Lords of Vegas is a game I enjoyed the first few times I played it. And then it started to be less enjoyable. This isn't to say it is a bad game, but there are games out there which I prefer for a board-gaming experience.
In Lords of Vegas, you are trying to build up your Casino's along the glittering strips of Las Vegas. To do this, you draw a random tile, then can decide to construct at this location, sprawl to another location, and gamble to try to get more money (or takeover a casino). If you draw a certain type (colour) of casino, players who have developed that type of casino get points.
The game looks great for what it is, and I think that may be what attracted me to it originally. The random drawing kept the game tense the first few times I played it, especially the choice to do an expensive sprawl just to be taken over by an opponent. Of course, my brain then decided it to compare to Settlers of Catan.
To me, if you took Settlers of Catan and compared it to Lords of Vegas, Lords of Vegas does not stand up well. Instead of trading, you now gamble (roll a dice and see if you or your opponent gets more money). Instead of choosing how to expand, you randomly get told where you can expand. To sprawl, you pay allot and another player can randomly take it without earning it at all. This wouldn't be a problem if sprawling wasn't so expensive to be randomly taken away from you (costs twice as much).
The whole game seems to have party-game type mechanics but, unfortunately, it seems to be far too long to be a party game. There is also an artificial score limiter that seems designed to help the party flavour and to address balance issues (this being that there is limited point to building more than single-tile casinos if they, once again, don't randomly fall on your lap). This keeps scores artificially closer, but once again seems to Band-Aid the game balance rather than truly addressing the issue.
Some people can argue that Lords of Vegas is meant to be this sort of game, but I don't play board games for this much randomness. This may simulate the gambling aspect of Las Vegas, but at the expense of player skill. There is some timing and player luck mitigation, but with so many more games out there that have done this thing better in the past (right back to Settlers of Catan), I will be trying to avoid this where possible.
1 out of 5 glitter-strip waffles.
