The not-super-photogenic Rise of Queensdale from alea and the Brands. This is kinda what happens when you turn a completely generic eurogame into a Legacy game. The first game I was thinking “seriously? you really expect me to play this for 20 games? Or, in fact, more than once?”. But the second game was much better. I’m a bit surprised that people like this core action dice mechanic which dates back to (I think) War of the Ring; unless you really use it very cleverly or very sparingly it’s pretty uninteresting, and I found that to be the case here. I suspect with this, the game is going to be almost entirely in the Legacy elements, as the core mechanics aren’t really doing anything of interest. As always, pacing will be key - it’s slow so far, but we’re just two games in. I also feel compelled to add that there is a lot of narrative “read this aloud” text and the writing on it (translating?) is really atrocious. Some people object to too much non-game-mechanic-relevant flavor text or exposition; I do not personally, but I do insist that if you’re going to go that way, it does need to be better than this. Decent writers are not an expensive commodity, it turns out (although bad genre writers are really cheap). Ok, one last thing, the generic-medieval-European-castle-building setting is very disappointing. It’s actually not terrible, but it’s just so generic and been so completely done to death; the whole entire point of a Legacy-type game is to do something interesting narratively. Anyway, I didn’t hate the game, and it does seem to have been designed by marketing to be inoffensive to as many people as possible, so I think I’ll enjoy it for a few games. Unless there is some hidden depth here though (and I should say, I don’t rule that out entirely!), it has very little chance to make it to 20(ish) games. The copy I played was comped; that’s the way to do it if you can 😄 #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #aleaspiele #riseofqueensdale https://www.instagram.com/p/BvOIj3pjQWY/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1koikhaq5dhrv
