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The Dave
United States
Brooklyn
United States
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For this Friday, I had thought that N, L, and N’s sister R would be over, but it turned out N & L’s newborn had a fever, so they were not coming. My original plan, given we’d have 6 players (me, The Wife, Mikki, and N, L, and R), was to try Bootleggers. (Well, actually in my first blog post I didn’t realize R would be in town, so I was thinking El Grande would be good, but that’s a no-go with 6). Bootleggers will get played at some point, but this Friday wasn’t going to be the night.
So it would just be Mikki and me. The Wife was worn out from a long day of handling The Daughter, so I needed a good game for two. I scanned the games I have on my shelves – In the Year of the Dragon? Hmm, a player count of 2-5 usually plays better with more…Cavum? Eh, we had plans to try Seeland later, and I have a strict 1 tile-laying game per game night policy. And then the box caught my eye. A player count of 2 (ok, well 2-4, but we all know it’s designed for 2). A game I’ve had since March, and with hardly any opportunity to try it. A game I had heard was excellent once you knew it, but a total bear to try to play the first time.
Stronghold.
I remembered I had printed out zefquaavius's excellent player summaries, so I thought we might be able to decently slog through the rules. I explained the game concept to Mikki, who seemed intrigued. We decided to give it a go. (Last year, when I was a gamer-newb, I told her about Agricola and how it weighed a ton, and the rule book was crazy long, and etc. I also told her how I was so intimidated to try it for those reasons, and she called me a wimp or something and made me break it out and try it with her. I now use that against her in situations like this, and I’m sure she regrets being the one to break me of my fear of new, complex games.)
We opened the box at 4:15. Mikki took a look at the crazy amount of components, exclaimed “That’s a lot of cubes”, opened the defender rule book and said “Oh boy…” Oh boy, indeed. Let the siege begin!
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I will now review Stronghold according to the following criteria. Keep in mind this is a review of the game after only one play.
Accessibility (1): How easy was the game to teach and learn? Is it complex and/or fiddly? Are the rules easy to understand and follow? How long did it take to go over the rules?
Fun (1): Is it fun? Included in this might be a theme-to-mechanics metric, or a player interaction metric.
Length of first play (1): Some games say 60-90 minutes, but the first play might take you 3 hours. Not included is length of rules explanation.
Desire to play again (1): Typically I would rather play a new game than play a game I’ve already played (with some exceptions). I know – I am crazy. This will be a good measure of how much I like the game.
Review:
Accessibility:
Well let’s just go ahead and address the 300 lb gorilla in the room. This game is very challenging to learn. The player summaries made it a bit easier, but even then it was difficult to know exactly which components belonged to whom, and for me as the Invader I was overwhelmed with the sheer number of tokens and counters. I had read ColtsFan76’s excellent overview (and I do mean EXCELLENT), so I had a decent idea of how to treat the phase cards, and what I should be thinking about as the Invader. I also tried to explain the concepts to Mikki, but her eyes were already glassing over. Eventually we took about 10 minutes to just read through the rules (both the actual rules and the summary rules mentioned above). Afterwards we talked a bit about what we thought we should be doing, and then finally we basically said screw it, let’s just play. That was at about 5:15.
Score: .2
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Fun:
Now this is interesting. If you know Stronghold, you know that there are 10 rounds. At the end of Round 2, I got up to get a drink (no, not that kind, but at that point I could have used one!), and I started to think “I'm not sure I enjoy this. I don't quite see the point, and maybe I should trade it. This game is in pretty high demand right now. There’s a number of people that are looking for this in trade, and I think I might just put it up. I’m not sure I’ll ever play this again.” Of course, all that had happened up till that point was a few exchanges of siege machine fire, a couple of traded blows between marksmen and goblin archers, and some building of cauldrons, bridges, and traps. We then took a break for dinner and I told Mikki that if she wanted to quit, we could. We decided to keep playing, and I’m very glad we did.
The next two rounds saw the first melee combat, and that significantly increased the fun factor. Now there were real consequences for each of our decisions. Before, I could guess as to what impact Mikki’s goblin cauldron would have, but now I saw that I could not, would not place any goblins there. I also saw that my banners, combined with my troll army did a great job at crashing through her stone walls to take out some of her soldiers. I began thinking less about which games I could get for Stronghold in a trade, and more about how I could crush her defiantly smug defenders. Instead of thinking about each phase as discrete events, I thought more about a long-term plan to breach the walls. I started feeling less like one who is learning a game, and more like a field commander trying to storm a castle. It was fun, and I began to really like Stronghold. I liked it even more when I finally breached the walls in Round 5 to secure a 10-8 victory. Time of victory - 8:00pm
Score: .6 To be fair, I think no matter how hard I try, the accessibility is tainting this score. I really believe that with a few more plays this game would get a solid .8 or .9 for fun. But, as a first play, it's a .6
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Length of first play:
You might think this is going to get a low score. You are wrong. The box states a game takes 120 minutes. Once we got the rules going (and taking dinner out of the equation), the game took probably 2 hours and 15 minutes, maybe 2.5 hours tops. And that’s not bad, considering how complex the game is and the box warns it takes 2 hours. All in all, it never dragged – more so we were confused about what to do because we had no clue what the ramifications of our actions would be. We weren't able to plan with any confidence so we hemmed and hawed about what to do. To be clear we were never bored - just hesitant. Also, I never felt Mikki took too long with her turns, nor did she feel I took too long with mine. The pacing was quick and we eventually fell into a good groove.
Score: .8
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Desire to play again:
I really want to try this again. I am afraid I won’t get to play Stronghold much because of how steep the learning curve is. I’m not sure The Wife will be up for this game, even though I know she would love storming my castle. I’m hopeful I can convince at least one of my friends to try it, they will like it, and I’ll have a Stronghold partner. Luke the Orange, I'm talking to you!
Score: .7
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OVERALL: 2.3/4
Keep in mind that this score is not my RATING of the game, but rather a metric of how my first play of Stronghold measured up. I would expect it to be low because of how complex it is. It is not a game you can just bust out and easily teach someone. Teaching/learning Stronghold should be the destination for a gaming day/night, not just a part of it. If you go into it thinking you'll quickly learn the rules and be invading/defending in no time, you'll be disappointed.
I will try to get this back out a few more times before I officially rate it.
Up Next: I first-play review Seeland. Can it live up to the double-rondel, tile-laying standard its counterpart Vikings has set?
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