TDG: Sidereal Confluence 

Is "I need a big black" the new "I have wood for sheep"?

My apprehension with negotiation mechanics is the necessity of knowing the value of everything. Now these values can fluctuate based on circumstances but knowing a base value is a must that many games seem to leave up to experience to figure out. This leads to more experienced players having an advantage. This being good or bad depends on how much of an ass an experienced player decides to be to new players.

This warms my heart, this game is so great.

It's a really great game. I agree that it benefits from players who prefer cooperation, but during the game I've revised my initial idea that it's always profitable to trade with everyone just as long as you get what you want, because you might end up helping the leader more. Surprisingly deep, I don't think that there is anything like it.

The link to your second channel didn't load for me.

I picked up the previous edition of this game but never got it to the table because of the intimidation factor too. And then another friend had played it but had a bad experience (he was new to it and a more experienced player was playing the Zeth and basically bullying him). Seeing your video has sparked new interest to try to get it to the table. Do you know if there is any difference between this edition and the previous one aside from the cover art?

Sigh deer ee ull

I had the original and I felt very very burned. Basic emergent aspects of the game are not explained well, lots of the rules are not in the rulebook. I tried this twice with groups of people and both times it was so bad we just quit and they never want to play a board game again. The game should have been more humble and just straight up explain how you should take advantage of some species powers because if you don’t take advantage of certain things, like how the one species with unlimited colony support needs to be a warehouse for the other players, then this game is a terrible experience.

This is my favorite ugly game.

The last game we played in our now dissolved gaming group before the pandemic, was this one, and boy was it a success. The crazy nature of the trading and building your engine, it's one of the very few chunky, asymmetrical games that actually benefits from a large group of people... it needs massive space, but it's so darn fun.

I love this game but unfortunately there is one person in our group who's negotiation style is very "my way or the highway" that includes the immediate threat to not trade with you the rest of the game. It sucks all the joy from this beautiful game out! Yes we could gang up against him but we find no pleasure in that either as he just won't "learn". It's a shame though as the game is a negotiation masterpiece

one of my faves