Darwin’s Journey

“My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.”

— Stephen Wright

There’s a clever idea here — some workers are better at certain tasks (and lesser trained workers cannot do some tasks). But that is completely overwhelmed by the other dozen mediocre ideas thrown into this box. And at 2.5 hours (with teach) this way overstayed its welcome.

Worker placement in theory but drowning in point-salad-dressing.

Rating — Indifferent, bordering on avoid.

Horseless Carriage, Redux

I’ve now played four games of (Hush hush, keep it down now), Horseless Carriage, and I am reminded a hiring decision. We’d gotten a new contractor (temp-to-hire). After a few weeks, We had a meeting (without him) and discussed the decision.

“Well, he’s a bit prickly, but he seems to know his stuff.”

“If you stay on top of him, he gets his work done.”

Etc etc.

And at my turn, I said, “Well, I was going to give a criticism, but everyone seems to be saying ‘He’s bad, but he’s not that bad.’ Am I reading that right?”

And we let him go.

And after all of my games of Horseless Carriage, I said (and heard) statements like that meeting.

“I think it’s too spatial, but that’s probably just the first few games.”

“The sales phase is too fiddly for what it does, but its not the soul of the game.”

“Once you get past the confusion it gets better.”

Etc etc.

One player in last night’s game said “If the game ended on the turn it did or the next one, it would have ended the same way.” Impressive, given the Splotter “If you can’t win on the first turn, why have it?” jibe. One player had messed up their research and suddenly found themselves unable to build a minimum technology that turn (they had the tech, but no space for it in their layout), so that player is last.

So, time to admit that I want to like Horseless Carriage more than I actually like it. I’ve spent $30 on organizers trying (successfully) to trim the setup/teardown costs of the game.

I suspect that one of the real problems is that when you lose Horseless Carriage it feels like a personal failure. “Oh, I blocked myself off from this tech,” “I didn’t see that coming,” “I didn’t suspect that part would run out.” “I would have been fine if I’d been 2nd in turn order instead of 3rd.” Horseless Carriage’s systems are entangled so that you can predict it.

You can see Design is going to come in next turn, and you’ll need more Design, but how hard will others fight for it, or will they be content with having an OK design and setting up the fight for turn N+1? Because that’s hard to gage. The game rules are already a bit rough (until you know them) but the game state seems illegible, not offering any guideposts as to what to do and players wind up foundering and crashing. So the winner is the one who simply founders the least.

“Perhaps when we are better then that will not be the case,” I say to myself.

“See opening anecdote,” I answer myself.

I am not yet at the point of letting my copy go; there are definitely people who want to play again and I am one of them. But I am not nearly as hopeful as I was a month ago.

Happy City

Got this game as a convention gift and its …. not bad. It’s a minimalist tableau builder. You start with a Happy Market, which earns $1 a round, and can get buy more buildings. Buildings can get you income, people, or happiness (and some times have a color). Once per game, you can claim a bonus building if you meet the pre-requisites (colors). Decks are sorted by cost (1-3, 4-5, 6-8) and at the start of your turn you can discard one building and then replenish from any deck.

At ten buildings, your score is People times Happiness.

Happy City falls squarely into the “cozy game” category. Barely there, but not bad. It speaks well of the game that skipping a turn to purchase may be a good idea (at least, I won doing it, whereas all the other players bought every turn).

Never would have bought it, so a fine gift.

Would probably make an excellent kids game, or a gentle introduction to gaming. (For young children they suggest adding people + happiness, instead of multiplying). More complex bonus cards (the “expert” cards), and I’ll probably try them. Obviously this game is competing with things like Jump Drive in the tableau building genre, so its not going see much play in Casa de Tao, but its not bad.

Rating — Indifferent

Hush Hush, Keep it Down, Now — Horseless Carriage

I don’t know why that thought popped into my head a few weeks ago, but it did. You are welcome. (If you are too young to get the reference, here you go).

Ahem.

A thought that I’ve had for a while now is that “Terraforming Mars and Wingspan have destroyed gaming.” OK, that’s an exaggeration, but these sort of … “engine building point salad” seem to be the rage. Martin Fowler expressed it well in the Heavy Cardboard Horseless Carriage Playthrough video (towards the end), when described many recent games as (paraphrased) “Do this, get a point, do that, get a point, stick out your left foot, get a point.”

Which isn’t to say Terraforming Mars / Wingspan are bad games (although I dislike both), but they lack focus. In Mars you have six (!) currencies (Money, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Heat, Energy), plus a bunch of “tags” you count, a ginormous deck of cards (and most of the special things you want to do need a card). Each player has a special power. You are building an engine, to be sure, but also managing a metric ton of randomness.

(At the local game store 3 weeks ago I was teaching someone I had recently met Res Arcana and he said “Oh, it’s like Terraforming Mars.” I suppose you could say that, you are building an engine in both. But there is a massive difference in level of control, etc. Anyway, my eye stopped twitching a few minutes later).

I’ve commented recently that Friedemann Friese trims his game down, and that I appreciate that focus. Splotter games also have that strict focus. Martin Fowler continued his comment “… here you score by selling cars. That’s it.” What is interesting is that here you aren’t limited by actions, money, cards you draw, or anything. It’s space. Solely space.

You can dedicate that space to assembly lines to build cars, dealerships to sell them, marketing to improve your sales reach, R&D to improve your technologies (which allow your cars to be sold in more niches, or are sometimes mandatory to sell a car at all), planning departments to shift your focus. Got 100 grid spaces free? Use them all, or some. But once you’ve built a line, it stays built. There are connection rules to observe and whatnot.

Each turn you get a bit more space (which you can put where you like, again with a few rules), and can grow more. Do you spend all the space now or reserve some for that new parts line you’ll be able to access next turn?

And (being a Splotter) you have a fight over turn order with players going first having better access to competitors technologies (and dibs on any tiles that might be running out soon), but players going last sell earlier, and the market is limited.

Laser-like focus. I admire that.

But … there is a lot of “heads down, stare at your factory, try to plot out things” that seems like solitaire. Certainly repeated play should give you a good feeling for how to lay out a factory. But one problem with Splotter games is that the learning curve is so steep that a new players coming into a group will find themselves horribly out-classed. (That doesn’t particularly bother me, I played lots of Titan and 1830, always losing until I figured them out; but it does keep a game from hitting the table in many groups).

There are five technologies, and the game will vary based on which two are in the starting setup (and player order), but getting a feel for how each of the four types of parts line (the “A/B/C/D”) vary and interact with the five requirements is difficult. And each starting color has an apparently slightly different set of cards to grow demand, which feels nice but is also way too subtle for me to understand right now.

But there’s also the ebb and flow of turn order and manipulating which technologies the market demands. Those are decidedly not solitaire by any means. The question (that I don’t know the answer to) is — Does this interactive part of the game count as much as the spatial puzzle part? Because the spatial puzzle part seems like it will get old. No, let me contradict myself. Part of the puzzle is not only “how can I fit this” but there’s the “What should I build?” part. That’s also not solitaire … but for new players it kind of is, because (like many games) you spend your first game(s) “heads down” in the sense that you can only process your own position … trying to do that and keep track of 2-4 opponents is too much.

For a ~20 minute game like Race, where I was often anxious to play 3-4 games in a row, not a problem. For this? It may be. It’s longer. It’s less forgiving. (Understatement of the month nominee!). If I get this to the table ten times with different people, I’ll be ahead on the curve, and they’ll lose interest.

Also, the first game with my set was a bear because I had simply bagged everything. And there are too many parts in too many bags. I had to go and get a special plano box, which should greatly reduce setup and teardown, but now it doesn’t fit in the box. (This and Stationfall really made me think about investing in a 3D printer for organization).

And (like many Splotter games) there’s a dodgy physical design. This is well covered by literally every gamer who ever voiced an opinion. And I’m perfectly fine with bland design (Fast Food Franchise) but the market things are klunky and borderline unusable. (A good option could be 3D printing little plastic corner marker that you just place on upper left and lower right and adjust based on marketing …., rather than having 3 flimsy plastic overlays of various sizes for each dealership).

All of which is to say: Yup, this is a Splotter.

Rating — Suggest (but we’ll see).

Stationfall Analysis

At the time of this writing, I have half a dozen 2p games (each controlling two characters, no bots), two 4p games, two 5p games and a 7p game.

No surprise that I love Stationfall.

I’ve always enjoyed games with strong narratives; even excusing shaky gameplay, and Stationfall (for all the nits I plan to pick) has a solid core system.

I’m not going to explain the mechanisms or why I like it. I like it. My rating is Enthusiastic and probably will stay above indifferent for a long time. In a recent game night, we played three games in a row (which took roughly 4.5 hours, with a partial teach for a new player who joined the second game). At least for me, Stationfall is what every gamer hopes for: it has that “Let’s play again” feeling.

I’m trying to analyze what works about Stationfall and (more importantly) what doesn’t.

But here’s the review. If you dislike chaos, you’ll hate Stationfall. Your main character could be knocked out before you get a turn, and having both your characters downed isn’t out of the question. (Particularly in a 7p game). I do view some games as primarily about winning and being clever, but I’m not particularly driven to win. If you are, you’ll hate this.

The Big Issue

“It’s easier to destroy than to build.” I heard this from a few people. Let’s examine it.

Knocking a character out (“downing”) takes a wrench (which can be stopped by a helmet, if the victim is human) or a gun. Or firebomb. Or other unique to character rules. Restoring a downed character takes nano-gel (or unique characters, mainly Medical). That’s a bit asymmetric, but OK, into every disaster there will be disasters and characters going down.

The bigger issue: Characters that do not need to escape are more efficient and resilient.

Let’s examine everyone’s favorite — Astrochimp. He wants to escape and have important objects with him in the process.

With his favorable starting location and abilities, Chimpy can get to the pod in two activations, assuming each gets two actions (meaning — nobody else activated him in the last round). But that means you activate, a turn on someone else with nobody else doing anything on him, you activate. If someone else activates “your” character, even worse. So, at best you get one action a minute with your character (and one a minute with everyone else).

If you just run to a pod and launch (5 actions), you escape for a measly score of 3 points. (Most characters max out at eight or nine, plus possibly points for bribery). That’s three turns, of which two have to be on the Chimp. If you want the briefcase/artifact/gun, that’s another turn each (at a minimum), but more likely two. So a good scoring chimp takes ~6-9 turns focused on his goals. Presumably you want to spend some time dealing with others. One VP a turn.

If anyone has their activation disk on the chimp (or the characters you are using to move said briefcase/artifact/gun) you’ll need more time, as your efficiency goes down.

Now the Cyborg (who wants to murder officers and keep people from escaping). He doesn’t need to escape, doesn’t have many positive goals. He wants to Deny others. Let’s call this type a “Denier.” Cyborg doesn’t have to pull the trigger to score for down officers, so whatever character is available to murder for two actions, he can take. He doesn’t have to take Cyborg (unlike the Chimp, who has to spend some actions on a specific character).

If others activate the cyborg, its likely that they are doing it to down a character without becoming a suspect (since the cyborg is a fugitive). At worst, you don’t care. (And — insult to injury — Cyborg has the uncanny trait to get two actions more frequently).

It’s hard out here for a Chimp

If the Astrochimp does get a gun, the Cyborg’s PC (or anyone) might activate him to shoot an officer. That doesn’t help the chimp at all AND the activation makes the chimp less effective. Worse, they might move him the ‘wrong’ direction.

And they can bribe/kompromat the chimp to give his gun (etc) away even if they don’t have time to activate him! If someone bribes/kompromats the Cyborg, its likely to just bash someone’s head in, which doesn’t bother their controller at all or cost any VPs.

But worse — The Cyborg can still win if he gets dropped out an airlock. If the Chimp goes down, score ZERO points unless you happen to be close enough to the pod that you can be dragged in (max one space a turn). Even if you can get back up in a turn or two, people are free to take your stuff in the meantime.

Having a goal of “Escape” gives you a single point of failure … the character itself. But “Deniers” (Cyborg, Engineer, Operative, etc) can lose their PC and still score well. Some can score their maximum points, without every activating their character! That’s flexibility!

Since escaping is harder, “Escapers” maximum score should be higher.

Everybody Knows

In a game that takes ninety minutes, this isn’t a huge problem. But there’s a trickle-down factor. If you have six players, some will get dealt two Escapers as their choice of identities. Some get “Escaper/Denier” and some get two Deniers. If all the players with a choice think Denier is better, they’ll “Denier”, then nobody gets out (probably) and deniers will always win because they not only have the above advantages, four deniers will overwhelm the two escapers.

Stationfall has implicit collusion. It’s game is a single hand of cards. This is a deal breaker in many games (I’ve used the phrase “A long hand of cards” as a pejorative multiple times), but Stationfall is amusing enough I’m letting it slide.

Someone probably loses on the deal. They just don’t know it for an hour or two. If there is a dominant strategy (such as Escaper vs Denier) then games will tend to bend that way and not be as amusing for those who realize they are going to lose.

That is Stationfall’s main flaw. Not all characters fit easily on the Escaper/Denier spectrum, but there are too many deniers in a game already loaded against escapers. There need to be “Enablers” who want to help other people escape. Characters who get VP for other escapers, so that people will be incentivized to move pawns towards the pod, even if they aren’t yours. As it stands, I think the game tilts towards denial, but sometimes the deal has enough escapers that the variety is OK. It could be tuned, but the melody isn’t bad right now.

(Exile is a big escape enabler and can rack up a huge score. We just had a game with Exile and Stable Wormhole and ~8 characters escaped, but that’s certainly the not the rule in our game.) This analysis applies not to just “Escape/Deny” but to many of the common goals. For “Release project X/Not Release Project X” the advantage is with the releasers, but that’s simply because they can use any character to do it and once done it cannot be undone (and you can use a four action turn which is hard to prevent).

Regarding “One Art” By Elizabeth Bishop

The game tilted towards one strategy isn’t a problem. The problem is that denialists being too effective is frustrating.

Betrayals are fun. Shocking Revelations are fun, Bad Luck (with Project X or who is a PC) is fun. I lost the last game via a stupid miscalculation. It’s fine. Ending up short one action, banging on the pod door? Great!

But a few times (someone) spends half the game left with not a single option? They are bored while everyone else is engaged. Both characters down. No other character would score points if that person escaped, so they got no help and died. In a two player game (where this is more likely) then just concede, but in a six person game you just stew for an hour.

It’s no fun to lose just because you only have twelve minutes, and need eight of them with nothing bad happening and no chaos. “No chaos” is boring. The game needs balanced chaos, and that could be better. Right now I’d say that in multiplayer games we’ve had maybe 10% of the players frustrated for a game. I suspect some were avoidable, but its still a problem.

A Sidebar on the Rules

We keep finding rules that we missed. (Perhaps the Eklund style is to blame, perhaps we are, but in any case the game can work with a close approximation of the rules). Firebombs cause fires but don’t damage sections. And there are rules interactions that are easy to forget (not to mention all the exceptions that are just footnotes). I don’t think the rules are poorly written, but they are dense enough that its easy to get them wrong.

A week ago I thought the rules were well done, now I think they are OK. Not a huge deal, more of a non-trivial nit. Fortunately (like many games that you get enjoyment via narrative and not planning) as long as the group is consistent, getting a few rules wrong is more of a nuisance than problem.

The Nits

There are a number of issues I have with the game:

• The action tilts aft — The pods are on the aft side of the map. All the pods (unless the Medevac pod is in play). This means that there is a choke point and with a bit of effort you can basically block all characters from getting to a pod unless they have a helmet. (Particularly if the engineer is in play, then damaging the reactor will cause vacuums all around the aft hub). If you have a helmet, then it is a turn or two from fore to aft (via outer space) but if not then you might have to go a long way to escape. There aren’t many helmets.
• Some actions just cost too much to get used — Removing a fire hazard takes two actions! (One to replace fire with vacuum, another to clear the vacuum). And you have to go to a console (mostly). Decontamination costs an action in the tanks, but getting contaminated is free (just move through the space). Why isn’t decontamination free? (Especially given how out of the way the tanks are). The point of Stationfall is that funny things happen, but over-costed actions can’t happen often enough. This is mostly because doing this takes an action, but getting to the place to do it costs multiple actions!
  • After 8 games, I’ve never seen decontamination or bridge action, etc! After 8 games! With most characters!
  • Hazard suppression is also pretty rare.
  • Similarly, there’s only one place you can manufacture evidence! And only one place to Transmit!
• You can be out of it, particularly as an escaper. — An unhelmeted character can easily be trapped for most of the game.
• A few unfun characters — A big deal in a game that is about the story. The Corpsicle is an escaper that starts down and never gets a free action, and can’t be activated if someone else activated her. Simply Terrible.
• Some characters can frustrate plans too easily — Fine if they are funny or stunning. For example, if the Counselor makes you a suspect and then sends evidence, OK. Or if the Consort does his pawn switch, amazing! For this I’m talking about things like the Operative’s Nerve Gas action to down a room of characters and destroy a path … over and over again. Boarder can launch missiles and destroy section after section. Frustration and screwing over people is fine, but it should be big one-time surprises, not constant denial.
• Characters with more difficult goals should score more — It’s harder to keep project X bottled up, but its an implicit collusion issue, as mentioned above. But Getting a max score on the Corpsicle or Clones (hard characters) seems nigh-impossible. Engineer can get nine points in six or so turns, Corpsicle needs a lot more time for its goals, so it should get more than nine if scores.
• There are a few goals that only have a single character who wants it — Doing that goal reveals you. Also, if you are the only person with that goal, you get no help. (Again, implicit collusion works against you). If there are 3-4 characters with that goal, you might get some help.

Right now these play balance issues aren’t a big deal. But they are fun-balance issues. The characters should be maximally fun even when they lose. (As an example, the TaoLing just mentioned that Daredevil could string together a giant move. That’s not balanced, but its fun, so I don’t mind it).

Possible Variants / House Rules

To be clear, I’m not attached to any of these. Even eight games isn’t enough to guess balance. But these are things I’m leaning towards.

1. A character can only drag or be dragged through a single section with gravity per turn, but can drag/be dragged through zero-G as often as you like. (Makes being downed more palatable).
2. Anyone moving through Tanks is Decontaminated (no action cost).
3. Hazard Suppression can fully remove fire (if the user desires) with a single action, or go from fire to vacuum.
4. I think that one of the regular pods should be in the Medevac pods location, (and the Medevac pod go after), but I haven’t considered this in detail.
5. Adding another helmet and/or nanogel at setup. (Not sure where to put, just a thought).
6. Making the Briefcase worth one point for any character to have at the end (in addition to any points on your card).
7. Seems to me that there should be a “badge” that lets the holder be an officer.

We can also modify individual characters.

One simple balance fix is to give each character a VP modifier to reflect how hard they are. For example, the troubleshooter seems hard pressed to score nine points (no damaged sections? Antimatter never armed? etc) so a straight bonus would work.

But my goal is to make things more fun. Everyone would have to be aware of these before the game and have notes available (as to the rules).

• Corpsicle
  • When corpiscle reveals, revive if down AND (instead of OR) perform an action.
  • The Corpsicle may reveal during ANY PLAYERS ACTION if they are in the same space. (What’s a zombie movie without a jump scare?)
  • During the revealed action (only), the corpsicle is considered to have a wrench to attack/rob.
  • The Corpsicle counts as downed for the medevac pod constraints at all times.
  • (All together these might be too much, but you have to admit, it sounds fun to play right?)
• Engineer
  • Reduce antimatter VP from 3 to 2. (So he has a maximum of 8).
• Legal
  • You do not flip over the pods on setup, they flip over the pods when Legal reveals (similar to boarder’s ship). (Escapers already have a hard enough time, no need to add to it just via setup ..)
  • Scheduled timed launches are cancelled upon reveal unless all characters on the pod have an NDA.
  • (Possibly Legal should be changed to make printing an NDA a free action as well).
• Maintenance Clones
  • Add +4 points if the third clone escapes. (Getting all three clones out should be a huge victory).
• Medical
  • Anyone collocated with Medical may take an action to decontaminate (if Medical is not down).
  • Medical may decontaminate everyone (living or down) in the same room as an action.
• Microbiologist
  • The Contaminate action infects ALL co-located characters (instead of one), or maybe it should be one person, but a free action (replacing pickup/drop)
• Operative
  • Unwanted Attention — Operative cannot win if she revealed prior to Stationfall unless innocent.
  • (If that’s too much, at least lower Nerve Gas to once per game).
• Troubleshooter
  • Raise Influence Limit from six to eight (so no penalty ever). (Rationale — she’s hard to score points with already, and her abilities require co-conspirators).

Conclusion

Again, I love this game. Enough that I’m constantly thinking about how to reduce its failure modes from 5% (or whatever they are) to half that, or a third that. If Stationfall get’s “Solved” then its no good. If everyone says “Oh, X always wins” then its no good. If there’s 1-2 dominant/bad characters we can just leave them out of the shuffle, but let’s have more chaos and more fun!

See you on re-entry.

Update 3/21 — After some discussion on the BGG thread (especially Geoff’s notes), I think the troubleshooter can be made less fragile by his changes:

1. Change the “2 VP for antimatter not armed” to “2 VP if Stationfall happens at minute 0 or 1”
2. Change the “2 VP for Project X not revealed” to “2 VP if there is no live monster on board at stationfall”
3. Change the “2 VP for no damaged sections at the end” to “Troubleshooter gains 1VP per damage repaired or hazard suppressed.” (Geoff has this be data on the character, which certainly works and allows for more shenanigans).

The basic point of all these is to let Troubleshooter recover from antimatter arming or project X released or damage, which are all good idea.

Beltex

Katherine of Sky (a Factorio streamer I watch) did a video (series) on Beltex and it was an easy $5 purchase (in fact, after a few minutes I was “yup” and shut off the stream, so I can experience the game myself). This is a small “cozy” factory (in that there’s no time pressure, no marauding aliens, etc). You have extractors that can “mine” numbers (at the beginning you can only mine 1s), conveyor belts, and a delivery station that wants numbers.

Initially it only demands “1s” but soon it also needs “2s” (and you’ve unlocked the “adder” station). Pretty soon you need 3s, 10s, 32s, 57s and others, and you never really stop needing the earlier numbers. You also unlock bridges (so that belts can cross over), subtractors, priority belts and whatnot.

I liked but didn’t love Shapez, this games predecessor (that involved cutting, rotating, re-assembling and painting shapes) but this is more up my alley… still not in the “going to drop hundreds of hours on this” but that’s fine. “20 minute bursts” is a solid timewaster.

Anyway, you’ll know if its for you after looking at the video on the steam page.

Beltex on Steam.

Update (in response to Jeroen’s comment) — It actually does get a bit samey. I’d written the above at ~2 hours and now (~10h) the last few hours have just been kind of “more”. You never get past multiplication (but do get copy/paste and storage). I maxed out one of the upgrades and haven’t seen anything new in an hour or two. Still, I built some shift multipliers and a few other interesting things. I might get 10 more hours out of it, I might not, but it was better money spent than shapez.

A Dozen Mini-Reviews — Dec 2022

I’ve played a small burst of new games over the last two months or so. (Perhaps I’m finally getting over my pandemic grumpiness and reverting to my normal grumpiness level).

1848 Australia (1 play) — I’m not a particularly discriminating 18xx player: I like most of the ones I’ve tried and I liked this. The loan mechanism provided some subtleties and our (3p) game was under 3 hours, which isn’t as fast as some titles, but still means the game zipped along. Suggest.

9 Lives (2 plays) — A trick taking game where you have to make your bid “exactly” (but it wraps around at 4, so 1 and 5 are the same bid) and the winner of a trick must take one card from the trick (not his own). So if you are void and trump a trick, you might not be void anymore. Cute to play a few times (the little cat markers you use to make your bids are nice) but I think I’m done. Indifferent.

Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea (1 play) — I’m told this is improved Snowdonia, which I apparently played once a decade ago and didn’t remember. I suspected this is JASE and apparently I thought the same thing about its predecessor. Indifferent.

Cascadia (1 play) — Place tiles and then place something on the tiles. So, a big Carcassone vibe, but it worked (I also played Carc again this year after a long layoff, and its still good). You pick tile + animal combo and each animal has one of 4-5 possible scoring rules (which vary each game), so there’s combinatorics on this one. I liked this one enough to buy a copy (at 50% off) after one play. Suggest.

Charioteer (2 plays) — A racing/hand management game with a number of good ideas. There is a common card you include in your meld each turn, and you can see the next few turns. In my first play there was basically no passing. The leader (your humble narrator) stayed leader the entire time. (Since attacks are abstract and hit all opponents, it wasn’t that I was clear of the fray). The next game saw more passing and was more of a fray. I would play this again, but this lacks the hooting-hollerin’ fun of Circus Imperium (which probably also lacks it, as well, and is only “remembered with advantages”). Indifferent but will probably give a few more chances.

Downforce (1 play) — Another entry into the Daytona 500 / Detroit Cleveland Grand Prix family. A few improvements on good system that I enjoyed in the 90s and still enjoy now, but never seem to actually suggest. So, a very nice Indifferent-Plus.

Enchanted Plumes (1 play) — Yet another entry in the ever-growing peacock tableau building genre. J.A.S.P.T.B. doesn’t have a great ring to it, though. Taking tongue out of cheek, this was sort of a Lost Cities-esque push your luck game. You put feathers at the base of your pyramid to score negative points. Each row above it scores positive points but can only use colors that appear in the prior row. But I don’t love Lost Cities, so why would I like this? But if you wished Lost Cities played three+ players, here you go. Indifferent.

Heat: Petal to the Medal (2 plays) — The recent hotness is actually good! I only played Flamme Rouge once … didn’t hate it but neither was I aching to play again. The slingshot passing (and blatant catch up mechanisms) mean that once you get the system there’s a decent amount of thought under the hood. Suggest.

Little Factory (2 plays) — A simple trading game where you can either improve one of your cards (clay to brick, wood to timber, etc) to gain value, or use a market to move sideways in value (sell a $5 card for five dollars in other cards). But in either case you can only get cards in the current market. You only have one action a turn, but factory (worth 1-3 points) might give a bonus action, but only of one type (like “clay to brick”) and 10 points of factories wins. I’d never heard of this, but its a lovely little filler. Suggest.

L.L.A.M.A. (1 play) — No. OK, it was fine, but …. no. This felt like a tic-tac-toe-ification of a card game. Avoid.

Maglev Metro (1 play) — I knew this game existed, but only that. A few months ago I saw someone playing this and was frankly amazed by the production value and that it gave off an Age of Steam vibe. I picked up a copy at a 50% off after Christmas sale and I think (after one play) the AoS vibe is real. You don’t have the money issues, but all four of us were constantly adjusting our setup. There are a few things that I didn’t like …. for all the great production the copper and gold robots are very hard to distinguish (and the spots on the player boards that hold them are also hard), and I agree with the complaint about some of the bonus cards, but this strikes me as a solid system, and also reminded me to throw Age of Steam back into the bag. Suggest.

Reality Shift (2 plays) — A 3-D game trying to capture the Tron-light-cycle vibe. Nice production with magnetic bikes moving on the tops and sides of cubes that you can rotate, slide, etc. Smash your opponents against the wall, de-rezzing them to start again. The issue is that if players are good the game can go on forever (as 4 players can rearrange the board to prevent a potential winner from being able to hit the finish spot) or if they are terrible / playing casually then its just “oh, the finish spot is revealed, the next player got it.” In both games I played I got literally half as many turns as the other players, because I went last and the player before me won on his second turn. On the other hand, I wasn’t particularly unhappy about this turn of events. This not quite Avoid but its at the low end of indifferent.

A few thoughts on Oath and Autobahn

For Thanksgiving (ish) gaming, I played Oath and Autobahn.

Oath — First of all, the copy I bought (from my FLGS) a few months ago was missing …. a single card. (I looked multiple times, and yup, missing). Leder games did send me a replacement, which was nice. (Actually, they replaced the entire deck which I guess is just easier for them; although it still seems to me that it should be worth paying the 2 minutes to find the right card …. if anyone is missing a card that’s in Deck B, there’s a ~98% chance I have a spare).

Anyway, I’ve now played 3 games of Oath (the prior two at last year’s Gathering) and I’m still not sure if it work as a single game. It didn’t help that my latest game was three players, which got into a dynamic where “Player A threatens to win, Player B can’t stop him, so Player C must go all out to do so, but it’s only a delaying action…” and the game was Oprah-esque in giving out Pyrrhic victories! “You got a horrible victory! And you get one! And you!”

So, as a story it was pretty good. But I think four is probably the sweet spot. Between this, John Company (Revisited), and Root, I think Cole is delivering games that are intriguing and I wished I could grok the rules. We went through the playthrough and one player (no slouch at rules) said this was more confusing the JC2. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but its debatable. But its true that Cole’s games have novel rules, which makes them tougher to model or keep in memory. One point that jumped out at me again … the little gold coins are called “favors.” Which is nice and thematic, but they look like coins! Confusing.

(I did also play JC2 a few weeks ago but the game was called early and I’m not sure my thoughts are that different than the earlier version, although this is certainly a better production).

Rating — Oath is still a game I’m suggesting, in hopes of the right group. (I will still play JC2, but I’m wavering towards indifferent).

Autobahn — This feels like a kitchen sink design with a bunch of stuff thrown at it. You build the autobahn over three eras, and workers you use to build them get put into the tiger team running that branch …. at the end of the era the budget for that branch is split among that team. But when the team is full the player with seniority gets promoted to admin for a few VP, and later you can get promoted to Senior Exec for more VP (I’m inventing these terms). You play your cards to build roads, improve roads, unlock new technologies, make Auf Achse style delivery runs with a truck (for money and points), build gas stations (which score at the end and give the owner bonuses when trucks pass them, and each player has a route they’ll score at the end of the round (based on how compact the route is, with bonuses for improved roads).

You can improve your hand of cards (which stay on the table until you pick them up, earning money for each card played, unless you played them all in which case you don’t get money but don’t take an action to replenish). And there is a track you can advance on to get minor perks (and later major ones), and bonus tiles. It has many moving parts; but after a while it flows.

There was nothing wrong with it; but there also nothing particularly compelling. Also, Autobahn is visually unattractive (with small chits for bonuses and easy-to-miss icons for other bonuses).

Rating — Indifferent

September fast game thoughts

Schadenfreude — Super-mediocrity, the trick taking game. Second highest takes the trick and keeps their cards and all sluffs for points. (Cards are -3 through 9, with a single wild 0 and 10). But! whenever you keep cards you discard any matching numbers. But! Anyone who goes over 40 points busts and the highest remaining player wins.

We actually had a five player game with 4 players busting (some of which needed ~15+ points) on the same hand, which means that I’ll try this again despite thinking this was random.

Rating — Indifferent.

Axio — Ingenious for trypophobes who crave regular, soothing squares.

Rating — Slightly better than Ingenious, but not enough to matter. Indifferent.

Across the Obelisk

Across the Obelisk had been suggested to me before, so when I read The Zvi’s review (Spoiler free-review “Buy it”) I bought it.

The basic idea is that instead of having a single character and deck, you have four. Characters (and monsters) have inititiative but otherwise each turn is draw 5 cards and gets ~3 mana a turn. Mana is saved between turns (each character has their own pool), but you’ve get the gist. Some attacks hit the first opponent (in party order), some target anyone. There’s a ton of modifiers. Characters can have weapons, armor, etc.

“Slay the Spire meets Dungeons and Dragons.”

My abstract review after a few days —

Race for the Galaxy : New Frontiers :: Slay the Spire : Across the Obelisk.

Which isn’t to call it bad, just “not the classic that clearly led to its creation.”

Across the Obelisk is simply more, not better. It overstays its welcome, and I say that as someone who hasn’t gotten far into the second act. More characters make combats longer, but not more interesting. Less since there is now the strategy of “concentrate fire.”

More annoying are the tedious modifiers. A character/enemy has various resistances to slashing, blunt, piercing, fire, cold, lightning, holy, shadow, mind … numbers ranging from -21% to +60% in the case of a slime mold. With more characters you’d want a streamlined system.

For example, a ship vs. ship battle in Star Fleet Battles take ~3 hours. A squadron takes all day. You’d likely never use the system to deal with a full campaign if you were interested in the campaign, unless you really just wanted a system to generate combats. The point of Slay the Spire isn’t the individual combats. So in Across the Obelisk combat should have been even simpler (since you have 4 characters), instead of the opposite.

And most of that complexity doesn’t matter that much. Many of the modifiers are a few percent, which rounds to …. nothing. Great.

I first noticed this with Civ VI, which I played for a few hours, tops (as compared to years for Civs I and II). The ability of computers to instantly correctly track dozens or hundreds of small modifiers does not mean that it is good design. Better to have a few big important ones than tons of fiddly ones.

And if my warrior’s attacks are all melee, there’s nothing I can do to modify it in combat. If I can enchant a weapon to be either fire or cold, then I just have to pull up resistances and figure out which is best. Again, no bombs, just fiddly. The Spire’s enemies have few modifiers, but big effects. Here it’s just “Throw everything at the party.”

I guess this game is for people who thought Slay the Spire was too short and too easy.

I get the “too easy” criticism. Yes, StS can be beat after a few games (if you aren’t going for the Heart, which didn’t exist in the first year or two). But you can increase the ascension level until its challenging. Across the Obelisk’s problem isn’t difficulty (although at first glance it is legitimately harder, probably impossible to win without unlocking meta-scaling that you get between runs). The problem is tedium. When I played the first game, time did not fly. It’s airplane was grounded. From what I’ve read a full game is ~4 hours, and once you know it the first hour or so is rote. It’s like a worse Hades, in that you need the meta-scaling to win (at least I did), so early on the first hour is challenging but once you’ve “earned” it you still have to play the first hour.

This is not an improvement, because most of the time is spent micro-managing.

As Rock Paper Shotgun noted, what makes StS great is that you can (mostly) see what is about to happen to you. A typical example on the first combat is “A Jaw worm is attacking you for 12. You can block for 10 and do some damage or fully block but do no damage. The Jaw worm gets stronger (increasing damage) every 3rd turn or so.” That’s a choice. Here you can’t (by default) see what is coming, but you know the pattern. Across the Obelisk does make this a bit better …. after a while you’ll see all the cards in the enemies “deck” and memorize the order (if it is in fact fixed), but for the early game it feels random.

And many enemies have “Attack random opponent” as a card. So should each character block for 10? Just accept the hit? Some of the attacks are “Do this X times.” So if you have 4 attacks of 5 each, perhaps each character blocking for five works. But odds are one character will get hit twice and one missed. Guess who? And one character could randomly take all the hits for 20 (50-100 HP is what they have). A longer fight with more randomness violates my tenets of good design (unless the fight is the whole point of the game).

And in Slay the Spire, the fights are the micromanagement. The macro-management is which rewards to pick, which path, when to take keys. Etc. Across the Obelisk triples the micromanagement in combat, and in other ways. Consider the start of Slay the Spire. You pick a character. Then (assuming you are playing an Ascension Level) you get a gift. One of four choices. Pick and go.

In Across the Obelisk, you pick your four characters (assuming you’ve unlocked more) and then you can spend last run’s gold modifying their starting decks paying to buy new cards, improve cards, and get rid of cards. You can save your common setups and load them from disk, but its a big up front issue. I am reminded of Struggle of Empires, which has your most important decision when you are least likely to understand it, and then your options narrow throughout the game. Again, part of the joy of “roguelike” games is rolling with the punches, not a 10 minute setup phase.

All of which isn’t to say that this is bad, just “not the reason I play Slay the Spire.” Someone tried to mash up two things, but they weren’t peanut butter and chocolate. Neither were they peanut butter and anchovies. Its not disgusting, but there’s no synergy, so it winds up being an “This is OK, I’ll play it for a while, even obsessively for a few days or so, and then I’ll probably ignore it.”

There are a number of points I did like:

• Many of the random events give you a choice with the RNG being a draw of cards from a variety of decks (and you have to “roll” greater than or less than a mana total, or get a card of the right type….). More interesting than the purely random events of StS (like Wheel of Fortune, etc).
• Some events direct you to surprise mini-maps (at least on the “Adventure map” which is fixed). Perhaps this becomes more well known once you’ve discovered the game. Also, there is a decent bit of world building in the background events, but I assume that’s par for the course of modern games.
• Mixing and matching parties (from the warriors/scouts/mages and healers) probably is of interest (I assume, I haven’t unlocked other characters). Certainly when you get rewards, you get a chest full and each character can get one thing (or you can buy things from shops and allocate). This means that you have a number of interesting combinations and anti-combinations to beware. This does slow the game down, but in this case its because of actual strategic choices.
• Like Baseball Highlights 2045, there is a minimum deck size.
• When you upgrade a card, there are two options (such as “make it better” or “make it worse, but cheaper.”)
• If one (or more) characters die during a battle, but the party survives, you get a curse in that characters deck. A nice “death spiral” feeling.
• Some of the battles have an “Increased Risk, Increased Reward” option. Cute

Some minor peeves:

• The grunts whenever a character takes damage are annoying. I’d like to be able to just mute those.
• No “Skip the opening cutscene when starting a game” option. Yes, I can hit skip each time … this seems like an obvious option to add.

I’ve written this review after playing for ~8 hours. I doubt this will get to 100. Often I’ll play an hour of this, save the game, then come back and make a spire run or two, then resume the game.

Rating — Indifferent, in theory, but man I am playing this a bunch for how annoying it is, so I guess its a suggest?. More thoughts later.

Post-Script. After I finished my fifth run of AtO, I got an achievement for playing (not winning) five times. Only 56% of people who bought the game got this achievement! (Although that may actually be more than average. Cult of the New isn’t just for boardgames).