Thread to actually discuss MEQ

Notahandle wrote:

Hex Sinister wrote:
" Hey, Jason that's not fair. I said awesome Middle Earth games. =)"
Can't resist harking back to a recent Trashdome: War of the Ring - The Game of Middle Earth .

Never heard of that one, but I have played this War of the Ring .

Back to this particular Middle-earth game...

What would you say the weight of this game is? I am personally pretty much sold on the game, and the length sounds pretty reasonable, but if the game is a real bear to teach/learn, I might think twice about a purchase. I already have WotR, and that doesn't get played as much as I'd like.

I think it's pretty heavy- there's essentially two sets of rules to learn.

However, it felt really daunting in the first turn but after that, it moved really nicely and things made sense. Teaching it is actually not that bad since you can do it based on the turn sequence, and on the first turn you can just lay out how to do things in the order that they happen. And since combat is a completely separate thing, you don't even have to worry about it until it happens, just warn them that the cards they move with are the same cards they fight with.

I think it's one of those where you can also sort of say (as the Sauron player at least) "I'm going to handle these parts of it, I'll explain them but you don't have to worry about it.

Compared to WotR, I actually think it's a little easier. WotR is _not_ a simple game. It's as complex as most CDWGs, and I think there's some really tough to process stuff. MEQ makes more sense, and doesn't feel as thick with rules.

That's very good to know. It sounds like a game that can easily be played on a weeknight, with lots of depth and theme. That sounds like a winner to me.

Have you had a chance to play Pegasus yet?

Shellhead wrote:
" Never heard of that one, but I have played this War of the Ring ."
Definitely the one in my book. But strangely absent from MattDP's classics list.

SanIlDefanso wrote:
" Have you had a chance to play Pegasus yet?"
To which I reply:-
SanIlDefanso wrote:
" Back to this particular Middle-earth game..."
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

I'd like to hear more about how well it plays two-player. And what people think the optimal number of players is.

Apparently a lot of people are getting good mileage out of playing two players, but letting the Hero player take two turns for every one of the Shadow's. (Is that the official rule?) There's a session report here:

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/433829

... where they did this and it seemed to work very well.

@Notahandle

Yes, that disparity occurred to me as soon as I hit the submit button. I didn't feel like starting an entire new thread to see how the game was so I tried to hijack this one. Full of fail.

Tee hee!
(As Southernman would say.)

So, how's the downtime on MEQ? If I get this, I'd probably play this almost entirely with 4 players, and I'm wondering how bored I'd get on other players turns. Looking at a couple of game reviews, it sort of reminds me of Descent, and downtime is the issue that kills Descent for me.

Each turn will take about 20 minutes. While there's a lot of steps in Sauron turn, his turn actual goes pretty fast because most of his actions are pick cards and playing cards. So each player turn ends up about 5 minutes each. So on average there is 15 minutes between each players turn. Many players turns will only take 2-3 minutes unless there's a battle. The battles are what suck up a bunch of time. Each battle will take about 5 minutes. What could be a drag for players is if they have a couple of really short turns and the other players have battles on there turn.