Miami Dice: Empires of the Void II 

i know I am kinda randomly asking but does anybody know a good website to watch new tv shows online ?

@Reid Tommy try flixzone. Just google for it :)

@Marshall Bradley yup, I have been watching on flixzone for since march myself :D

@Marshall Bradley Thanks, I went there and it seems to work :) Appreciate it!

@Reid Tommy Happy to help =)

Haven't played it. What's wrong with the rulebook?

I know I am late to the party by a lot (I found this game by accident) but Emitent Domain seems like a short space empire game. It doesn't have a nice board as all is card based, but you explore, colonize and conquer planets from the planetary deck. It's an Euro deckbuilding game since you do not attack players directly, but you could easily introduce a house rule: - Fighter cost of capturing the colony is also applicable for your rival to spend to get your un-flipped planet. - In the normal rules there is no interruption during your turn (players can only follow your order or draw a card), if that would be another player's turn and they try to pay fighters for non-flipped colonies in your field, you can discard Combat orders and fighters. In such a scenario the other player has to add more cards and fighters. - Regardless of the victor, all used cards are discarded at Clean Up and Fighters return to the common pool. - Combat symbols on your planets also count as numbers of fighters required to take the planet from you. - You cannot follow the current player's order after defence since logically it was kinda following the order (using Combat cards). This adds yet another layer since you do not know what kind of colony the other player has, as costs of Colonization/Conquest do not really suggest if it provides you with VP at the end of the game or it produces materials traded for VP, only the type of the planet is known. Good for mind games or answers to bad draws from the Planet deck if you need that exact planet type.

It's less euro-y than Scythe, I'd say. I love both games, though. The key plus to EoVII for me is the story ... not stop-an-read-a-paragraph type of story, but the story that is suggested through the event cards and built through player interaction at the table. There's one event card that came up on a play for us that involved betting on races. One of our players took advantage of that event a lot, which led to a whole mythos building up about the gambling addictions of the race he was playing. Scythe has this story mechanic a little bit, but I feel that it happens much more organically in EoVII.

Downloaded concur

I was going to ask how this game measures up against Scythe in weight/complexity. While the things you do in each game aren't necessarily the same, there seem to be a similar number of them, each with similar significance to gameplay.

I would say the two games are pretty comparable in rules complexity, but EoVII will have you reaching for the rules more often, as various cards and allies come into play, since not everything is in every play. I find Scythe a bit more complicated strategically.

Thanks very much for your insights, Diane. I personally never picked Scythe up because it seems a little *too* isolated for me. I enjoy euro mechanics but I also prefer games where opponents can directly influence the efficacy of each other's strategies every turn. In Scythe this is possible, but the way it handles combat with the "teleporting" mechanic that makes all players equidistant from each other really rubs me the wrong way. It's the same reason I don't enjoy Kemet. Maybe it's just me, but this mechanic really destroys my suspension of disbelief while playing. The fact that EotV II doesn't use this mechanic and allows for a little more player interactions while still awarding points primarily for efficiency in your faction management rather than for eliminating other players makes it really appealing. I'm hoping it will be able to give me a similar experience to Scythe without any immersion-breaking mechanics. Looking forward to getting it to the table soon.

I'm glad you compared it to scythe. The feeling I get with scythe is that it played smooth, which allows everything going on to click together. If this can be similar, I may like this. And I'm really trying to get into a space game.

Which variants do you recommend?

I would be fine with the game being a bit longer myself (though not so long as to completely alleviate the time pressure, which is a plus for me). I would love an expansion that just had more cards for each planet. Then, when building your deck, you could choose how long a game you wanted by including a randomized number of the cards for each planet. And of course ... more planets would be awesome, too (though that wouldn't impact game length.

That's exactly the expansion I'd like to see for this. 2-3 more cards for existing planets and a handful of new planets to add variety. It can't be too long or there's no pressure on the player boards, everyone will have built everything or close to it.

That's a bit of an improvement but it doesn't really alleviate the SCORE card coming up as early as it does. For that to work I would say slip the SCORE card in around the 2/3rds mark of the deck and add 10-12 cards back. In our last play the SCORE card came out on Action 7. Everyone upgraded early and burned through their initial hands. And that makes the tech trees too expensive to invest in, because as you do so you are consuming resources and expending cards, bringing the game to a conclusion faster, making those techs not worth investing in. A bigger deck won't necessarily make for a longer game because of the rate at which cards are used.

Tom Luongo agree to disagree

It's played that way for me every time and I'm always competitive if not outright winning by not investing heavily until late game to build techs.

No, one person can choose that attacking is a phase that will happen this turn. It doesn't mean they're the only one that can attack. He/she just was the one that initiated it as a thing that would happen this round. Everyone can participate/attack, but the guy who marked it as a phase that would occur gets a special bonus, presumably.

When a new round begins, the Commander token is passed to the next player in clockwise order and that player must move the Action token to a new action for that round. So, within one round, all of the players might do the Research/Build action, then in the next round all of the players might do the Move/Attack action. If a player wants to do a different kind of action within a round, he must pay two command points. That is very costly, but in certain circumstances it is worth doing.

Metal coins and One monster mini.

So, unnecessary!? Retal will do. iThanx!

Retail is fine. The metal tokens weren't anything special.

I love this game. The monster mini is just silly (and it hasn't come out for me yet). The metal coins in the Deluxe are super futuristic and awesome if you like metal coins I highly recommend; however note that they are triangles, so if you do pick them up wrong, you tend to stab yourself a little lol.

Idk not all of his games are fiddly. I nean 8 mibute empire had barely any rules. and i just taught bear and fat to people who play no board games

No it doesn't; no it isn't; no they aren't.

"That's not an argument, that's just contradiction!"

Oh wow, do you happen to play with Bijan Ajamlou? It is so odd you two thought the game drags. Every review I've read, and my own personal experience, is that the game ends to abruptly. And personally I rather play with the epic official variant. Regarding what you claimed on all Laukat games, most of them end in 90 minutes time-frame and move in a rather brisk pace so I wouldn't say they drag on. The only one I could say that about it City of Iron, but it's actually my favorite of his designs. EOV ended in 120 minutes and the turns was RAPID. The Ancient World took 60 minutes to play and was super elegant and fast. City of Iron is about 60 minutes per player and could def drag on in the winter phase. A&B is about 90 minutes but could drag a bit with 4 players due to adventures. IsleBound is 90 minutes and is super fast and rapid. N&F is about the same as A&B. A bit longer. EOV2 ends in 120 minutes, very quick pace. The only slow part is the development phase which is simultaneous. And of course 8 minutes empire takes about 15 minutes :P I could see what you mean about fiddly, if you mean the complexity of the rules, as some of them are a bit difficult to teach. But if you got a good rules-explainer there's no problem. But even that statement isn't true as The Ancient World, A&B and 8 Minutes Empire are super elegant and easy to explain.

This is a false lie.