This is my 300th review, and I thought that I would review a board game designed and produced in Korea, my country of residence. Korea has a rather active board gaming scene, yet very few board games are produced here, and even fewer actually designed here. When I first opened Lineage II: the Board Game (Dagoy, 2005 - Thomas H. Jung, and Sunyoung and Sanghoon Lim), I was very impressed to see the quality of the components and the originality of the game. Lineage II, the multiplayer online game, is extremely popular here in Korea, and this game attempts to capitalize on that success. I never played the computer game, but the component quality itself made me have high hopes for the game.
Lineage is, simply put, a blast to play. I've played it with RPG fanatics, I've played it with computer game Lineage fans, and I've played it with gamers, and they’ve all enjoyed it. Yes, there is a lot of luck involved in the game, and I understand that piles of variants already exist all over the Korean message boards and gaming sites; but it’s fun nevertheless. The game is at its best with five, but works fairly well with four, and is an interesting mix of RPG and (very) light war game. It’s an excellent starting game for the company, and I hope that we see many more in the future!
A board representing some fantasy kingdom is placed on the table with a circular track of hexes in the middle of it. There are four points on the circular track where paths cross through, connecting to the other side. Each player chooses a race card (all the same - only different artwork), and the matching colored pawn - which they place on the Start space - the Town of Giran. Three wooden castle pieces are placed on three castles located on the crisscrossing paths. Three piles of enemy cards are shuffled and placed face down on the side of the board, as well as a pile of event cards. Each player receives ten adena (money), which they place on their player board, with the remainder going to the bank. Players also receive three victory point chips and five soldier tokens - all placed in the appropriate place on the playing board. A pile of soldiers, blue victory point chips, and red chips are placed in the bank. Three event cards are dealt to each player, as well as an “offense” and a “defense” card. One player is chosen to go first, and then play proceeds clockwise around the table.
On a turn, a player rolls the die and moves their pawn the amount of spaces indicated. Because of the crisscrossing paths, players often have a couple or more choices as to where their pawn lands. A player must move clockwise around the outer path, but on the inner ones they may move in any direction, providing they do not go through the same square twice. Depending on what space a player lands in determines their actions for that turn.
- Town: A player takes one event card from the deck (there is a five card hand limit), and may sell equipment (for its listed value) to the bank, and/or buy soldiers (3 adena each).
- Monster Racing: On the monster race space, a player rolls an eight-sided die and either gains or loses money, according to a chart.
- Temple: The player takes 10 adena from the bank.
- Hunting Grounds: On these spaces, the most plentiful, the player decides whether they will hunt an “A”, “B”, or “C” monster, with the “A” monsters being the hardest. The player rolls five special eight-sided dice (three sides green, two sides yellow, one side red, one side starred, and one side having an “X”.) If the player rolls the colors shown on the top monster card of that type (stars are wilds, “X”’s are misses), then they defeat the monster. Otherwise, the player is defeated by the monster. When the player wins, they flip the monster over to see what their award is, and then their turn ends. If defeated, the player must place the monster in the space they were in, drop money shown on the monster card (1,5, or 10), and move to the nearest town.
- Castle: If no one else owns the castle, then the player takes a free soldier from the bank of their color and places it into the castle. If someone else owns the castle, a castle siege occurs.
The different awards on the back of the monsters are placed on a player’s card. These include:
- Money awards: The player takes the amount shown on the tile, and places the monster tile in their “bag” section on the player card.
- Potions: These potions, if used, allow a one time use - such as modifying a roll or an attack.
- Weapons: A player can either have two one handed weapons equipped on their hero, or one two-handed weapon. Weapons show a number of colors on them that are added to a player’s attack. For example, if I wield the Spirits Sword (with two green shown on it) and am attacking a Yellow Hornet (which requires three greens and one yellow), I need only roll one green and one yellow to kill it.
- Armor - Each hero can wear a helm, armor, and boots. Each piece of armor allows a player to reroll a certain amount of dice when attacking.
Armor, potions, and weapons may be sold to the bank for the value on them or sold to other players for whatever amount they choose.
When a player moves into another player’s castle, a castle siege begins. All players are automatically involved. Each player must secretly pick either their offense or defense card (attacker and defender have no choice) and an amount of armies. All players simultaneously reveal their cards and place their armies on the sides of a battle board printed on the board. Each player must “ante up” one of their victory point chips, and the battle begins. The attacker and defender both roll an eight-sided die. The player who rolls higher removes the difference of armies from the other players’ forces. The battle then continues until one side loses all their armies in battle. The winners take back their victory point chip, along with an extra one from the bank as spoils of war. They also take the victory point chips of the loser, starting with the player who sent the most armies, etc. ALL armies sent are then discarded (the troops are tired or something), and either the castle switches hands or stays the same, depending on the outcome of the battle.
Action cards can be played whenever the card indicates - some of them during castle sieges, some on a player’s turn, etc. Some cards are “quest” cards and reward a victory point to the player if they kill a certain amount of monsters, etc. Also, if a player owns a castle, at the beginning of their turn, a red chip is added to the castle. The player then gains one adena for each red chip outside the castle. If the number of red chips equals seven, then all of them are removed, and the player controlling the castle gets one victory point. Eventually the game ends, either when one player gets ten victory points, or one player loses all their victory points. At that time, the player with the most victory points is the winner!
Some comments on the game...
1.) Components: I was very pleased with the game components; they are on par with most German games produced today. The wooden castle components are the nicest parts of the game; they’re entirely unnecessary, but add a three-dimensional aspect to the game and a nice visual effect. The soldiers come in three sizes: for single soldiers, groups of five, and groups of ten. Each is an octagonal prism - similar to the trash pieces in Power Grid. They’re easy to handle, work well, although we found ourselves making change with them a lot. The pawns are also made of wood, and everything fits well into a custom-made plastic insert. The victory point chips are clear blue and red plastic chips and slide easily around the board. The movement eight-sided dice are normal, but the special dice are wooden one with painted circles, stars, and “X”s on them. They work well and look good visually, but I found them to be rather pointed. The monster cards and event cards are lower quality then the rest of the game but are still functional and use actual artwork form the game, which looks rather pixilated. On the other hand, the board and character cards are superb quality and have absolutely tremendous artwork - artwork, which carries over to the box. Great, great components - a good start for a company.
2.) Rules: The rules are in Korean, but a translation was made available to me and will soon be on the web, by my good friend Shin Yoo. (Also, I talked to the game designer, who clarified some points for me.) All cards and the board are printed in English, though; so a copy of the rules is all a player needs. The game is rather simple to learn, and I've taught it to many teenagers - they learned it quickly.
3.) Luck: This is technically a roll-and-move game, I guess; but because of the varied options, it barely feels like it. Yes, sometimes it’s critical to land on another player’s castle, but potions and event cards can be saved for this purpose, and with so many options when moving, it can and most likely will happen. Fighting the monsters at first is mostly luck, so a player should usually try to kill weaker monsters to gain weapons to fight the larger ones. There’s a decent amount of luck in the game, but it’s mitigated by smart playing.
4.) Monsters: Hunting monsters is a very fun part of the game. It’s neat to have three choices of what monster you can try to kill, and the fact that you get stuff from every monster is a lot of fun, especially to people who enjoy RPGs. Killing monsters doesn’t garner a lot of victory points, if any; but it is a major source of income, and players need income so that they can raise a lot of money to buy armies. I did notice that in some games, a few players became obsessed with maxing out the weapons on their hero, rather than winning the game; but if they had fun doing that, who am I to argue? It does give you a good feeling to be holding a DarkElven dagger in one hand, a Damascus Sword in the other, and a full suit of Blue Wolves Armour.
5.) Sieges: If you like simultaneous actions, you’ll enjoy this part of the game; as it’s critical to send just the right amount of troops. Send too few, and there’s a good chance you’ll lose the conflict. Send too many, and you won’t have as many for future conflicts. And which side will you join? It almost had a flair of Cosmic Encounter in the siege mechanic of the game with players jockeying to get the others to join them. Winners of the game MUST be part of successful sieges, so they are a critical aspect of the game. The entire game, hunting the monsters, gaining money, etc., all builds to the siege battles. Sometimes there are only a few siege battles in a game, which makes them all the more critical. The combat system in them is simplistic and can cause a lopsided victory; but the luck does even out, and players can quickly mount a counterattack.
6.) Theme and Fun Factor: As I said, I don’t know much about the MMORG Lineage II, other than that it’s wildly popular in Korea. But the people who have played the game said that the board game has a decent reputation - and everyone who played the game had fun, regardless of their knowledge of the computer version. At least three people I gamed with made plans to buy the game, and that is a good sign, to me.
7.) Availability: Currently, as far as I can tell, Lineage II is only available in Korea for a reasonable price. Hopefully distributors in other countries will pick it up soon. If you’re interested, I highly recommend that you find a contact in Korea to get you a copy; it’s worth importing.
I don’t think the game is for everyone; people who are seeking pure strategy or elegant mechanics should probably go elsewhere. But if you’re looking for a game that has a dash of RPGs in it and other fun mechanics, such as simultaneous selction and forming alliances with other players, then this is a great version. With high quality bits, and easy to understand rules, this game is one that may draw some computer gamers into the board gaming hobby. And even if you hate online games but still like a fun fantasy type game, then this is still a good choice. Either way, it’s my current hottest game in the game club, with teenagers queuing to play it each week. For me, that makes a game worth owning.
Tom Vasel
“Real men play board games.”
