Category Archives: Matchup

Verses: BattleLore Second Edition vs Memoir ’44

Head to Head, Matchup, memoir 44, VS

This match up happened very early on in the pairwise comparisons. I thought “wow! This is a tough choice.”

How am I going to chose between BattleLore (Second Edition) and Memoir ’44? 

Both are based on the Richard Borg Command and Colours system. 

Yes BattleLore has some extras to its mechanics. Setting the game up is actually part of the game play. It also adds lore to the game, which is basically magic. And that setup as game play is inspired.

Memoir ’44 has had way better support when it comes to expansions. There is a shit load of stuff for it. Ok some are mega expensive because they are out of print (which I don’t get, because it’s a popular game, an ever green title, and keeping stuff like expansions in print shouldn’t be an issue.) Plus I’m not sure FFG will do much more with BattleLore now with their RuneWars mini game just hitting the stores. 

So does it just come down to theme? Do I prefer fantasy over historical? Or vice versa? 

I decided this was a draw. Theme wasn’t a big decider in the end for me. Because if on the day I wanted to play a game like these it would come down to what theme am I in the mood for? 

So I put this decision out on social media to get the thoughts of others on what they would chose.

I suspect Henning might be a little biased in his answer below. But he is correct his art in BattleLore is amazing.


So what would your choice be?

An Early Top 10 Games of All Time

Matchup, ranking, TopXX Games

I’m just over 7% into my journey/experiment in ranking my game collection. That’s 1659 pairwise comparisons (so far).

I have an initial version of the lists/stats engine, that pulls off the results, calculates a value for each game in the collection, and then sorts that list into descending order. That sorted list is then printed out to the screen.

So running the lists/stats engine python script gives me the following 11 games as my Top 10 games (so far). Naturally as I complete more pairwise comparisons this list will change as more results are available. With more results the more reliable and accurate the list will be. I must do some research into at what point do the results generated become truly representative (is that the correct word?) There must be a tipping point where doing more tests is irrelevant because it doesn’t impact the results.

Anyhoo (and I bet that gets up the noses of some folks) here is the first very temporary top ten games of all time.

 

Kodama vs Odin’s Ravens

Head to Head, Matchup, VS

I think when I was boring you with pseudo techie speak about how I was going to write this matching engine to allow me to rank my games, I threatened to write posts about some of the match ups. Sadly for you I’m carrying through with that threat at least once.

Our first match up in this series (more threats I’m afraid) is Kodama: The Tree Spirits vs Odin’s Ravens (second edition).

The winner of this match up was Odin’s Ravens. So how did I arrive at this choice?

Both games are very attractive to look at. Both theme wise are completely different. Racing ravens verses growing trees and tree spirits.

Odin’s Ravens is a two player only game. While Kodama plays two to five players. Although I have only so far played Kodama as a two player game.

Kodama is the more “complicated” of the two games. And probably the harder of the two to pick up and play after a long gap between plays. Looking back at the post I wrote when I first played (and only time at the moment) the game there was confusion over how the scoring worked. And I feel that may be the case again when this hits the table next time.I have played Odin’s Ravens more than Kodama (not by much). But even so it only takes a minute to refresh the memory on how to play after a gap between plays. And that refresh is mainly on the setup.

I think what swung it for Odin’s Ravens was it has a take that element. Using the Loki cards it is possible to interfere with your opponents progress. However doing so has repercussions for yourself (potentially) because you too will have to negotiate the hurdle you threw in the way of your  opponent. It’s not much interaction but it’s there, which is more than there is in Kodama.

There you have it. That is how I chose Odin’s Ravens over Kodama. Which would you have chosen and why?