War of the Roses - Can you judge a game by the components?

War of the Roses arrived today and i have just had the best 'punching out the bits' experience i can remember. The box weighs about 4 Kilos and is just a litlle bigger than a standard bookshelf size game. So what's in there? Lead or gold? Gold! It might be only February but i think i can safely predict that this will win any award going for the best produced game of 2010. The quality of the components are staggering. The board is six folded, very thick and with superb clear artwork. Turn it over and it has a map of the historic battles of the subject matter. Each player has a screen and an order planning board - both are made from the thickest card, the player screens are huge with summaries of important rules and a history of the Wars. The chits and tokens are up to the same standard. The only niggle is that the picture of the Captain of Calais token is a scanned picture of some modern day bloke (Peter Hawes?). I'd hope that nonensense was not going to be repeated after the design mess of 'Heads of State'. I pray that the game play is as good as the bits!

War of the Roses - can you judge a game by the rules?

The last time i read a set of rules for a ZMan published game deisgned by an Antipodean i dismissed the game as derivative, simplistic and poorly themed. The game was 'Endeavor' and how wrong could i have been - it's one of my top 5 from 2009 and i think it is a masterpiece of clear and simple board game design.

Now i have read the rules to 'Wars of the Roses twice' and and i am attracted and put off in equal measure. On the plus side it's about a period of history i find interesting (three years of studying the period did not put me off). It looks greeat. It has some intersting mechancis, especially the simulataneous move programming.

However, it's a Euro game (area majotity) with a bit of conflict thrown in and i'm worried that Euro mechanics and The War of the Roses are not amarriage made in heaven.

Secondly there are some historical inaccuracies that i find annoying. If you play with four then two players are Lancastrian and two Yorkist. It only matters for an area majoirty calculation and you can't confer with your 'partner' about tactics. Secondly for Area Majority calculation players get votes in Parliament - not in synch with political dymanics of the 15th century at all.

The other thing that worries me is that with the hidden planning but sequential actions that game play might be a bit too chaotic.

Despite my reservations i am still looking for a scuccessor to 'Kingmaker' and however remote the possiblity this is it i'll give it a go.

Zman and the UK distributor seem to have learnt form the pricing mistake of Peter Hawe's previous game, 'Heads of State', and have set a RRP of £49.99 for 'Wars of the Roses'. It's still on the pricy side but i hope it won't end up in the bargain bin with 'Heads of State' which was priced at a truly absurd £59.99. 'Heads of State' is an ok game, ironically well worth the £14.99 i sell it for, but a complete waste of money at full RRP.