Second edition does indeed fix some of your gripes: - cardboard player tiles are about half of the original sheets' size; still not a card size, but much better - rulebook is miles better and includes a teaching guide
This review is a perfect example why this channel has quickly become my new fave and why I happily became a patron: Behind all the swearing, gruffness etc is a bloke who really knows his stuff, explains it well and doesn't pander. And fuck he makes me laugh!
I just played this on my Birthday (21/12) for the first time. Had it for years but it's been difficult to get the player count of 5+ recommended by BGG. I found it to be very enjoyable but didn't really have much of a clue what I was meant to do for the first half of the game and by then it was too late. I was the Im'Drill or something like that. But I came away from the game with my mind going over all the things I should have done and I want to play again as soon as possible. Excellent analysis as always. And Merry Christmas.
Played the game (2n edition) today with some 5 other players, most of whom had played the game before. My observations: - The game looked great and while it has some theming, this theming has no noticeable impact on gameplay and lacks transpararency. In practice, players weren't trading for energy, manufacturing goods or power: they were trading for green, yellow or blue cubes. If the civilization names or attributes were swapped around, nobody would have noticed. The same was true for the technologies: nobody cared what they were called, it was just a converter with some irrelevant label attached to it. The mechanics and the flavor didn't integrate well. - There is a lot of effort, especially as a first time player, to manage the complexitity of your own cards. This means most of your attention will be focused on getting your converters filled, and you basically don't care what the other players are doing, as long as you can optimize your own economy. Nobody looked at the abilities or cards of other players, they were basically playing an optimization game in isolation. At the end of the game, nobody had a clue who might have won. I don't think a competitive game that doesn't make it apparent during the game who is doing well and who is doing poorly is good game design. - The trading depends a lot on the types of players you have. With a lot of ADD players in this group, it was more of a matter speed: you have to make the deal before someone else makes a deal and you can't get what you need anymore. This in turn meant that no attention was spent on any deals except your own and that even though deals might be made in the open, you didn't get any perspective if someone was making good or bad deals. - The game lacked memorable moments: there didn't seem to be any critical decision points. Players rose and fell by a hundreds of small cuts. This probably makes it a well-balanced game, but not a game where you remember critical plays. - It was an intense game with barely any downtime, there is usually something to do at any given time. My suspicion is that the game gets better the more often you play it, as a lot of the complexity is reduced and you actually have enought attention left to see what others are doing or how their unique mechanics work.
I just finally got the new edition of this and I'm going to try and get this to the table this week. Great points about how the races interact to form a cohesive system, which is something I'll use to sell this during the teach. For anyone looking for another unique and very fun game with trading at its core find a copy of Trade on the Tigris from TMG. That game is a complete blast and it's a shame it got caught up in the implosion of TMG back in 2018-19. A real gem that scales well and is a bit shorter. Imagine the trading phase of the original AH Civilization with another level of game added onto it.
Here a cube there a cube... convert away, try to see what players on the far side are doing, more cubes final scoring...what the feck? I fell asleep early in the video, awakened briefly for the discussion on hygiene in oral sex and managed to keep my eyes open for your inevitable positive recommendation. As long as I don’t have to play this, OK. Look l am all for people enjoying whatever crap they like, but this game needs deathstars and fusion missiles at the least. Let’s have some Hot Lava Death, folks.
Early in the game's development it did have deathstars and fusion missiles. That beast took over 10 hours to play, so all that boring war crap got cut, and all we're left with is a fast game that plays like a trip to the market except you're both buying and selling and haggling for a better deal on both ends. I love it but i see why some wish we'd got the 10 hour long wargame too.
I get a lot of points in this video and I can see why this game is decent. I still wouldn't want to own it for many reasons. Lack of theme and table hogging just two of them. I just found that there wasn't enough story in the game for me. Anyhow, I didn't come here for a fair discussion of the game's pros and cons. I came here to point out at around 4:51 it didn't look like you were holding your ships in your hands, but more like you were handling two opponents' converters. Hope you found something valuable in the nether regions of that research deck.
The only board game I have in my collection is Monopoly and most of them are bloody knockoff. Getting my self into Tabletop role playing game[TRPG] but don't have myself a book yet.... Would like to have more board game like my uncle got a room full
A good TTRPG to start is MechWarrior Destiny (MWD). I had tried to enter the RPG world with DnD and Star Frontiers and it was just impossible due to the amount of crunch. MWD has minimum mechanics and was the perfect RPG game for me. So I can concentrate on the narrative. The reddit sub of Battletech is where you can ask questions.
