Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Mark's #45: Star Wars - The Queen's Gambit

Sometimes, when you buy a big box game, it's full of air... the company just wanted a big hunk of shelf profile and so made the box large enough to offer living space to a gang of Smurfs and their pet ferret. That is definitely NOT true with Avalon Hill's The Queen's Gambit, which also manages to buck another trend, the general suckage of movie tie-in games. The box is filled to the brim with a three-tier "palace" + two other battle boards + a chunk of plastic minis.

In fact, I like the game better than I like Epsiode 1. (Geek note: there are two really great parts to Episdoe 1: [a] the closing 30 minutes of the movie, which is the subject of my #45 game, and [b] the pod race, which really needs to be made into a game. Otherwise, George Lucas, what were you thinking?!)

This is a big, sprawling, table-eating dicefest - and yet you do have some control with your card orders. There's a constant balancing act going on between the various battles, and the game is filled with great "yahoo!" moments, when something good happens for your side.

I call it a "three hour tour", because it takes 30 minutes to set up, two hours to play, and 30 minutes to put back in the box. It's well worth the time.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There actually are a bunch of pod racing games (though they are all video games...) Did you mean non-video?

10:12 AM  
Blogger Mark (aka pastor guy) said...

Yeah... a pod-racing BOARD game. I have the Star Wars Episode 1 game for my Mac, and Braeden loves to "play" it with me. (He handles the throttle; I steer. He also ducks under the desk when we zip by the Space Worm.)

2:18 PM  

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