Clash of the Titans: GW vs FFG

Last column I had Mad Dog step up to the plate and complain that no-one ever posts about Ameritrash games here anymore, so I determined to do a mega-dose of trash for my next pieces. I wanted to stuff you all with trash until the taste of it is making you sick in the back of your throat, until it was oozing out of every single bodily orifice, until you were pleading for mercy under the sheer, suffocating weight of all that trashy goodness. But how to do it? Steve Weeks unwittingly provided me with the answer by asking my opinions on GW and FFG. That was it - the two magnificent, undisputed behemoths of the history and present of the Ameritrash scene put side by side, that was a recipie right there for all the trash you could stomach. But to tip it over the edge we'll not just put them side by side, we'll make this into a fight. A full on, fifteen round, no holds-barred bare-knucke boxing match of old against new to determine once and for all the king of trash.

This is, in effect, going to be my own personal Trashdome. Which I find pleasingly ironic since I'm stealing Mad Dog's own format to force-feed him what he claims to desire. Both companies have released rather more than fifteen games so I've tried to pick the best known and best loved from each and match like against like in this head-to-head contest. There's been a couple of high-profile casualties in the process, most notably the FFG Warcraft line, but those don't seem to have hit the collective geek consciousness like some of the other titles I've picked. Also I've deliberately avoided the GW miniatures games which can't be a direct comparison (as some of them are very good) because they're not board games. Not all the matchups make that much sense, but that's unavoidable - the gaming scene now and then are very different, and the range of titles from each company reflects this - but I've tried to find a bit of common ground in each case.

So, who are you rooting for? Who do you think will take the crown? Would you put money on it? Will it go the distance? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'll keep you in suspense no longer. Here come the first contenders into the ring for round one, and they are ...

Fury of Dracula vs Fury of Dracula
Well, it made sense to start off by making a direct comparison of the editions of games published by both companies first of all, right? And this is the one to start with from those four pairs, because its the one that sparked off the whole discussion. Well, I'll re-iterate what I said in the original trashdome thread - both are good (there are very few bad games in the matches coming up), but the original GW edition has got to be the winner here. Whoever it was at FFG who thought it was a good idea to make the Dracula player remember about half the deck in the form of locations he's previously visited must've been on something. Or perhaps they just hate vampires - why else emasculate Dracula so that an asthmatic ant could push him over with a cotton bud? So the original is more random and longer (although, paradoxically, simpler to learn) than the reprint? The old Dracula lords it over the board like the majestic terror he should be, and that imbalance is at the heart of everything that's good about this game - in particular its what makes it the closest thing yet made to a true "horror" board game and contributes to its deserved label as one of the most atmospheric designs ever made. Take that away, and you're left with a lesser game, no matter what other elements you might improve.
Round 1 goes to GW

Talisman vs Talisman
A tricky match up for me, this, since I've made no great secret of the fact I don't much care for Talisman in any shape or form. Watching this round is going to be a bit like watching a couple of bespectacled nerds having a verbal slanging match over which is the best AD&D monster ever. But they've both printed the game so we'll have to endure it. And it's actually a tricky comparison because FFG didn't change a whole lot when they reprinted it, apart from the physical components. But you know what? I actually prefer the artwork in the original edition. Who cares about some shiny plastic when you get to glory in some classic Gary Chalk art instead? But the clincher in the end has to be the expansions. One for the FFG edition, about fifteen billion (once you count fan additions) for the original. With all those extra rules and parts there's got to be a game to satisfy just about anyone in there somewhere.
Round 2 goes to GW

Cosmic Encounter vs Cosmic Encounter
In spite of the fact that I owned a GW copy of this game for nigh-on fifteen years I forgot when I first put this list together that it was a title they'd published. That should give you some idea of the direction this round is going to go in. I owned the GW edition for fifteen years and played it once. I owned the FFG edition for less than fifteen days before it had its first play. It's basically better in every respect - more aliens, a better conflict deck, better art, better components, clearer rules, more options. It's no wonder even decade-long fans of Cosmic Encounter tend to overlook the GW printing when they reminisce about old editions. Had GW never acquired the licence for this, they might have come off better from the FFG edition being matched against a different game from their stable, and won this round to make it three out of three. As it is, I bet whichever GW executive was responsible is kicking himself even as he reads this.
Round 3 goes to FFG

Warrior Knights vs Warrior Knights
Another tough one. And this should be a good fight to watch too, as two fully armoured medieval knights stride into the ring and have at each other with broadswords and poleaxes and bohemian ear-spoons and all manner of other frightful and strangely titled weaponry from the middle-ages. The FFG knight is the better looking one, no doubt, with his inlaid gold filigree on his plastic plate mail, compared with the cardboard armour of his foe. But the GW knight is a veteran of many long years and has the straightforward, ruthless, fighting nature of the barbarian - with him what you see is what you get: brutal violence and backstabbing politics with no poncy and effeminate mincing around with "modern" ideas. The crowd gasps and applauds in appreciation as these two uncompromising gladiators trade blows again and again, both taking inhuman punishment and yet not flinching under the onslaught. But just as everyone is marvelling at the astonishing endurance on display, the GW knight begins to slow, his exhausted limbs betraying him finally into the hands of his enemy, and with a final bash on the helm, he hits the canvas. The flexibility of the FFG warrior told in the end - he can be a quick fight if you want him to be, or a long fight if you prefer that, and he has optional rules and expansions if you want them.
Round 4 goes to FFG

Dungeonquest vs Runebound
So now we're on to the asymmetric matchups. This seemed like a fair pairing - both are low interaction adventure games which don't attach mutch importance to a longer campaign style element. But when you watch them both come into the arena swinging, and then watch the leaner, meaner, better looking and more entertaining DQ floor Runebound with one punch it doesn't seem like quite such a fair matchup after all.
Round 5 goes to GW

Warhammer Quest vs Descent
After that brief clash of the adventure games, we've bought in a similar pairing of fantasy heavyweights to tickle your fancy but this time we're comparing titles which have more in common with the RPG scene. This is a more difficult bout to predict but when it comes to the crunch only one of these games actually has any competitive killer instinct at all. This is trashdome, and the namby-pamby 100% co-op nature of Warhammer quest can't survive in such a brutal environment. It's all the referee can do to stop Descent tearing up the unconscious WQ with its teeth.
Round 6 goes to FFG

Space Hulk vs Doom
I'm beginning to think that I maybe made a mistake in doing all the re-release titles first because they were at least close contests. The ones we've had since then have all been horribly one-sided, and this is no exception. Two games about heavily-armed marines blowing up nasty, chitinous things with lots of teeth and claws and too many arms. One of them is a near-perfect re-creation of all the times this has happened in films and video games: tense, stressful and exhilarating and yet rules-light, fast and streamlined. The other is slow and turgid and whilst tactically engaging completely fails to capture the spirit of it's theme at all. I'll leave you to guess which is which. In case you can't here's another clue: the looser does have the advantages of being multi-player and in print, but even that isn't enough to save it.
Round 7 goes to GW

Blood Bowl vs War of the Ring
A couple of fairly meaty two-player games going head-to-head here. Although I like Blood Bowl, and the campaign rules are great, this isn't much of an even match-up. After all, how can I give this title to a game where the best part of the rules - the league - hardly ever get used because no-one has the time to run the number of games required?
Round 8 goes to FFG

Block Mania vs StarCraft
This is another unfortunately one-sided contest. I've never actually played Starcraft, but I've played Block Mania, the only redeeming feature of which is the absurd amount of carnage it contains, up to and including city block collapse. That's a pretty good redeeming feature mind, but it's not enough to stand up to one of the more popular tactical combat titles of recent years.
Round 9 goes to FFG

Batte for Armageddon vs Tide of Iron
This isn't quite as odd a head-to-head as it might look. Both are 2-player wargames with tons of miniatures and BoA, in spite of the sci-fi theme, is actually loosely based on Operation Barbarossa. I've not played either, so I asked my friend Sam Marsh, who has played both, to call this one. He went for BoA, simply because it's an involving and thematic game which delivers more on the gameplay.
Round 10 goes to GW

Judge Dredd vs Battlestar Galactica
I had to put BSG up against something, and there's nothing in the GW canon it resembles remotely so I did the next best thing I could and picked a game which featured some level of deductive analysis. But when the only entertaining thing in that game is getting to arrest Judge Death for Littering, it's a pretty poor match up.
Round 11 goes to FFG

Chainsaw Warrior vs Arkham Horror
Please. Do I even need to explain this one? Allright then - both horror games with solo play options so seemed the correct pairing. One is possibly the most widely and enduringly popular Ameritrash game of the last decade. The other is utterly reviled and possibly one of the worst solo games ever conceived.
Round 12 goes to FFG

Blood Royale vs Android
I put these together because they were both very creative games with heavy role-playing elements. And you know what, for all the lessons of modern design that went into Android, I think the older game is going to come out on top this time. People have done down Android for being clumsy, overly-complex and insufficiently thematic, accusations that you could never level at Blood Royale, no matter what its faults. Besides which Blood Royale is, in addition to being a role-playing game, a civ-style multiplayer conquest game. And when I'm making the rules, there's no way any kind of namby-pamby, near-future, detective-story, blade-runner-ripoff is going to loose to a red-blooded conquest game.
Round 13 goes to GW

Kings & Things vs A Game of Thrones
This is a tough one. Kings & Things is an old-time favourite of mine, and I have an immense soft spot for Tom Wham artwork which may make me rate this higher than it deserves. Game of Thrones on the other hand was a very popular game which now, with the sheen of a few years' age, doesn't seem to excite the same levels of adulation as it used to. Both are conquest games of a sort but AGoT does the whole "diplomacy" thing rather better. You know what, I hated the books, so I think on balance I'm going to give this to Tom Wham, biased or otherwise. Besides which, on reflection, unashamededly silly, cartoonish fantasy artwork and similarly daft and just plain fun gameplay is going to beat a game which seems to frequently attract the adjective "static" any day.
Round 14 goes to GW

Mighty Empires vs Twilight Imperium 3
So, with a score of eight each way, we come to the decider. This might seem like an odd match-up at first but Might Empires is about the only civilisation-style game GW ever produced. FFG have made several, so it only seemed right that I pick the most perennially popular to go toe-to-toe with ME. And there's actually quite a lot of commonality between the two: modular boards, mammoth play times and a strategy that revolves around pushing units from your base up to your front line before someone else gets there and tears your settlements to bits. I have a lot of fond memories of playing ME, indeed for one summer in my life I spent virtually every weekend doing nothing else other than playing it, while outside the sun shone and normal, non-geeky people bought ice creams, lazed on the beach and generally made the most of the paltry slices of fine weather that this miserable island nation sees fit to serve up from time to time. No game that obsessed me that much can be that bad, and I must say I'm vaguely interested in checking out the recent re-release. But TI3 benefits hugely from the lessons of modern design: whilst it might be no faster and no more thematic it is, tactically, strategically and diplomatically, a hell of a lot deeper. And if you're going to compare two games which play in the four hour plus bracket, added depth is a complete, undisputable knockout blow - and with it, the match!
Round 15 goes to FFG