The Boarding Kennel

Night night my little princeling, don’t let the snarks and grumpkins bite. What? Well it’s a little late for a story lad, but if it’ll help you settle I suppose a few minutes can’t hurt. Pull your covers tight and let me tell you a tale of treachery and deceit, of friendships crushed and a rulebook so long and complicated it rivals the histories of the great houses themselves… 

Ah, A Game of Thrones, the epic series of slaughter, sex and political intrigue which has single-handedly made dragons an acceptable chat topic in offices and pubs across the land. Far from just a cash-grabbing tie-in, the board game is a masterpiece of channelling the ruthless, backstabbing shenanigans you’ll have come to recognise from the books and telly. Yes, playing a game of A Game of A Game of Thrones (AGOAGOAGOT) is a nerve-wracking affair which sees you sweating over your thinly-defended fiefdom as nearby armies swell and tenuous alliances are brokered.

Each player takes control of one of six great Westeros houses – including your Starks and Lannisters of course – raising armies, building fleets and grabbing castles across the beautifully-reproduced map of the continent. As in the books you win or you die, and creating a concrete treaty with a neighbour before stabbing them ruthlessly in the back when least expected is the lifeblood of the game.

Board and card game behemoth Fantasy Flight Games was quick(ish) out of the gates with the first version of AGOAGOT in 2003, and leapt on the huge popularity of the TV debut in 2011 to release a second edition incorporating new wheezes such as siege engines from the two expansions. The game’s main mechanic has far deeper roots though, being based on the 1950s board game Diplomacy – a simple area control game with legendary status as a destroyer of even the hardiest friendships through surprise betrayals. It’s rumoured that if you say the game’s name three times in front of a map of Europe it appears behind you and stabs you in the back, and I’ve always been too terrified to try.

For all its tantrum-inducing skulduggery Diplomacy – God, I’ve said it twice now –  at least had the possibility of two, three or even more people sharing a victory if everyone voted for the result, or the game hit a pre-agreed time limit. AGOAGOT crushes hopes of such benevolence with an iron gauntlet, forcing even the strongest of alliances to eventually crumble as each house makes their play to wrest the crown of Westeros for themselves. As in real life, success is determined by how many castles you own, and a tie at the end of the ten-turn limit sees players compare other factors including number of power tokens, height and even virility before forcing you to fight to the death with swords to decide the winner.

Fantasy Flight neglects my preferred option of controlling troops by screaming abuse in favour of a splendid token-based mechanic, with each region with troops in receiving an order face down to keep it secret from the other players. Every player then flips their orders over at the same time, whereupon you discover that not only have you completely misread most of your opponents’ intentions, but that one of your allies has lied through their teeth and is about to smash your unprepared fleet to bits. The best bit nicked from Diplom- erm, the game mentioned twice above is the support system, where anyone in a battle can call for aid from neighbouring troops from other houses. Tell your friend you’ll obviously support them, then switch sides when it comes to the crunch and have your army help run your ex-ally down. Utter joy.

Want to be Jamie Lannister? Bit sick given his familial sexual preferences, but you can after a fashion, as each house provides a range of character cards used to command your armies in battle. Some are powerful, some are dire and plenty have special powers to really shit up your opponents’ plans. Each can only be used once until you go through every card and reset the deck, creating a smart little bluffing mini-game each time there’s a scuffle.

Before you rush out and buy a copy be warned: this game needs patience, and not only regarding when to strike down your enemies and turn on your friends. The rulebook takes its cue from George R R Martin’s novels, weighing in at 29 A4 pages of text culled straight from the bottom of an optician’s sight chart, and is as hard to navigate as the sea route to Volantis. New players will need a 30-minute read through to avoid being hopelessly lost, and they’ll have forgotten most of the more obscure workings of things like ports by the start of the second turn. Attempting to pull this game out as a nice surprise for family Christmas will invariably lead to confusion, anger and ultimately violent acts.

Having a couple of experienced players in the game makes a huge difference, but failing that be prepared for the first couple of games to take a LONG time – our debut six-player effort clocked in at about eight hours (although we did have a feast half way through) – and to be riddled with mistakes and fallow periods spent trawling the rules. You’ll hit points where you realise Stark’s siege engine should have been destroyed three turns ago, or you forgot a card was in play banning raid orders that turn – it’s frustrating, but persevere and you’ll soon be wrapping games up in two to three hours depending on how many noble Lords and Ladies take part.

Given the steep learning curve and deep vein thrombosis-inducing game length it can be tricky getting six players to commit. Playing with fewer is fine, but the game is way more fun with more people all arguing with each other, begging for aid and ganging up unexpectedly to swing the momentum of the game. While musing this problem over a flagon of Arbor Gold last year I stumbled across the amazing forums at BoardGameGeek, the Encyclopedia Britannica of board gaming, where some legendary character has created an interactive map you can use to play by email. We were pretty skeptical of this at first, but much like its grandaddy Diplom**y (which suffers even more for games running hours and hours) the system dovetails beautifully with this type of play.

It took our group of six about two and a half months to get through a game – which sounds stark (zing!) raving mad, but rather than diluting the action the tension of the game was actually compounded, as everyone had hours – and frequently whole days – to sweat and fret over their orders and overanalyse every potential move their neighbours could make. There’s far less time to overthink things while sat around a table together, but it was amazing how the different dynamic led to players making occasionally bizarre moves after feverish hours convincing themselves they’d spotted an opponents incredibly subtle master plan, only to fund out their brain had betrayed them.

We were also encouraged to send ‘ravens’ to others to convey secret messages, something that’s obviously much trickier in the live game (although primordial attempts at subtle text messaging have gone down well), which led to hilarious instances of someone being backstabbed by their ally and revealing all of their secret correspondence to the others in a fit of email pique. It also opened up the possibility of ‘forwarding’ emails from other players which never even existed, making communication an essential but ultimately untrustworthy affair – words are wind, as they say.  There’s plenty of scope for writing long, rambling messages in character if that’s your cup of tea (it is, trust me), and it actually works out as a good way for new players to learn the rules without feeling pressured by time into making their moves – Fantasy Flight helpfully puts all its rulebooks online, often ahead of games being released, and it’s much easier for noobs to subtly ask other players for guidance about how retreating works or whether they can build a ship in a particular place.

A question from the back! Yes, you in the hat. You’re one of the six people in the world who don’t know/like/give a shit about Game of Thrones you say – will you enjoy the game? Yes! But not nearly as much as if you are familiar with the first few books or the telly show, which will make it about 300 per cent better. You can easily solve this by switching off Made in Chelsea and blitzing your way through the first season of the show, it’s truly excellent telly.

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