We are back in the swing, 7WD was played with both the Pantheon and Leaders expansion last night with a trio of interesting games.
Game one saw my game change to full-on aggression. I drew Caesar, Horace and Semiramis, and I also grabbed the Colossus Wonder, so warfare was front of mind, which is a change of role for me.
So many variants on the core principals. Favourites are Leonidis, or Caligular who can potentially strip an opponent of 14 coin in one turn! Also, Tomyris and Semiaramis who act as potent discouragements to war, ideal for a builder or science fan.
Totally abandoning any though of winning any other way, I dismissed resources, science (no Strategy or Poliorcetics tokens to be had), or most blue builds, but did score Mars. Red, red, red was the name of my game!
Meg saw it coming, but too late as after consolidating in the Second Age with Caesar and later Mars, I bought Horace for the Third Age, building the Colossus and drawing a triple shield first round (going first is one advantage of having no VP). All over bloodily and quickly. If it had drawn out to a points decision, I would have been embarrassed with possibly less than 20pts to my name.
Playing single mindedly can bite you, when the fall of cards just fails to serve, but sometimes there are just too many incentives. In game two I fixated on Science for the same reasons and bombed dismally.
Game two, felt more dynamic than our regular base games, which is the Pantheon thing, and was won comfortably by Meg on points.
Game three was an unlikely science victory for me, not because I am not always on the lookout for one (see above), but because none of the usual prompts where there (No Law, Ishtar or Re-draw options). Like the Military victory, I decided to go all out, gaining three solid tokens late in the game (Architecture, Urbanism, Masonry), but they probably would not have saved me.
A Science victory, partly disguised by my late decision to try for it and the lack of the normal indicators, came with the third last card. Again failure to secure a science victory would have led to a solid points loss. This was a case of prioritising pairs, the bulk then disguising the impending full set.
Our feelings on this format are much like the previous incarnation.
The Pantheon makes the game more mechanically dense, but much more dynamic. In Megs words, “her pulse quickens” with this incarnation of the game, where the base game, even with Leaders is more mechanical and procedural. In one game, we bought useless Gods three times between us in the last turns of the game, just to switch up the turn order (you always feel there may be a way out of trouble, a bit like calling check mate, then analysing unseen options).
In the base game, the end could have been predicted mid Third Age.
Adding in the Leaders offers a further level of unpredictability, but unlike Pantheon, the Leaders are less volatile in their use. A good Leader combined with fortuitous Gods can make for a powerful combination, but the Leader is mostly a luck based element (you will see each about 1 in 15 or so games), the Gods are more influential (coming up about 1 in 3).
Even though many Leaders are as powerful as a God, Wonder or Progress Token and often easier to get (Caesar/Mars, Minerva/Aspasia, Horace-Imhotep/Anubis, Solomon/The Mausoleum or Hades etc), their limited and programmed introduction and their relative rarity mean that at most, Leaders may lean you towards a strategy (see game 1 above), but will rarely get you over the line on their own.
An area I favour is Science. Often under served and compared to Warfare (above), is still a little thin, the Leaders on offer do however add welcome opportunities. Plato and the Maths token can make even dabbling quite useful (12 VP for 2 tokens!) and Archimedes with Euclid or Ptolemy, a re-draw and Ishtar or Law can make a science win almost automatic, especially if your opponent does not play green.
What the Leaders do bring though is more variety of effects. Warfare has several twists especially defensively, chaining is well served, VP can be gained from various sets of suits or mixed cards which gives you some motivation to diversify or intensify your builds (I recently gained 15 VP just from Justinian). These are all viable strategic motivators that help to round out the game.
The Leaders do in fact help abolish any remaining game un-eveness through sheer variety and density of choice. It is not a coincidence that both Meg and I have been playing out of character lately.
The Leaders add a comfortable padding of variety and mild unpredictability, the Pantheon adds volatility and strategic dynamism. You can also ignore them all and just play for points!
On a final note, I am always impressed by the games balance and logical approach to such a deep subject matter. For example, we always felt the Gold cards were less useful than others, Meg usually avoiding them, leaving me to take them as an alternative to missing out on Browns (then not often being well healed enough to buy the needed resources).
We missed the rule where you get 2+ coin equal to your Gold builds when cashing in a card! This balanced the game out again and now we both take gold cards with more enthusiasm. After a lot of games, we instinctively felt the imbalance, that as it turns out was not actually there.