Cult of the Old - Lords of Waterdeep
Podcast/Video Details
Game Information
Each episode your hosts Iain McAllister, Matt Thrower, and Nate Owens are going to turn back the clock to look at games that are at least 10 years old. They’ll give their own critical impressions, tell you about the history of the game and its impact, and what relevance these games still have in the modern hobby landscape.
Dungeons and Dragons has always been the dominant game in the tabletop RPG space. From its early days to the all encompassing 5th edition, there have always been attempts to leverage that name in other ways. T-shirts, mugs, TV shows, and of course board games. Lords of Waterdeep from designers Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson is a game that took many by surprise when it came out. Putting the worker placement mechanism into the world of DnD as you take on the role of one of the Lords of the city, it remains on shelves to this day and we delve into the reasons why.
First off, sorry, Nate, but I agree with Matt in that I don't see much of any connection between 7 Wonders and Ra. But, again, having only played the former a couple times and having played the latter a TON of times, it might just be my unfamiliarity with 7 Wonders that leaves me without the connection.
Second, I found it kind of odd when all of you seemed to agree that drafting games were WORSE with more players, when the game that inspired 7 Wonders (MTG) basically standardized the idea of a draft with eight. I always found that part of the magic (ahem) of MTG drafting was not only what you were talking about, in terms of the tension created by giving cards away that you wanted and hoping they'd come back, but in also watching the patterns of what was coming to you initially and then returning to you from those packs that were passed around. That's what makes the whole mechanism even more interesting to me, although the card content of MTG packs and the static set of 7 Wonders is obviously a very different dynamic.
All of that said, I do agree that 7 Wonders probably tops out at 4 or 5 players for the best experience.
Jackwraith wrote: First off, sorry, Nate, but I agree with Matt in that I don't see much of any connection between 7 Wonders and Ra. But, again, having only played the former a couple times and having played the latter a TON of times, it might just be my unfamiliarity with 7 Wonders that leaves me without the connection.
I got where Nate was trying to go... That each set of colors had their own specific ways of contributing points, three rounds, etc. But how you get to that point is so vastly different I can also see where the dissonance from Mike and Ian came from.
I gave my thoughts on the discord about the various expansions, I'll wait to copy/paste them.
One thing I wish I could have back with the 7 Wonders episode is that I wish I had realized that I wasn't really coming to this game with any experience in drafting games. I had no memories of Magic drafts, and so 7 Wonders was scratching an itch I personally didn't have. Maybe one of my issues with the game is that I'm not sure it expresses to me why people love drafting in the first place. Compare that to, say, Dominion. There's a game that totally made you understand why people love building decks, even if you'd never done it before.
Anyway, I wish that I had understood that lack of context on my own part. I remember thinking that the day after we recorded this episode.