Each player has a hand of cards and must play a minimum of two per turn, regardless of how much it messes up your strategy. In the Game players are attempting to player a full set of cards numbered from two to ninety-nine across four piles of cards, two piles will ascend in value while two will descend. I had tried the Game a few days earlier and enjoyed it thoroughly, though I remember feeling like it would be much easier with fewer players. We played a relatively long game but eventually I managed to get a win after Matt backed himself into a corner with five pieces remaining, he made it possible to win with either a square or circular piece in two different spots without realising, meaning that any piece would have been the winning piece. Matt hadn’t played the game before so I spent some time trying to show him the strategy that I use, where before handing over I try to place the piece myself in my head to see whether it will make me lose. The twist that makes Quarto such an interesting game is that at the end of every turn the player chooses the piece for their opponent to play on their turn, meaning that when you do eventually lose the game it’s usually your fault for handing over the wrong piece. The first player to make four-in-a-row of any one property is the winner. Either short or tall, round or square, dark or light then hollow or full. Quarto has a four by four board along with 16 wooden pieces, each containing a unique combination of four different properties. Also the game feels unique, interesting and short enough to play multiple times. The game looks outstanding too, I like a game that has big chunky wooden pieces and abstracted shapes. The rules are incredibly simple, you can teach this in under a minute however the strategies are deep and captivating. I’m sure that we’ll play things slightly different next time but I loved everything about this game, I can’t wait to play it again.Ī games night with me would be complete without at least one abstract game, and Quarto is one of my all time favourite abstracts because it ticks a lot boxes in what so look for in this genre. I had stronger cards and Frodo couldn’t retreat sideways due to the space next to him being fully occupied, allowing me to defeat both Sam and Frodo to win the game. With only four characters remaining I made a last ditch effort to find Frodo by attacking a space on the other side of the board with my Flying Nazgul, finding both Sam and Frodo. I made some bad moves early on losing some key characters but Matt lost some of his better cards in the process. I enjoyed my first experience partly because it did bring me back to playing Stratego when I was younger, but the Confrontation is in a completely different class to Stratego which hasn’t really stood the test of time. All eighteen characters have different abilities and a range of different strength values, plus there is an advanced game with a different set of characters and a few extra rules, so there is no shortage of variation to the game. In addition if a player can not move a character forward on their turn they also lose. Alternatively the Sauron player can win by getting three characters into the Shire on the opposite side of the board to Mordor. The Fellowship wins the game immediately should Frodo enter the Mordor space, where as Sauron wins the game if Frodo is killed. In addition the game is asymmetrical with characters, cards and win conditions being different for the two players. Confrontation instead has only nine pieces on each side and players get to add a card to every encounter which might add to their strength or provide an extra ability or effect, so it isn’t just a case of the higher number wins. I used to quite enjoy Stratego when I was younger but a single game could go on for hours, and the game could start to become tedious because each player had 40 pieces on the board making it near impossible to remember where pieces were once they had been revealed. Higher numbers beat lower numbers when they meet but there are special abilities and exceptions to the rule. Designed by Reiner Knizia Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation appears to be influenced by a much older game called Stratego in which players would move a set of numbered pawns around a map with each player only able to see the numbers on their own pawns. This has been sat on my shelf for a little while now unplayed and tonight seemed like as good a time as any to try the game for the first time. I met with my good friend Matt to catch up and play a bunch of two player games on Wednesday evening, I tried to bring a variety of different genres of games and we ended up playing six different titles starting with Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation.
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