions of impossibility, and turning the tide to defeat insurmountable darkness.
One of the things that makes WAR OF THE RING a truly epic, masterful piece of game design is the degree of narrative and the way in which the story of LORD OF THE RINGS unfolds throughout the course of the game with both large scale, massive movements of nations as well as the effects of individuals working on an entirely different scale. As much as Knizia's game recounts some of the more human, intimate themes of the story WotR illustrates the grand, "widescreen" version of the events. And a key component of depicting this story is that things don't look so good for the good guys in the beginning. That's the challenge of playing the Free People- figuring out just how in the world you're going to keep all those freakin' Uruk-Hai out of the Shire and keeping future generations of Gondorians from speaking Black Speech. With perfect balance, much of the drama and tension of the game would be completely lost.
The idea of balancing the game is complete bullshit- doing so would eliminate not only a major theme of the game (and the story), but also the point of the Fellowship having to play a canny, daring game in order to make the 3-point shot into Orodruin. Imbalance also adds pressure and a virtual time limit to the Free People player's game- once those strongholds are under siege, it isn't hard to feel moved toward the "game over, man" fit-pitching like Legolas does in the movie right before the ladders hit the Deeping Wall. When the Fellowship wins it should be by a hair and as a result of smart strategy and taking advantage of the Shadow player's mistakes and misfortunes- not some "Bill the Pony" card or other mechanic that unnaturally shifts the balance of the game to parity.
Imbalance is also critical to depicting the Shadow Player's position in the game. The whole point is that Sauron is gathering an army to pretty much end the world, right? He ain't sending the B-team, and he's not pulling punches on the DEW (Dale, Erebor, Woodand Realm) line just so the Fellowship gets a fair chance. Mordor is poised at the beginning of the store as a gigantic black bulldozer cranking up to smash everything good and green against the brick wall of Isengard. What if Saruman said "We'll send 9,000 Uruk-Hai instead of 10,000 so they'll have a better chance of holding Helm's Deep." Bullshit, right? Right.
If there's anything that balances it all out, it's the same thing that tips the scales in the story. That wacky One Ring. Mordor can have every stronghold on the map under siege and have wiped out all 3 or 4 of the Dwarf units in the game and _still_ lose if those huggin' hobbits quit cuddling long enough to make it through Gorgoroth and send it back from whence it came. It's a deadman switch that the Shadow player has to react to and try to delay while also moving toward other objectives. Yeah, the weight of balance might be on the Shadow player, but the Free People have the nuke. A smart Free Peoples player will win the game almost every time against a dumb Shadow player, so if you think it's imbalanced- play better!
The poster ends by basically stating that the game somehow can't live up to its potential by having this "balance issue". Whatever. I understand and accept a lot of the criticism I hear about WotR (it's not the One True Infalliable Game at all, that would be DUNE) but to fuss, hem, and haw over "balance" in a game (and a story) built around imbalance is frankly ludicrous and just another indication of the artificial game design sensibilities that armchair pundits seek to impose on published designs. I guess those nutty game designers didn't consider matters like this when they conceived, designed, tested, and finalized a high profile game with a huge license, did they?
If you you don't like the assymmetry, there's PLENTY of other games that will accomodate you. Hell, LOTR: THE CONFRONTATION might be a better game for you. But in fact, I hope that the WotR crew does throw these guys a bone and add a card or two- the more copies they sell, the better. I just hope they leave a great game alone and turn a deaf ear to some of the nonsense. It seems that thousands and thousands of people have somehow managed to play this game without complaining about balance so there's no reason for a vocal minority to ruin it for the rest of us.
44 comments:
War of the Ring can be won quite easily by the Fellowship player if he just rushes the two hobbits and sacrifices about any other character in this run.
But I still gladly remember trying to win a military victory with the Free Peoples, which is -like you said- rather impossible. But in one game Sauron was defeated by the Ents card, and another card allowed me to move Gondor cavalary to Helm's Klamm just in time to beat the besieging forces. In the end I lost by one point. Nevertheless, that was a hell of a session and beats playing any Euro game.
This game is so good, it almost convinced me to read the books ;)
sorry, exchange sauron with saruman. I always mix those two up...
Always link to the stuff you are referring to if you can, in this case, the source article. This is the number one expectation of folks who read blogs quite a bit.
We had lots of fun with the base game. I get a feeling the expansion addresses what these guys were talking about and actually makes the Fellowship the stronger player. Galadrial is very powerful and makes a military victory harder because Lorien can hold out better.
But ya, I don't understand why you are playing a game like LotR and carping about balance. Tell them to play Berg's SPI LotR game if they want a taste of REAL imbalance.
In an unrelated note, it is now possible to design tuckboxes for the myriad pieces in WotR.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/158798
:)
I just want to chime in with a hearty amen to this article. WoTR is a finally crafted game, and asking for balance in what was an asymmeterical story in the first place doesn't make much sense to me.
Oops...the link. For some reason I can't remember any HTML right now, so it's at www.boardgamenews.com. You'll see it there.
Tuckboxes are only welcome here if your name is something like Nemesis Divinia or Larry Wachowski.
Totally agreed on the balance issue but I *do* find fault with some of the design issues of WotR, love it though I do (the map, the similarly-colored platic pieces, the rules format, etc.) In fact, it was this game that proved to me that we ATers can only take plastic figs so far. At a certain point they become a problem.
Plastic figures are NEVER the enemy! You start talkin' like that...the terrorists have already won, son!
I've never played WotR, but your post reminded me of another game I consider asymmetric: your almost-namesake Fortress America. We'd always stick the best strategic mind with USA, sometimes even have TWO people team up as the US. This was the only way America ever won that game. Maybe it was just us, but it really made the game. Viva asymmetry!
I think the imbalance with the base game is pretty rough. The game should not be totally balanced because of the theme, but I think the added features of the expansion adds more playability while making the game more balanced. The fixes in the expansion are all that it needed. Honestly, they would have to be careful with any more additions not to tip things towards the free side too much.
Isn't it a law that if you sub-title a piece with "A Modest Proposal", you have to propose completely bat-shit insane fixes to the problem at hand? Frankly, I'm a little disappointed with BGN.
Good rant ... made lots of sense, and has even made me get up off my arse and make an effort to play it - one of the guys in our group has it but only one other guy plays with him. But now we are slowing getting a lot more AT games in due to weekend sessions I have no excuse ...
A&A:Revised just done and now a combined wargame(ish) session has been suggested with two tables playing from a choice of BattleLore, Commands & Colours, M44, BattleCry, and Combat Commander.
And I've just had Buck Rogers arrive last month so have that and Shogun (MB) on my nominations for table time ... my precious plastic
this is something I am constantly reading on "other" sites. People bitching about balance in games where the balance should clearly not be balanced, and then complaining that the game must be "broken". I love WotR. It's the game that got me back into gaming. But changing the game balance is ABSURD as has been previously posted. What's next? More Spartans at the hot gates to even things up a bit?
I might be going against the grain here, but what imbalance? I don't think there is one; seeing as the Free Peoples have two ways to win. Shadow might be stronger militarily (to start at least), but having two possible goals more than makes up for it.
Balance is highly overrated. So says my bottle of Rye.
I'm the guy who wrote that idiotic game balance blog.
You may be interested to know that when we were playtesting the expansion for War of the Ring, the playtesters and designers had a debate about the need for game balance. The designers thought that it would be alright if the game had a slight imbalance for all the reasons you folks have mentioned--it fits with the book.
But they certainly didn't want the Shadow to win 75% or more of the time, and they hoped the strategic elements in the expansion would help with game balance.
Now, you may or may not think that the game is that imbalanced (I do, at least with experienced Shadow players), but know that the designers consider balance an issue.
A great imbalance may be good Tolkien history, but it is not good game design. And a more balanced game will get more table time than a game in which one side constantly wins.
Thanks for the response Kris- nice to hear you defend your position logically and without fanaticism, leave that to we professionals.
So let's scrap a little more...you state that imbalance isn't "good game design"-I think that's a pretty absolute statement. I think it's AMAZING design to convey not only the sense of despair, hopelessness, and impossibility that the "good guys" face in LOTR but also that it can be overcome- with smart play, good strategy, and a little luck. Most of the very best games have imbalances that require the player to _think_ around shortcomings...even a game like SETTLERS has built-in imbalances (due to setup) that cause the player to have to mitigate resource shortages. Only pure, no-luck abstracts are completely balanced in the long run _and even then_ player skill, intuition, and cunning create a natural imbalance, right?
But what we're dealing with here is a VERY heavily themed game with a very high fidelity to its source material, which complicates things. It's easy to say that a more balanced edition would see more table time...but what about those of us who come to the game for this level of theme/mechanic/balance integration?
I think it's interesting that some of the same balance questions met LOTR: THE CONFRONTATION when it first came out...the problem was that most folks don't really figure out that the Fellowship is absolutely Mordor's equal given all the trickery, subterfuge, and special movement allowances. They just require an entirely different strategic approach. It's totally balanced...just because the game ends if Frodo's caught doesn't make it imbalanced.
Funny enough, myself and others here, pretty much concur that WoTR _is_ balanced, if not materially then by elements such as the Ring victory. I've seen about a 50-50 split in win records and only a handful of total Shadow blowouts (which were usually due to an incompetent Free Peoples player).
I don't know about you, but when I find it a lot more satisfying to win an imbalanced game than a perfectly balanced one leveraged by artificial add-ons, variants, and supplemental rules.
But anyway- thanks for your input and thanks for defending your position. Glad to have you here.
'you state that imbalance isn't "good game design"'
No, he said that "great" (i.e. excessive) imbalance isn't good game design.
When I was a teenager, one of my gamer friends was into war games, so I played some Squad Leader, Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz and Starship Troopers. At that time, I was annoyed that the scenarios were usually unbalanced in terms of troop levels. The victory conditions for each scenario still made every game competitive, but that basic imbalance grated on me at that time.
Over time, I came to appreciate the importance of imbalance when trying to re-create historic scenarios, and I could even see the application in re-creating more fantastic settings, like the Empire versus the Rebels in Freedom in the Galaxy.
But it wasn't until I came here, Fortress AmeriTrash, that I finally came across another good reason for imbalanced scenarios. I don't remember the thread or the poster offhand, but somebody said that combat scenarios with perfectly balanced forces tend to be stagnant, as the players turtle down and wait for each other to make a mistake.
It depends on the system to a certain extent, as some games give the advantage to an attacker while others favor the defender. But an imbalanced scenario that is rebalanced by victory conditions will tend to play more dynamically, as the stronger tries to crush the weaker.
The situation in War of the Ring will seldom bog down because the game situation is made to be asymmetrical. The Shadow has limitless troops, but he has to blitz Middle Earth before the pesky hobbits reach the volcano. A good game of War of the Ring is essentially a race to see which side can achieve its victory conditions first. The particular way that each side can win should make for a balanced game--assuming that the cards don't skew the game toward one side or the other.
The problem that some of us have is that the Shadow can not only blitz Middle Earth, but it can drown the Fellowship with corruption in nearly every game. The Free Peoples special victory conditions aren't helping them much.
This not only makes it less fun to play the Free Peoples, it makes it less fun to play the Shadow. All good gamers want a challenge, and knowing that I have an 80% (or more) chance of winning if I play Sauron doesn't make playing the Shadow all that appealing.
I will admit that the game imbalance tends to show up the more you know the game. During the designer/playtester debate over game balance, some guys wondered if it really is a problem if only the most fanatical WotR players noticed it. Many casual gamers who don't play the game that often might not even notice that there is a problem.
I want a reasonably balanced game because I want to feel that I have a chance when playing the Free Peoples, and because I want a challenge when I play the Shadow. And I think it would be nice to have an official game-balancing element available. But if one doesn't become available, I'll still be able to use one of the clever variants listed on the Geek or I could invent my own.
I present this as definitive proof that imbalance is bad. I don't see how you can argue with this Barnes. The game is up, so to speak.
Imbalance = Pure Evil (Click here to learn more!)
On a side note does it suck or what that Blogger doesn't allow images in comments?
"Only pure, no-luck abstracts are completely balanced in the long run"
This is rather erroneous on your part. More often it's the pure, no-luck abstracts which have obvious imbalances (e.g. chess).
Is it really "imbalanced" or do the sides merely have different abilites, and therefore a different strategy for winning the game? "imbalanced" to me means that one side is so overpoweringly advantaged that you could get a two year old to move the pieces and you'd still lose. If both sides can win (assuming equal skill), then it's not imbalanced--
Some gamers need to win a game in order to fully enjoy it. I can see where they wouldn't even want to play a game if the odds were stacked against them.
I am perfectly willing to play a fun game even if I am likely to lose. I lose at least 90% of the time when I play Vampire: the Eternal Struggle and I win or come in second more than 95% of the time that I play Mall of Horror, but I am perfectly willing to play either one of those games any time. And when our group plays Arkham Horror with both of the expansions, we currently lose 2/3 of the games, but it's still one of my top two favorite games. And getting ousted in Nuclear War is still great fun if I can launch a really damaging retaliatory strike.
More on topic, even when the game is inherently unbalanced, I may enjoy playing the disadvantageous side if it's still fun. For example, the Boogeyman player is at a distinct disadvantage in Slasher Flick: The Revenge of the Boogeyman. But I love playing the doomed Boogeyman anyway, because it's fun for the first few turns, stalking victims and then killing them with a variety of weapons. By mid-game, the poor Boogeyman is usually getting his ass handed to him roughly every other turn by the alert and armed survivors, but it's still fun to look at the number of corpse counters he managed to leave sprawling around the map.
I think my problem with the original article was hit on the head here:
I will admit that the game imbalance tends to show up the more you know the game. During the designer/playtester debate over game balance, some guys wondered if it really is a problem if only the most fanatical WotR players noticed it. Many casual gamers who don't play the game that often might not even notice that there is a problem.
The problem with too many geeks on the internet is they over analise the game instead of simply playing it. I myself detect no 'imbalance' in the game, it seems quite tight each time I play it, but then I avoid all of the 'strategy' articles on it like the plague. Any game breaks when you put too much scrutiny on it. I'm certain Arkham horror is 'solvable', but I wouldn't know because I experience the game when playing it, I don't read every card and dissect it to come up with an unbeatable strategy on a lazy sunday afternoon when I have nothing to do.
"Balance is boring." -Peter Olotka, designer of Cosmic Encounter
Hah! That's a great quote, and by god he's one of the people who designers SHOULD be listening to.
Frank's right too...a big part of the problem is this tendency folks in the hobby have to hyperanalyze EVERYTHING- look at all the meaningless statistics users cobble together from BGG that basically say absolutely nothing about anything and have little or no bearing on the hobby. You've got statistical analyses for all sorts of games, strategy articles for games where you only have 2 or 3 choices per turn anyway...whatever happened to just playing and enjoying games for what they are? I'm all for smart, insightful, and uncompromising criticism but when I hear terms like "concerned about the balance" in any sort of game writing I know I'm reading something entirely too serious for me.
Back when I was writing for Games International, one of my assignments was a two-part strategy guide for WAR OF THE RING. It was the hardest thing I've ever written of any description. It sucked, it wasn't very helpful, and it wasn't really very thorough. Reflecting on it now, it was hard because I just don't hyperanalyze games like that- I play for the experience, the fun, the atmosphere, the story, and the drama- not to tease out an infallable path to winning a certain percentage of the time.
The books are totally unbalanced. Those damned goodie two shoes win every time.
Any game breaks when you put too much scrutiny on it.
Sorry, to me this is just life on the internet. When you have people all over the world, going to web sites and discussing Game X, it is only a short matter of time before a possible solution is found, if one exists.
Plus I disagree that 'any game breaks under scrutiny'. I guess this is theorically true, but even with todays computers, we are not there yet. Checkers (last I heard) was not even solved yet, but getting close.
PR, Caylus,... to name a few Euros have had plenty of scrutiny and are not solved or broke. Oh, guidelines for how to play is around, but it is far from broke.
I have not heard anyone say (or write) that other AT games suffer the balance problems that WotR has once you know the line of play.
sorry but I have to disagree. The way I see it the question here is one of purpose. What is the point of playing a game? To have fun right? It's a game not a jigsaw puzzle or a rubics cube. You're not trying to solve anything! I stay away from the same articles on strategy that Mr.Skeletor was talking about cause it saps the fun, and the point of playing the game. And its real hard to come up with a proven battle winning startegy that works every single time. I used to see this when I worked for GW. People trying to come up with the all conquering army. Beardy play is what they used to call it. And it sucks. It's not playing the game. It's playing the rules. You can over analyze a game to the point where you take the fun out of it surely. I read once a debate over whether to use the witch king or the lord of the nazgul which boiled down to a statistical analysis of which one was best in which....... jesus I'm putting myself to sleep just trying to remember it. Not very exciting though is it? I think the best thing about the games that have been mentioned in this whole discussion is that IF you do manage to pull of a win when you're heavily outnumbered, then how much cooler is that. I am STILL trying to win a game of Arkham Horror. I thik its a great game, is it imbalanced cause I havent won yet? No I just suck at it. But then you could always cherry pick the best investigators and equipment. But where's the fun in that. When you break it down to statistics and probablities you lose all the flavour of the games themselves.
You know...I've told friends- who are pretty hardcore gamers- that aren't aware of this idiotic BGG "culture" about the sort of statistical ravings "analysis", and game dissections that go on and they almost always respond with "you're fucking joking".
When you break it down to statistics and probablities you lose all the flavour of the games themselves.
Remember Sewer Urchin from the Tick cartoon? One of our local gamers could be his dad. He's got that same droning voice and questionable hygiene. This gamer leans heavily on the strategy articles at BGG to help him win his beloved EuroGames.
This same guy doesn't like AmeriTrash games, because the randomness makes it unlikely that his memorized strategies will give him the win. And he hates games where different players have dramatically different starting points. No, he enjoys reducing his favorite games to a set of equations that can be more or less solved together. Back when I still played games with this guy, my sole enjoyment was playing chaotically so as to disrupt his plans.
The problem with your comment alan is that you are defining 'breaks' as 'solved'. I'm not, because after all WoTR has not been solved either, there is no strategy that will guarantee you the win. There are however strategies that favor the dark player.
This is no different to Puerto Rico, where your chance of winning depends upon where you sit in the turn order (I think the 2nd player has the hardest time of winning from memory) oe E&T where the first person has a big advantage.
My argument is are these bias' discovered during the normal course of play, or as I suspect because people go all math nerd on them? If the analysis on the online E&T games hadn't been done, pointing that the first players were winning some 40+% of the time (from what I can remember) then I would probably never have realized this fact, and I'd enjoy the game all the more for my ignorance.
I'm not really sure what your point is, or even whether you know what you're talking about.
War of the Ring is a great game. It's suspenseful and fun to play.
If you get very good at it, the Shadow wins almost every time. This removes a lot of the suspense. It's not as fun to play when the choices you make in-game have almost no effect on the game's outcome. The evolution of strategies and counter-strategies comes to a halt because there's no contest anymore.
How is that not a bad thing?
If you have a game system that still works after 100 long plays, what's wrong with trying to change the ONE scenario so that both sides have something to do again?
Have you even played the game against a Shadow player who knows what they're doing? It's nothing like the books. Minas Tirith is either the first place to fall, or Sauron just completely ignores it. The Fellowship sometimes stands outside Mordor for three turns, because they can't get in because of cheesy Shadow cards that don't do what they're supposed to do. All the companions die without doing anything else first. And Sauron almost always wins.
Why would you want to play that game when it's so easy to make it so much better?
MrSkeletor, it's great that you're suspicious of those dastardly math nerds, but I assure you that everyone I know came to the conclusion that the game was imbalanced by noticing that the Shadow was winning all the games. Usually the math is no more complicated than "one win in last ten games" => 10% or "last Free win was in 2005, which was (math happens here) over a year ago".
There are however strategies that favor the dark player.
This is no different to Puerto Rico, where your chance of winning depends upon where you sit in the turn order (I think the 2nd player has the hardest time of winning from memory) oe E&T where the first person has a big advantage.
No strategy or seat position in PR or E&T gives you an 80% chance of winning.
I can't say the 1st position player has a big advantage in E&T. Certainly, if any player gets too far ahead, the other players can take him out.
PR, I do agree that seat position can play a factor, but mostly in 4 or 5 player games. 3 players is fine, 4 players is certainly playable but I think the game breaks down a bit with 5. 2 players works great too with the optional rules.
No not defining breaks as "solved" as such but the idea, not mine btw, that if a game can be "solved" then it is broken. I think too many people throw the term broken out there for a game that they either suck at or cant "solve". Likewise I dislike the term "solved" as I don't play a game because I'm trying to solve anything. Maybe this is why I play so many AT games. There are people who write strategy articles for games to the degree I was talking about. Go here do this then this then you win. This is their idea of "solving" a game.First it is boring. Why would you want to play that way. Second it is not a fool proof way of winning everytime. I always compare these things to the video game strategy guide that the guy in the shop tries to get me to buy along with the game I just bought. You want me to buy a guide on how to complete the game I just spent £40 on. No! With these games it is a solvable thing. Generally there is only one way to solve the game, there may be a little room for play but not much. It's why I mentioned puzzles and jigsaws.Once you've cracked it, why bother playing again.Gaming, for me, is about the game. Is WotR harder to play as the free peoples when both players are of equal playing ability? Sure. That's the point of the game.Isn't it? It's not SUPPOSED to be perfectly balanced. It is supposed to be stacked against the free peoples, like the books/film. Is it impossible to win as the free people? No. Well at least not in my experience. That's the key here. And as far as "fixing" it, well do we really need another version of a game that, in my opinion, doesn't need fixing.Obviously some people do. Maybe they want a more straightforward game. But then they may say that the LotR theme is just pasted on.
MrSkeletor, it's great that you're suspicious of those dastardly math nerds, but I assure you that everyone I know came to the conclusion that the game was imbalanced by noticing that the Shadow was winning all the games. Usually the math is no more complicated than "one win in last ten games" => 10% or "last Free win was in 2005, which was (math happens here) over a year ago".{MrSkeletor, it's great that you're suspicious of those dastardly math nerds, but I assure you that everyone I know came to the conclusion that the game was imbalanced by noticing that the Shadow was winning all the games. Usually the math is no more complicated than "one win in last ten games" => 10% or "last Free win was in 2005, which was (math happens here) over a year ago"
If that is what is happening then fine.
Like I said from MY experience the game always seems very close. But then I haven't played it as much as others.
No game is perfectly balanced. The problem I have with balance in WotR is how much imbalance there can be. Sometimes, you can get just over the halfway mark and realize the bloody Shadow player has really got it sewn up because they've gone blazes with early corruption. At about the 2/3 point you realize the Shadow has about a 98% chance of winning. Only the ultimate streak of lucky draws can give the Free Peoples a shot. Before the game is over, luck of the draw trumps any strategic variation. It's a lousy endgame. Skill gets trumped by the totter teetering too far in one direction, at which point you are just waiting for gravity to stop.
You guys look like fools now 3 years later talking about this game having no balance and it is universally accepted that it does.
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