A Gest of Robin Hood Review: Surely, You Gest

[@HomoLudens1871]

Well, that was my favorite review so far, thanks! I totally agree that if I had been a better designer the game could have been more streamlined, thank god my developer is good, it could have been way worse... Still glad that you enjoyed it, sorry about the lengthy historical notes, and I hope you'll enjoy the next one a bit more. Anyway, now that I have a Tom Vasel review, I am officially a designer.

[@wmarclocher]

You're an awesome game designer Fred, I love Gest of RH. Keep up the great work.

[@johnf285]

One of the things I LOVE about GMT games is the historical notes.

[@Haytidaho]

Congrats Fred! I love your game :)

[@CptRoboto]

Be honest with us Fred, how nervous were you when you first clicked play on this video? A least you knew better than to include paper money 😂. Great game!

[@HomoLudens1871]

Well I didn't expect a review from the Dice Tower, so I was very nervous. But in the end I am very happy and I totally get where the criticism comes from.

[@wmarclocher]

I wish every game had a rulebook, an example of play book and a history book like this one does. Love this game.

[@w92viking64]

GMT are excellent when it comes to this

[@KabukiKid]

Yeah, this line of games from GMT is supposed to sort of be like an introduction to COIN games. It isn't exactly COIN, so they call it the Irregular Conflicts Series. Personally, I'm happy for Fred who designed this game. He's a good guy.

[@ThymeKeeper]

He absolutely is. And brilliant, damn him :).

[@kruzhalovv]

The whole BGG: complaing about how hard it is to win as Robin Tom: Robin has the advantage

[@HomoLudens1871]

That was my favorite part of the review. And for the record, Tom is right (as usual).

[@kruzhalovv]

@@HomoLudens1871 I'm not in either of the camps, maybe it appears to players as such, since it could be difficult to catch up after several bad decisions (at least seems like it after a couple of plays). Anyway, tight balance is overrated; there's nothing more boring, than an overbalanced euro. It should be about several viable ways for victory, tension and feeling that you have a chance most of the time; not the general win-lose statistics. Your game is fun, thematic, and pretty elegant for a historical simulation genre. That's an achievement. I love your approach to historical (war)games, looking forward to more upcoming titles.

[@CresentSoul]

Well Tom did qualify ‘I’m probably wrong’. Anyway, perfect balance isn’t necessarily the important thing or essential - the game can still be fun

[@kevinb9675]

How can Tom say there's not much theme? Struggling to see how it could be any more thematic - Joey gets it!

[@w92viking64]

Tom has no clue when it comes to GMT

[@kevinb9675]

Sure, conceptually (and I do appreciate Tom for giving exposure to games outside his wheelhouse) but theme is transcendent of structure and if this game is nothing else its thematic.

[@mattkruse1364]

I agree this game oozes theme to me. It is baked directly into the mechanics. That’s the reason for a lot of some of the little nuance tricky rules in cases. I think what Tom may be feeling is that the game is also very crunchy in terms of decisions being made, it takes a lot of mental resources when playing that you might not have time/capacity to fully appreciate and bathe in theme as you are playing it. I can understand that.

[@lastburning]

The core mechanic in COIN games has nothing to do with counterinsurgency. That's why you can have games like Pendragon.

[@kevinmichaelis6625]

The first few times I played the Sheriff always won. The more you play the more you see how balanced the game is. I think the game is very thematic. This is one of my favorite games of the year.

[@Ras137]

I'm disappointed by the lack of Disney's Robin Hood references. "Oo-de-lally oo-de-lally golly what a day"

[@thedicetower]

I told Joey when we stopped recording that we missed doing this!

[@ThymeKeeper]

COIN games don't necessarily take six hours. They CAN (and the different games are very different), but they can also be 2-3 hours. That's the thing. You don't know. Start with Cuba Libre or People Power or The British way. General advice is to pick the COIN game where the theme matches your interests. Unless you like King Arthur. Do NOT start with Pendragon :). Cuba Libre in particular should be reasonably friendly to Euro players. My favorite is Gandhi, but that's out of print right now.

[@mattkruse1364]

Coin games I’ve played always take a long time, even this one, mainly due to the decision space being so large and such tricky/difficult decisions leads to a lot of analysis paralysis. I think I might play it with a chess clock or something to keep it going. Personally, I love this game. Mainly because of the crazy fun decisions. I can’t really comment on the rule book as my entry into this was from Rodney’s video and that’s all I needed.

[@YegRon]

My son and I jumped right into Fire in the Lake and we loved it. Played it a few times now. We just learnt A Gest of Robin Hood and so far it seems fun. Looking forward to getting other COIN games as well.

[@lastburning]

Apart from extreme outliers, COIN games do take 6 hours.

[@ThymeKeeper]

"Jest" is correct.

[@mieiri11]

You are right, I jess.

[@ormhaxan]

'Tis but a pun.

[@theearlyresetband]

This was a 9 for me- really love it! Took me a while to learn it too 😅

[@violentfrog_]

Want to try this. Always wanted to try Cuba Libre but never wanted to teach it. 2 player is more manageable.

[@w92viking64]

You should try CL it’s not really any more complex in terms of rules

[@klabjcobevj72nso0fj4]

CL is maybe 20% more complicated. I've taught it to newbies, and we can still get through it in 3h pretty easily.

[@joelredekop4555]

I got killed as Robin Hood my first time lol

[@gregbroxterman]

Love this one, maybe even more than Fred's other [great!] game, Red Flag Over Paris.. that one plays even faster (closer to 30min!), has a cool board that's half geographic map, half political landscape.. I love weighing if capturing a fort or the Church will help my cause more lol. If you want a shorter 'realer' COIN, The British Way is much much shorter than the others, and has all the coin goodness. I've been playing GMT's Twilight Struggle Red Sea game.. where they take all of TS and turn it into a game for their 'lunch time' series. the rules time to game time ratio is far far worse in this one, lol.. because it keeps most of TS's mechanisms, but trims them down to a card, or a 3 spot track, etc. Great fun once you know it, but that first play is a bear. Maybe Fred can get a Tom interview for his channel now.. I'd pay to watch that!

[@klabjcobevj72nso0fj4]

"this game's documentation is too thorough" 🙄

[@thecrossedtheroadfund4289]

House rulz, bruh.... House rulz 😎

[@X4-Commander]

You are the best!

[@EfrainRiveraJunior]

This looks like El Grande's board.

[@swkidtk421]

Title of the video should be “dead dove do not eat”

[@dddmmm21]

I am quite frustrated... I bought this as a medium light game, it is "only" 2.9 heavy on BGG (Rococo is 3.1), it has great reviews... But then I saw Rodney's teach is almost 1 hour long!!! Something does not compute.

[@thedicetower]

Rodney's teach is long, but it's also quite thorough. It's not overly complicated.

[@dddmmm21]

@@thedicetower I didnt mean to say Rodney's video is bad, but I just dont see how a game that requires 1hr explanation could be a weight 3. Something is off.

[@Hieronymus-Pseudonymous]

The issue here might partially be that when it comes to historical wargames from GMT, the people voting on the weight (and everything else) tend to be wargamers. As far as wargamers are concerned, it's not so complicated. Also, Rodney's not always the quickest teacher - would it take you 23 minutes to teach Catan? (It's possible some of that video isn't spent on the teach.)

[@YegRon]

@@dddmmm21meh. I found Rodney’s video helpful and in line with most of his others. Maybe a bit more thorough, but I appreciated that. It had my son and I playing the game as soon as we were finished with only a few rule checks.

[@40rods]

Play it on board game arena. It just hit beta recently and is a very easy way to learn how to play the game.

[@justinwh]

GMT seems to struggle with most of their rulebooks. Love the games once you learn them but there have been some that I move on from because of the rulebook.

[@w92viking64]

Couldn’t disagree more GMT have excellent rule books

[@justinwh]

@w92viking64 I'm not saying that they miss rules or make it so the game is unplayable, but I'm just not into reading an encyclopedia to play a game that was over explained

[@cardboardconflicts]

“Oh my god I need to read something?!?!? I want it spoon fed!” BGG posts Robin says is underpowered so…🤷🏻‍♂️

[@heavy_dice]

You guys should get Rodney Smith to teach you a COIN game, he loves them and who is better at teaching games? @watchitplayed

[@YegRon]

I’d tune into a live stream of the DT crew playing Fire in the Lake!! 😂😂

[@TabletopExpress]

It's an experience having him teach you a game. He taught us Cuba Libre.