Let's Play Fallout: the Board Game

The captain stood studying it through the periscope. If the Geiger counter was correct no life could exist there for more than a few days, and yet it all looked so normal in the spring sunlight that he felt there must be people there. There did not seem to be glass broken in the window, even, save for a pane here and there. He turned from the periscope. "Left ten, seven knots," he said. "We'll close the shore here, and lie off the jetty, and hail for a while."

- Nevil Shute: On the Beach

Fantasy Flight Games have come up with a Fallout board game, and of course we had to try it.

Nicholas Roerich: Tombs in the Desert, 1930

**

At first glance, the game appears bewildering: there's piles and piles of tokens, a massive card library and several encounter decks, and a map made up of hexagonal tiles that mostly start out face down. As seems to be standard with Fantasy Flight products, there's both a "learn to play" booklet and a heftier rules reference.

Appearances are deceptive, though, because once you sit down and start playing, Fallout is engagingly simple to pick up, and very much worth it. Each player controls a survivor, who treks through the wasteland, fighting monsters and completing quests. For every game, you pick a scenario, and they all start with some quests in play; completing them shuffles new cards into the encounter decks, gets you stuff and agenda cards, and so on. Ultimately the game is won by the first player who gains a set amount of influence from their (secret!) agenda cards.

Here's a shot from one of our first games; my Wastelander is armed with a sniper rifle and wearing metal armor, while on my left is a Brotherhood Outcast with a knife. Each player gets a cute little cardboard thing where we keep track of our hit points, rads and experience.

**

A recurring theme in our first, two-player games was that my friend really liked playing the Brotherhood Outcast, running around in power armor and stabbing the shit out of everything. He discovered this in our first game, then tried playing the Vault Dude in the next one and being serious, and went back to stabbing everything in the third game. When literally the first loot card he got was a Combat Knife, clearly the wasteland spirits wanted it, so who were we to argue?

Now, as it happens, I have quite a few Warhammer 40,000 bits lying around, so I decided to make him a little Fallout figure to capture his particular play style: a World Eater Chaos Space Marine.

He will stab you. Now, arguably I could just as well have made him a Blood Angel, but the Chaos bits are more fun and really, what's the difference anyway?

I even gave him a little World Eater logo transfer.

**

Next, it was time for a four-player attempt. The amount of influence needed to win the game decreases with the number of players, so there should be less turns with four players than with two. Overall, I think the game took a lot more time, though: there was more deliberation, and the possibility of trading with other players led to some complex trading schemes - and we didn't even trade any agendas!

Here's our World Eater Brotherhood Outcast in action, with my brother's ghoul literally hiding behind him.

Eventually, with three copies of the Freedom agenda, my brother won.

Each scenario has two factions, titled freedom and security: in the Capital Wasteland they're the Brotherhood and the Enclave, in the Commonwealth they're the Railroad and the Institute. If you hold one of their agendas, advancing that faction's interests will net you influence - but if either faction gains too much power, they win the game and all the players lose!

**

We tried another four-player game later, and while it was fun, it highlighted what I think is the most serious problem with the game: deadlock.

Especially with four players, it's likely that someone will be trying to advance both factions. Unfortunately, this can easily lead to a situation where advancing the main quest would mean losing the game for everyone, but a shortage of side quests means there's also few or no ways to get additional agenda cards. This is especially bad for players who end up with an unwieldy combo of agendas, like a straight freedom/security split. Effectively this means the game is deadlocked: no-one can win, but everyone will eventually lose as the factions gain power. It's a little frustrating; we ended up losing on purpose by advancing the main quest. That's not really a good outcome.

**

Still, though, we've enjoyed ourselves, and with an expansion already announced, we'll definitely be returning to the wasteland! There are lots of mechanics in this game that I like, it does a first-class job of capturing the spirit of the video games, and above all, it's a fun time.

LotR LCG: Return to Arnor

Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords.
- The Lord of the Rings, book I, chapter VII

Way back when we tried the Lost Realm deluxe expansion for the first time a couple of years ago, we weren't too impressed. It was a real shame, too, since I have a soft spot for Eriador. However, here we are: it was the last deluxe expansion before Wilds of Rhovanion that we haven't played, and since the Crossing of Poros was so interminably delayed, we had a bunch of time on our hands. So let's see what the experience is like with a considerably larger cardpool.

**

Intruders in Chetwood - DL 4

In the first quest of the expansion, our heroes set off from Rivendell to help a ranger track a party of orcs heading for Bree. There's just a single quest stage, but you'll be hampered by encounter side quests, and also have to destroy all the Orc War Parties you come across. All the while your threat is raised by enemies in the staging area, but they don't make encounter checks so you have to pick them off one by one.

There's quite a bit of ally hate and some multiple attacks by enemies, which is decidedly less fun with post-errata Boromir. There's also a lovely uncancellable Treachery where everyone suddenly attacks you. So in all, you need to quest, fight and do location control while your threat is racing upward.

It's not a bad quest by any means, and I do have to say that the art on the locations is some of the best in the game. The enemies, however, are actually quite dull, which kind of detracts from the experience.

**

The Weather Hills - DL 5

After intercepting the orcs, our heroes hunt down the survivors in the wilderness. Here you have to explore locations to find orcs to kill, and once you've killed enough of them, the final quest stage unleashes a flood of encounter cards that you have to quest through in a limited time. All this is done while also dealing with a pile of nasty weather treacheries.

This is a quest I really want to like: it's got very pretty locations in Arnor, and very strongly Tolkien themes of ruins, travel and weather. In practice, though, we're facing almost the exact same orcs as in the previous scenario, and they're still boring. There's also an extra level of difficulty to the quest that we felt was unnecessary. I generally like it when different mechanics and themes in a quest interact with each other, but here they just pile difficulty on top of difficulty. Again, I wouldn't say this is a bad quest, but it's quite tough, and quite heavily dependent on either some strong combat ability or plentiful healing. I also suspect it would lend itself quite well to a We Must Away -style delay in finishing the first stage.

**

Deadmen's Dike - DL 7

In the last quest of the expansion, our heroes end up in Fornost or something, and you have to fight a horde of the undead, as well as a special undead bad guy. I actually feel we did better against this quest than the others, but maybe that's just luck. Some of the sorcery effects are interesting, and the location art remains excellent throughout, but I dunno, this quest didn't exactly captivate us either. We were eventually overrun by a massive pile of undead in the last quest stage.

**

As for player cards, this is a strongly thematic expansion, with almost every card directy associated with the Dúnedain trait. The heroes are Halbarad and Neil Young Aragorn, both of whose abilities are keyed to engaging enemies, which is what Dúnedain decks are all about.

There's also a whole stack of Dúnedain allies, and an attachment to get them into play faster - provided you're engaged with an enemy, of course. There's a couple of nice touches, like Weather Hills Watchman, who lets you fetch a Signal card from your deck - say, one of those handy little stat-boosting attachments from way back in the Mirkwood cycle - and Dúnedain Hunter, who fetches an enemy from the encounter deck. The latter is clearly very handy for Dúnedain decks, but we've also had some success using him to find someone for Legolas to kill. There's also Ranger of the North, a unique player card in that you shuffle it into the encounter deck.

A couple of other cards are also of broader utility: Secret Vigil gives Tactics some fairly rare threat reduction, and Athelas provides a whole bunch of healing, with a useful side effect of also removing a condition attachment. I should also mention the first-ever player side quest, Gather Information; after all, it's not every deluxe expansion that introduces a whole new card type.

So basically, if you want to build a Dúnedain deck, you need this expansion, and they're a lot of fun to play! If not, there might be something useful for you, but nothing particularly unmissable. This really is a fairly tightly focused set of player cards.

**

With a much broader card pool than last time, the quests of the Lost Realm are still difficult, but not kick-in-the-face difficult like, say, Heirs of Númenor. Still, there's a reason why I'm posting about this game so much less nowadays: it's that it's too hard to be fun any more. Each of these quests felt like a chore to play, because we barely felt we had a decent chance at beating them at all. The Dream-chaser cycle aside, where we actually managed to beat most of the quests, this has become the rule rather than the exception.

The fact is, me and my partner barely play any more at all; we only tend to get the cards out if there's a third person interested in playing. The quests are too big, too fiddly and too frustrating; if I'm up for something big and exhausting, I'll rather play a board game like Star Wars: Rebellion or Game of Thrones. I still enjoy the deckbuilding aspect of the Lord of the Rings card game, but it's becoming painfully obvious that it's not really possible to make a take-all-comers deck, and neither of us is at all interested in starting to create bespoke decks for single quests.

Increasingly, what this means in practice is that we'll buy new stuff, sometimes, for the player cards, but mostly we end up playing quests from the first two cycles, and some occasional later favorites. Because those quests were mostly fun. We still haven't even gotten round to starting the Lord of the Rings saga, and I don't even know if we will. I mean, I grew up playing Nethack, I enjoy a challenge; but we've been frustrated by so many quests that we found unreasonably difficult that the game just hasn't been fun any more.

**

We did finally get the last two adventure packs of the Haradrim cycle, and they come with some excellent cards. One I absolutely have to try is Flight to the Sea: it lets you shuffle a copy of the brilliant Wind from the Sea into the encounter deck.

This is the first player encounter card we've seen since Ranger of the North - introduced, appropriately enough, in the Lost Realm. Unlike Ranger of the North, Wind from the Sea has a shadow effect, and it doesn't have surge. In short, I think this is going to be a really, really good card, and I'm very much looking forward to trying it out.

Another thematically irresistible card, especially now that I'm playing the sequel to Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, is Magic Ring.

At a limit of one per deck, I think this is kind of a no-brainer to include, but we'll see. Certainly it's high time we saw some magic items whose use carries risks!

A change I'm considering is swapping Arwen for Lanwyn and Elven-light for ally Arwen. I had some success with Lanwyn in my hobbit support deck, and I might want to take a shot at building a Dale deck when(ever) Wilds of Rhovanion shows up. Her ranged attack and ally Arwen's sentinel-granting ability should make combat a little bit easier, and give us a little boost when facing surge, all at the cost of one willpower and Arwen's discard ability. But we'll leave that to the future, and concentrate on trying the new additions for now.

56 cards; 30 Spirit, 21 Lore, 5 neutral; 24 allies, 12 attachments, 16 events, 2 side quests. Starting threat 28.

Arwen Undómiel (TDR)
Idraen (TTT)
Rossiel (EfMG)

Allies: 24 (17/6/1)
Jubayr (TM)
Northern Tracker x2
Súlien (TCoC)
Elrohir (TMoF)
Lindir (TBoCD)
Rhovanion Outrider (ToTD) x2
Bilbo Baggins (TRD)
Galadriel's Handmaiden (CS) x3
West Road Traveler (RtM) x3
Dúnedain Pathfinder (RAH) x2
Elladan (TMoF)
Gléowine
Mablung (TLoS)
Warden of Healing (TLD) x3
Gandalf (OHaUH)

Attachments: 13 (6/6/1)
Unexpected Courage x2
Ancient Mathom (AJtR) x2
Light of Valinor (FoS) x2
A Burning Brand (CatC) x2
Cloak of Lórien (CS) x2
The Long Defeat (TBoCD) x2
Magic Ring (TCoP)

Events: 17 (6/8/3)
Flight to the Sea (TCoP)
A Test of Will x3
Elven-light (TDR) x2
Leave No Trace (EfMG) x2
None Return (AtE) x3
Daeron's Runes (FoS) x3
Keen as Lances (EfMG) x3

Side quests: 2
Double Back (EfMG)
Scout Ahead (TWoE)

Let's Read Tolkien 48: Helm's Deep

The sun was already westering as they rode from Edoras, and the light of it was in their eyes, turning all the rolling fields of Rohan to a golden haze.

The action opens with our heroes heading west, toward the fords of the Isen. They soon learn that Saruman's army is on the march, and has shattered the forces of Rohan at the fords. Saruman's forces are making for the great fortress of Helm's Deep (the most sensible opening move for Isengard in War of the Ring), so Théoden leads his army there as well, while Gandalf rides off and announces he'll meet them there.

To be specific, Helm's Deep is a narrow mountain valley, blocked by the Númenoran fortress of Hornburg and a wall. The Riders of Rohan deploy on foot to defend it, and soon enough the enemy is there. They fight a bunch: Éomer and Aragorn lead a sortie to stop a battering ram, and Gimli and Legolas have a contest to see who kills the most orcs. Saruman's guys blow up part of the wall with like wizard dynamite or something, there's a bunch more fighting, and eventually Théoden leads his riders out on what they figure will be a last cavalry charge just before dawn. As dawn breaks, Gandalf arrives, leading the Rohirrim who were scattered at the Isen, and also some trees are suddenly there. The enemy is routed.

**

Helm's Deep is the first major battle scene in the Lord of the Rings, and probably where Tolkien comes closest to glorifying, even carnevalizing war with Gimli and Legolas and their orc-killing contest.

It feels necessary to point out that neither Gimli nor Legolas are supposed to be moral exemplars. Would you trust either of then with the Ring? If you answered yes, you really haven't been paying attention. As fallen creatures, they can take pleasure in killing, even if it's wrong. I mean, you may remember that one time when Gimli's dad and his pals nearly started a war with the Woodland Realm over a gemstone.

But in the end, Tolkien doesn't portray killing as wrong. To me, this is another case of the Nordic saga traditions winning over Christianity. Incidentally, if you haven't experienced the Geoffrey Chaucer version of Snakes on a Plane, do. There's a Christian action story! The battle of Helm's Deep isn't.

There's also a strong real-life parallel to Legolas and Gimli's killing competition in modern snipers. There are rankings online and in literature that list military snipers by their "confirmed kills", as if it was a sports statistic or an arcade game high score. Some of them, like Simo Häyhä, shunned publicity; figures like Chris Kyle reveled in it. Some people have always experienced war as fun. Given the nature of Tolkien's military service, I highly doubt he was one of them; but in judging his depictions of war, it really is worth remembering that he was a veteran of one of the most bloody and senseless wars in human history. And once again, if you ever come across texts that really do glorify war, you'll find Tolkien does no such thing.

Having said that, the orcs and "wild men" are fairly dehumanized enemies here, so it's hardly likely to occur to most readers to question killing them. Here, also, the sagas win out over the gospels.

I find Théoden's variable moods quite convincing: while Gandalf is still around, he's upbeat, but then basically resolves to commit suicide by cavalry charge after stewing in the Hornburg.

Finally, the end of the chapter has Tolkien's revenge on Shakespeare, so to speak: Great Birnam wood did march to war.

**

Next time: road trip.