As an unrepentant super fan of The Song of Ice and Fire series, I can describe it as many things: inventive, historically referential, chock-full of hundreds of characters with vaguely similar names that are nearly impossible for a casual reader to tell apart.
But brief? The roughly 5000 page long and counting saga isn’t known for its ability to summarize. It has 10 seasons so far of big budget TV, a living card game with dozens of expansions, and an excellent full size board game that will suck away hours of your life and break your friendships into pieces. So, how can all of this be distilled down into one Tiny Epic package? Or, more to the point, can it be successfully distilled down? Find out with Tiny Epic Game of Thrones, a Gamelyn game for 1-4 players.
Gameplay Overview:
The Name of the game here is victory points. Each player chooses a different house to represent, with a unique playmat, meeples, and tracker token. Four more houses are selected to be non-player combatants. Players take turns drafting action dice, performing the actions indicated by those dice, and moving meeples around the map to establish dominance and build alliances. You earn points by winning battles and triggering events, and whoever has the most victory points at the end of the third round of scoring wins.
Play takes place across a map of Westeros littered with castles and enemy troops. There are 6 types of actions represented on the die faces. You can Recruit, deploying meeple units onto the map, March, moving troops already placed around the map, Sail, moving up or down the coast by water, Plot, playing a card from your hand, Whisper, discard plot cards from your hand to draw fresh, or perform a unique Event. The different houses have a thematic ability that coordinates with one type of action. The Tyrells, for example, are known for their sneakiness and can turn one die per turn into a Whisper action for free.
Sometimes you can forge alliances with other houses to advance your mutual goals, and sometimes you must crush them into a meeple pulp to claim the Iron Throne for yourself. When you enter an area that another house controls, you can battle. The attacker plays a facedown plot card from their hand. Some cards just have strength bonuses, and some have special battle actions that let you do unique attacks. The defender also selects a facedown card, but they have to pay the card’s gold cost to battle with it. Players tally up their power tokens, hero tokens, castles in the domain, and bonus points for the iron throne, and add that to their now-revealed card. Whoever has the most points wins the battle and gets a victory point.
Game Experience:
I’m going to confess that I’ve played a dozen or so Tiny Epic games, and I’ve never run across one that I’ve thought was worth giving a second try. In the past, I’ve always left with the feeling that it either should have been a bigger game or been less ambitious in its scope. Am I expecting too much? Tiny Epic Game of Thrones does the job of delivering a full services board game in a small and portable box, exactly as advertised. It’s entertaining, challenging, and engaging, if a little gimmicky.
The game itself is expansive, taking up plenty of table space and set up time. It crams lots of bits and pieces into that little package. Those pieces are as fiddly as you would expect them to be. The map, taking place across 6 portable cards instead of a board, is easy to bonk and knock out of place as you reach to move those tiny pieces. The full size plot cards are nice, though, with beautiful illustrated art and thoughtful information layouts that prevent them from feeling too cramped. It’s not a quick-to-play game, but the round system keeps things moving and prevents it from dragging out past the point of enjoyment. It sits right in the niche of being heavier than a filler game, but lighter than what many people look for in a main event.
The balance of battle felt just right to me. You can stack the numbers in your favor and estimate the strength of your opponent before taking them on, but the facedown action cards give you just enough room to surprise an opponent who thought they had you pinned. The system is straightforward, but has enough moving parts to keep it from getting repetitive.
What Tiny Epic Game of Thrones has most going for it is an excellent solo mode. Because the regular game already requires players to do administration for the non-player houses, it isn’t much of a leap to translate this into a rewarding solo play structure. The game does a great job of it, and the solo mode makes for a good teaching tool as you try to learn the rules.
The rulebook is reasonably easy to follow, with clear instructions. I will note that Gamelyn has already had to release multiple sets of errata for misprints and errors in this production. There are issues with the wording on some playmats, cards, and the round tracker that should be reviewed before you play. A very enticing expansion was released that has all of the story content many fans of the show may want, so I’d love to see a second edition where everything is corrected and packaged together.
Final Thoughts:
Tiny Epic Game of Thrones doesn’t replace Game of Thrones: The Board Game, but for fans and enthusiasts, it can serve as a supplement. When you don’t have it in you to fully commit to the larger, heavier, and ultimately better game, the Tiny Epic one will do the trick. The amount of table space and time that this uses falls more on the Epic end of the spectrum than Tiny, but the game packs in a lot of content. Game of Thrones is one of the better Tiny Epic games that I’ve played, and if you’re a Solo gamer you won’t be disappointed adding it to your collection.
Final Score: 3.5 Stars – Solid, playable, and will satisfy the fans
Hits:
• A very effective and fun to play solo mode
• The battle system is satisfying
• Very well done screen printing and card art
Misses:
• Errata needs to be reviewed before you can play
• Map cards and pieces are so easy to bump that they require a lot of readjustment throughout the game
Source: Board Game Quest
