I've been posting a lot about boardgames recently (archive); I want to get back to blogging about tech stuff but one more game post, for now.

Today we played an epic six player session of the Game of Thrones board game. Each player took over one of the great houses and we battled to see who would control Westeros. We'd been hearing great things about it for a while but I was reticent to by it because the game can take up to six hours to play and I doubted we could get six people to commit the time.

I bought it last week and we finally got six to commit this afternoon. I'm glad we did because it was an awesome game. It took us about five hours of play plus one hour of learning the rules. The game was actually cut a bit short because people had to leave but I don't think it would have taken much longer to finish.

The game itself is a great mix of mechanics:

  • Risk-like attack and defense
  • Area control and support
  • Bluffing
  • Alliances and Betrayals
  • Cooperation (against Wildling attacks)

It's insanely complicated and has a steep learning curve but it is incredibly fun.

We'll definitely be playing again and if you're up for the challenge you should definitely check it out.