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Cthulhu Dreams posted:You guys should hit me up for a game some time. 4 Canberra goons in this thread huh.
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Aug 29, 2022 12:12
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My Food Chain Magnate reprint copy arrived yesterday. I am very excited, but now I have to work out which gaming group this will work best with. Whichever is the more cutthroat, I think?
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Sep 26, 2022 02:31
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!Klams posted:Gonna be playing The Kings dilemma this weekend, anything good to know before going in? I've found it to be great fun and good value. It's certainly a pretty unique experience - a game for talking over terrible decisions with your friends and trying to swing things your way (whilst potentially tanking the kingdom in the process) and then watching as things get out of hand really quickly. Negotiation works much better than trying to math the game out. And lean into the role on your house screen. The only other tip I have is that places and people get a bit confusing (because outside of each card, they mean nothing), so try and find some way to make them stick in your group's memory a bit. We made up stupid trivial pieces of information for characters and places sometimes to provide a bit of anchoring information, as the names are a bit fantasy-bland otherwise. In terms of scoring for the winner of the campaign, a very light spoiler as I think the game rules should make this a little more clear: Good and bad points are generally equivilent, one isn't worth less than the other
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Oct 27, 2022 23:33
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KongGeorgeVII posted:My group played through all of The King's Dilemma and we definitely felt like it had worn out it's welcome by the halfway point. Spoilers for some of the sticker spots in the rulebook: We had expected the stickers that go in the rulebook to be things that effected the rules and instead all we got were big lore dumps. For a legacy game, having the first game be effectively the same as the last and not having any idea of what they were aiming for because the scoring was fairly nebulous the whole way through was a bit frustrating. We also felt like there weren't really any consequences for our choices, certainly not on an individual level. Tentatively hopeful that the Queen's Dilemma fixes some of these problems but my gaming group is going to wait until retail and there are some reviews. It definitely looks like there are more individual consequences as each player is responsible for their own area which they will be upgrading and it looks like the stickers that go on the map do have rules changes. Yeah I can definitely see that view. Storyline decision spoilers:A couple of the storyline ending cards had some fantastic effects - we chose to turn humans into gold, and the rule change that provided played out comedically every game afterwards. I wished each storyline had a similar game effect to freshen up the gameplay a bit, 10 games in or so. Looking at The Queen's Dilemma, it looks like there will be more opportunties for wheeling and dealing, rule changes etc as well as more personal investment in the storyline, so I'm hopeful. Personally, I don't see a lack of a reset kit as an issue - I wouldn't play this through more than once anyway. My main complaint is with the writing: the daily story dilemmas haven't really shown an uptick in quality: they could desperately use an editor and/or someone to punch up the writing a bit. Many times in KD, I got confused after reading the card about what the hell we were actually voting for.
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Oct 28, 2022 01:41
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Ok well as they’ve reached a stretch milestone, they just dropped the base price of The Queen’s Dilemma to $99 and all existing pledges now come with a reset pack.
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Oct 28, 2022 21:46
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After coming off The King's Dilemma, my Saturday night group sat down to play/learn Oath. One of the guys in the group bought it a while ago and has been mad keen to introduce it to everyone. I was wary coming in - after multiple watches of several different videos explaining the rules, I felt like it was about 2 steps short of The Cones of Dunshire. Most of the others didn't really get a grasp of the rules from the videos and dad life gives them little time to prelearn this stuff, so I took it upon myself to be a second hand to help explain the game. My concern came from the game owner wanting to take charge of the night and god bless him he tries hard, but he's a very literal person and not everyone in the group approaches games in the same way. As we've talked about, there's definitely an art to explaining a game and something like Oath is particularly dense. I wanted to get everyone just playing, not worrying too much about the fine details, and talking out turns. Unfortunately this got a bit derailed - the game owner wanted to take charge of the explanation, but everytime we ran into a situation which we didn't have an exact answer for, they'd retreat to the rulebook and we'd spend 5 minutes waiting for him to dig it out. I suggested that he play the chancellor and I'd go directly after him so we could explain as we were moving, but he took his first turn completely silently and took 15 minutes to do so.  Eventually I convinced him to put the rulebook down and just smash through, not worrying too much about mistakes, and setting a turn timer (again, mostly for the owner). We managed to finish a game although it was 1:30am by the time we did so and I'm not sure we'll get it back to the table. The game itself was... fine? I'm sure there's a better way to make it work but all the weird edge cases and crossover situations and abstract mechanics made it really difficult to get a picture of what's going on and who's winning. What's the hook of the game? Where does the tension and experience come from? I'm sure it's well rated for a reason, and I'm no stranger to weird rules (The laws of oath is straight out of Avalon Hill's 1990s catalog) but I'm not convinced it was right for that group.
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Feb 13, 2023 01:10
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FulsomFrank posted:Like all Cole games but just a step behind John Company (IN MY OPINION) Oath is absolute nightmare to teach and your joke about Cones of Dunshire is spot on. Like you pointed out, my main issue with the game is that it just isn't good enough to warrant the headache of learning it initially, playing it enough to really understand it, and then inflicting it on new people. The game rewards repeated plays with a steady group and IN MY OPINION just isn't worth playing that much compared to other stuff. Also, someone always has a new game they want to play too so good luck doing just a simple, quick (~1.5hr) warm up play of it. Thanks for that. We're playing it again this weekend so I think I'll take it upon myself to run this session and be the explainer of rules of the game as concepts. I think this game disguises itself through the complexity as a crunchy game when it shouldn't be played like that at all - it's actually not fun to sit there and math out all the possibilites with this ruleset. Funnily enough I have a copy of Sideral Confluence that I'd like to get to the table which seems perfect here (crunchy + talky).
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Feb 27, 2023 11:47
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Are there any thread recommendations for turn timers (either app based or physical?) I've given up 'politely encouraging' some members of my gaming groups and am just going to insist that for certain games and weeknights, the timer comes out.
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Mar 1, 2023 22:11
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Thanks for the replies - I saw the turn timer cube before and really liked the idea, sounds like it worked as well as expected then. Going to turn timers is more my socially-acceptable solution to the problem. The person in question has been pestered and reminded so many times to hurry up that we either uninvite them (not desired) or we just got for a physical intervention, which seems fairer and takes away the social nagging aspect, which is good for all involved. Although a game of Eclipse done in 90 minutes sounds like enough of a reason on its own to buy!
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Mar 2, 2023 01:40
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Poopy Palpy posted:I got the tuner cube, tried to use it once or twice, but a real problem was defining what happens when your time runs out. In a 2 player game of chess you can just lose, but in a multiplayer euro game you can't just drop a player, they're explicitly not designed for that. "The player to your left gets to decide what you do"
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Mar 2, 2023 01:58
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WhiteHowler posted:Ask me about my two and a half hour 7 Wonders game sometime... Ok but I’ve started a timer for your explanation
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Mar 2, 2023 20:55
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It’s also a non-intuitive feedback in that if it takes you 6 minutes to do your turn and the other 3 people do theirs in 2 minutes each, then for you there’s not much downtime and hence you are less aware that there is a long time between other players turns. You also have less time, relative to your turn length, to plan for your next turn. 50% turn utilisation: oh man this game is engaging, I have so many options! Everyone else at 16%: I’VE SEEN GLACIERS MOVE FASTER THAN THIS GAME
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Mar 3, 2023 00:04
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jarofpiss posted:yeah no one has ever complained about that in this thread It's almost like people who are most enthusiastic and uncritical about these kickstarter bloated behemoths are also the kinds of people to never actually come in and play and/or discuss it.
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Mar 21, 2023 05:38
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Ix definitely improves the game and probably shouldn't be played without it. I enjoyed DI much more than I expected to and I'd be happy for it to continue to hit the table for a while. I think most of the negative reviews of it have come from 1) people expecting a serious deck builder and 2) picking woefully underpowered leaders. The deckbuilding aspect of it is important, but there's limited turns and by about turn 5, it's almost not worth buying anything aside from The Spice Must Flow (tm). Otherwise there's lots of different options and little economic levers to pull and particularly with Ix, you've got enough options open to you to keep it fair, whilst also providing some serious contention at certain decision points.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:15
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Alright I just read through the rules for Sidereal Confluence and now I'm really hyped to get this to the table. It wasn't nearly as complex as I thought it would be. Any teaching tips for this one, for a player count of 5-6?
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May 9, 2023 06:22
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Playing a 5/6p game of Oath tonight, and I’m Chancellor with the Banner of the People’s Favour. It’s our fourth play and the game hasn’t really been a big hit with our group so this could be the last time we play it. I’ve talked about it in here before and it relies heavily on players wanting a narrative for the story, where most of the group is more used to engine building euro games. Anyway, I’m planning to offer Citizenship to everyone and play the benevolent lord of the land, obsessed with only hoarding wealth, and see how it plays out from there. My encouragement is to get mini alliances and other things happening whilst trying to wriggle myself into an unassailable position. In the theme of narrative and bargaining I’ll spin some story against our resident AP player to either get some speed out of him or keep him locked out of the game if not. The comedy of it all is that he owns the game but is least suited to what the game is trying to offer. I’ll report back with the results and whether my friend is speaking to me or not at the end of the night 
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May 27, 2023 01:52
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Alright, so 6 player Oath is just too long if people want to chat as well, but we ended up having a pretty good game of it. I was Chancellor, holding the Banner of the People's Favour as the Oathkeeper. Successor win condition is to hold The Darkest Secret. First round, player 2 was already a citizen and player 3 accepted my offer to become a citizen. I gave him the relic from the reliquary spot that allowed me to pull extra cards when searching, but only as long as supply cost was 2. My initial plan wasn't much more than to just ratfuck the economy, collecting as much favor and secrets as possible and abusing the PF to remove suits that the non-citizens had as advisors. Players 2 and 3 were busy fighting each other for the Darkest Secret, which I was more than happy to encourage initially, especially as they were holding on to a Vision each "just in case". Player 4 was trying to AP his way to some sort of wild victory but none of the visions ended up helping him out towards that end. 5 and 6 had their own thing going on but similarly found it tough to get any kind of economy going. P6 became a citizen as well around turn 4. At this point though, the amassed secrets between 2 and 3 started becoming an issue. With my use of the PF and Player 4 and 5 burning cards off of sites in order to find something useful, we ended up with a multitude of denizens that had ways to cheaply obtain secrets or steal them. Rounds 5 and 6 saw the Darkest Secret ping-ponging back and forth between 2, 3 and 6. It was at this point I realised I may have a problem, as the upkeep on the PF was starting to really hurt and the combined strain of having so many armies out on the board saw the Empire's supply tank real hard. Then In Round 7, the cursed card Tinker's Fair came out as a Denizen, and the horse trading for the win began, as everyone started throwing their secrets at either 2 or 6. I didn't have enough cash on hand to exile all three, so my route to victory was appealing to player 4 to take the banner himself as an exile. I handed him all my secrets, he took the banner and then I threw a 1, ensuring the game headed to an eighth round. It was 1am this point and had I been slightly more awake, I could have (potentially) won myself by using the PF to discard the Tinker's Fair, but I only saw the play after I'd finished my turn. Ultimately, Player 2 had an unassaiable lead on secrets and no one else could challenge him for the banner. So the night did end up being memorable, but a couple of the players felt like they had no chance from early on and had checked out a bit. The last few rounds were just blatant Kingmaking and the ending went to show that potentially anyone could have won, but it felt weird to swoop in out of nowhere for a victory through pure negotiation. I doubt it'll hit the table again for a while but we managed to finally enjoy a game of it. I'm pushing Sidereal Confluence on them for next time
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May 30, 2023 05:09
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Survive is an easy playing silly game, good for warmups or to introduce gaming to those who haven't played many board games before. Annoying that it's not what you ordered though.
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Jun 23, 2023 00:19
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Playing Sidereal Confluence with 6 this weekend and I'm insisting we play with the Zeth. It's gonna be a good weekend.
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Jul 18, 2023 02:26
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I mean I sort of get it. If people are new to a board game (or board games generally) and someone is coming along to wreck your stuff (maybe but not really) then you’ll probably spend a disproportionate amount of energy worrying about them, or just refusing to deal with them at all. Having everyone not trade with the Zeth actually ruins their game and isn’t fun for the Zeth player. You also need to have a little bit of awareness that Envoys (the card) is definitely worth bidding for, even if you end up with the (minor) poison pill that is an Envoy. The first time I played with them I found it hard to sell Envoy tokens, which makes it really hard to increase your extortion payment demands, which you must do to keep up.
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Jul 18, 2023 11:34
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Aggro posted:Galaxy Trucker is a game that went through a great curve as we played more. First, we had low scores because we didn't know how to build good ships or anticipate the card draws. Then, we had high scores because we learned to build beautiful ships that could do everything. Then, scores plummeted when we realized that forcing your opponents to make awful ships is an even better strategy than making a great ship. Like, yea, it's fun to beat every enemy and store all of the cargo...but it's even more fun to win with 1 crewmember and 1 engine in a ship held together by papier-mâché. I feel like there's stages of board gaming. 1: You have never played before. You are about to sit down and play this stupid game about Portugeuse tiles that your friend won't shut up about until you try it. You have to play some dumb game about Hitler afterwards. You are only playing these for the friendship. 2: Catan is kind of fun! You're playing other games now, and mostly trying to not lose horribly. You don't really understand why a lot of rules are the way they are, but these things all look cool and the theme is fun. 3: You're well hooked. Catan is a bit boring - you're now trying to win, and win hard, every game you play. If it's not on the BGG hype list, you're not interested. You're backing everything you see on Kickstarter that looks remotely cool. You would sell your mother to get the premium minis add-on. 4: Your collection is out of control. You're playing through half of the poo poo you bought three years ago and see some of the flaws, but you're blinded because of the sunk costs. All those rules seened great on the kickstarter website but you don't understand why there have to be so many. 5: The bitterness has taken hold, and nothing comes out except Azul, 18XX and social deduction. Nothing is worth playing unless you can compeltely gently caress over everyone else. You will scream and flip the table if another kickstarter mess gets brought out that can't be learned in 5 minutes. You are only playing these for the friendship. If you modify those stages slightly then you can apply that mastery curve to almost any game. It's why Sidereal tells you not to play with the Zeth - unless you're a full stage 5 gronk like myself, people are too worried about "not losing" to see where the fun can be squeezed out of running an extortion racket (or counter negotiating for those fuckin envoys). It's also not fun for the Zeth when the Zeth's targets don't play along. I guess I'm weirdly defensive about it because the designer has made some excellent posts (and an excellent game) so I'm inclined to trust his judgement around providing general advice in a rulebook.
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Jul 20, 2023 09:21
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This is also why I think my friends who only play social deduction games "because I'm too stupid to play economic games" are actually the smartest people I know.
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Jul 20, 2023 09:23
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I started ‘serious’ board gaming with Avalon Hill games in the 90s as a youngin playing with his old man and his friends. Civilisation and Britannia let me live the fantasy of ruling an ancient kingdom but I know that I was getting rolled by those who could manipulate the others better. AH then died and it mostly all fell off my radar until about 10 years ago when the hobby started swinging up in popularity and I discovered things like Avalon, Carcassone and CamelUp - stupid goofy games that you get going quickly in and allow you to concentrate more on the interaction than having to memorise the 8 conditions that allow you to move into the hinterlands for free but without having to burn a secret to do so. In all of this, Kickstarter is a blessing and a curse I’m just baffled by those who sink this money into outrageously unproven games (or worse, into the designers who have proven to make minifig bloated pieces of crap LOOKING AT YOU ERIC LANG) and slightly concerned for the future of the industry when this all comes crashing down as people realise there’s only a finite amount of time. This rage posting is all because my friends are dumb and have no taste when it comes to games and keep bringing out trash and no I will not make new friends 
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Jul 21, 2023 04:58
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Some Strange Flea posted:
Depends on the group, but by the time everyone understood the terms of the finale and we’d worked through it, it was about 2 hours.
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Jul 22, 2023 05:59
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Spiteski posted:Got Sidereal Confluence as it fortuitously came up for sale while this thread was yarning about it.  You should be ok - as the advice above said, I’d just not bother inventing anything until turn 3 for your first games. Just try and run your converters as efficiently as possible and don’t get too caught up on trade values. Except don’t make the mistake I always do and get baited into thinking that two small are worth 1 large. If you’re playing with more than 5, it’s probably fine to include the Zeth, as Unity/Eni Et/Yengii are a bit rough to work out on your first game. Also whatever race you pick (you should pick Zeth), you should commit as hard as you can to their gimmick, including speaking in an Italian accent and making people offers they cannot refuse.
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Aug 3, 2023 11:28
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Spiteski posted:Realised I never reported back on how our first game of Sidereal Confluence went! One of the fun things about Unity is that you can skew the way resources are balanced. No demand for big cubes? Make the computer worlds that turn them into ultratech or small cubes. Too many smalls around? Upgrade your techs so that they take any small junk and charge a premium for your larges in trade.
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Sep 12, 2023 06:17
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My mother cheats in our family Carcassone games. We play such that if everyone ahead of you in the turn order has picked up a tile, you can grab one early to start thinking about your move. Sometimes, she will causally look at a piece, decide she doesn’t like it, put it back and then try another. I’m just wondering which of this threads strategies for dealing with cheaters I should go with? Do I fire her into the sun or organise a massive game and then call her out in front of everyone or just stop speaking to her? Even when she cheats she rarely wins but this behaviour clearly demands measures beyond karma.
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Sep 27, 2023 09:21
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Magnetic North posted:In this case, there may be another option. IIRC, Carcassonne has a somewhat common house rule that just has you draw at the end of your turn instead of the start. You keep it secret until it becomes your turn but it can let you plan ahead. Apparently it's called Precognition according to this random tiny wiki I found, but could not find tons of additional info. The other thing you could do is include this with the Strategic Variant where players have a 'hand' of 3 tiles. Ah that’s what we do (Precognition), hence giving her the chance to sneakily try for a different tile whilst we’re all distracted.
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Sep 27, 2023 11:13
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SettingSun posted:I'd let my mom cheat at Carcassonne; I'll hold viciously preventing cities from closing for my boardgaming friends. Yeah it doesn't really bother me that she cheats; it's a fun exercise for me to catch her when she's doing it. And of course if she's having a complete shocker of a game, I won't say anything at all. When I was growing up, she was very much the paragon of making sure things were fair - compeltely against any sort of cheating to gain an advantage. She doesn't have a manipulative bone in her body and is not someone I would have ever described as competitive, so it's hilarious to me to see the lengths she'll go to in order to try and win an extremely low-stakes game. I on the other hand, will mericlessly drop the 4 sided city tile on my father's almost-closed city. Really, it's his fault for being so greedy
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Oct 7, 2023 00:55
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Also you guys weren't joking about the Too Many Bones rulebook being a complete piece of poo poo.
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Oct 7, 2023 01:37
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My monthly board gaming group has played Sidereal Confluence for the last 5 sessions and it's been a real hit with them. Even the guys who have found it a bit dense to approach still really like playing it, which is a testament to the nature of the game. After the most recent night, I ordered Sidereal Confluence: Bifurcation. I'd assumed that people were getting a little fatigued, so we would play a different game for a few months first - I wanted to avoid another Oath situation where one person is loving it but everyone else hates it. So after giving something else a go, then I can pull out the expansion out to get everyone keen again. I punched the pieces out and then posted a pic of it in the group chat (mostly as a whinge about HOW poo poo IT IS THAT THE EXPANSION BOX DOESNT HAVE AN ORGANISER) and then next minute I have 4 DMs asking if we can play it again immediately, if they can be race X and will I support them if they try a new strategy out? Why yes, yes we can.
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Oct 16, 2023 00:14
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Nemesis Lockdown got pulled out last night much to my dismay and everyone else's enthusiasm. No one likes the guy at the table who complains all the time about the game though - so I took the spicy route and chose Hacker in the character draft after seeing one of my hidden objectives was to make sure everyone else died. This was probably the most I've enjoyed playing it or the original and the character choice was perfect. Everyone started off fairly well but once people start splitting up the game gets much tricker and people need to actually collaborate and communicate to help stop the place burning down. I was able to use the character to provide useful, legitimate information to the other players whilst simultaneously not doing anything to help them when they got into a sticky situation. It's the absolute best part of a hidden role game when you're watching everyone die in a section full of monsters and knowing that I could help turn the pwoer back on... but I won't. First person (and the guy who chose to play it tonight ) died fairly quickly to an unlucky larvae event. The other two guys who'd been following him around also ended up getting overwhelmed and one died quickly without immediate support, the other just locked himself into a room and tried to run the timer out.Meanwhile at the other end of the base, I'm helping the last guy get to his objective, but lucky card draws meant I was able to escape to the surface rooms and activate the vent controls to kill the Queen (blocking my escape) .. and then vent the room my buddy was in . There might have been a little bit of a payback aspect to that as he'd rampaged through me exclusively at our previous session playing Eclipse 2e. The last player died to his wounds and then I stroll out the front door to victory.I think there's actually the bones of a decent game in there but my god does it need an edit. The 90-180 minute timer on the box is some absolute crap if everyone stays alive the whole time. The designer has good taste in games according to his BGG profile (Agricola, Through the Ages, Sid Meier's Civilization, Eclipse and Galaxy Trucker) but sadly the tight and snappy aspect of them hasn't carried over to this. Anyway, the experience generator has now had me throw a grenade into a populated room and eject someone out the airlock, but the cost is having to memorise 16 pages of rules and slog through a few 4 hour sessions to do it.
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Oct 23, 2023 23:56
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Magnetic North posted:Another terrific little advice video from Jon Purkis: 10 Pitfalls Board Gamers Should Avoid I'm sure most thread denizens are familiar with most of these, but it's nice to see someone not cult-of-the-new-ing everyone to death. He also simps for Knizia, what a lad.
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Oct 25, 2023 12:35
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Only play terrible games with your Cheeto eating friends so that they may buy a replacement copy at any time
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Oct 26, 2023 04:54
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What about games like Skull that can’t be sleeved? Checkmate sleeviests
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Oct 26, 2023 05:00
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Mock (all) Wingspan Enjoyers
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Nov 3, 2023 03:39
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Bottom Liner posted:I appreciate you lumping TfM in with SM games. They definitely made and proved a point there. I think the design of SM games is quite good, or at least, easily interpreted, which leads onto the other thing they do well, which is generate hype. One of my regular board game nights kicked off by playing through the Scythe campaign (which was also my first introduction to Kickstarted games). I wouldn't say it was super memorable but it was easy to play and I appreicated the simplistic loop of the action selection. Once we've progressed from SidCon to an18xx binge (timeline on this is next year) I might break it out one night and see if it holds up for everyone.
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Nov 10, 2023 04:01
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jmzero posted:And yet... it appears we're all wrong (at least in some sense) because there's 1600 backers and €450k pledged. They’d have to compete with all the bland, incredibly expensive Kickstarter MWEs. Honestly, I thought buying the regular edition of FCM was expensive enough. I wonder if Splotter are charging an insane licensing fee so as to not compete with their regular edition?
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Nov 22, 2023 09:21
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Yet another Sidereal Confluence trip report, this time with a couple of the Bifurcation expansion races! This was a five player game with Faderan Conclave, K'jas Directorate, Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl, Imdril Grand Fleet and Yengii Jii. Everyone in this group now has around 4-8 plays under their belt of the original races, so I felt like this was a good time to introduce some additional dynamics to the game. Sidereal Confluence: Bifurcation provides a variant of each of the base game's races and if chosen, are played instead of the original race. Each variant has a new set of starting cards and race specific tokens (if applicable) but reuses the existing race's technology cards. The variant races are a sort-of inversion of each of the original races but still retaining their flavour: The Zeth Charity Syndicate now must beg to get their economy traded back to them each turn but you probably still won't refuse their offers, the K'jas Independants are completely reliant on donation goods from other players rather than being self sufficient, the Faderan Society of Falling Light are almost completely independent of everyone else by inventing for cheap but trading with them requires accepting a poison pill. The Caylion Collaborative is super interesting in that you become the center of attention due to people wanting to 'vote' on which set of your high-quality converters will activate this turn, of which each person who cast a vote will receive one, creating a dynamic where it's a great race for a newcomer OR a super experienced player to use as they'll be the center of attention. Some of the harder races to play become much easier with their variant (Deep Unity) and some of the less interesting races have an entirely new sthick to make them more challenging. The Bifurcation rulebook makes a big deal about being careful about how much 'Impact' new (to SideCon base AND/OR expansion) players see, and most of the new races have an impact score now: unlike the base game where the Zeth Anocracy is 2, and Eni'Et Ascendancy are 1, and everyone else aside from maybe the Yengii are 0. I wasn't necessarily convinced but I heeded the warning and capped the expansion races at 2 regardless. I played Faderan Conclave - I've now played SidCon about 8 times but this was the first game where I felt like I was actually getting a handle on everything and didn't make any major mistakes. The Yengii Jii are trying to sell 'Constraints' which are a high value converter (1 -> 3 or 0 -> 2) but they come with a catch - you can no longer consume the resource they generate for you. I accepted two - one was a [white -> two yellow], and the other was a [brown -> Ultratech], which then locks me out of using ultratech and yellow as an input. I was careful to make sure that I wasn't restricting any of my starting converters or the Relic World Deck. Two was pretty comfortable - I got a lot of free resources and rarely felt like I was being restricted from doing what I wanted. It also helped to focus my game a bit - instead of deciding which cards to upgrade, if it had an input I couldn't use, it was immediately burned to upgrade another card instead. The Im'Dril Grand Fleet start rich and with 5 fleets, but can't deploy any more, so they're about starting ahead and staying ahead. They can produce and sell 'Orbital Factories' which produce an extra small/large cube when attached to a planet. They weren't hugely important and didn't feel that impactful - I accepted early payment to take one, on the condition that it's output was given back to the Im'Dril player at the start of each turn. That said, their starting wealth is quite powerful so while they're difficult to leverage early, by the end of the game as their economy runs out of steam, you can start putting the screws on them. The game was fantastic - the modified races really change the game in subtle ways that forces everyone to look for alternate trades. Where base/inexperienced players might just be looking to trade cubes in a 1:1 manner, adding these different effects really pushes people down the path of multi-turn deals, trading converters and research teams away for fees as well as pre-arranged resource swaps. It really encourages some creative interactivity to get the most out of your economy and adds another layer to what is already a fantastic game. The Yenjii Jii player told me later that at the start of the game he was feeling like he'd played enough SidCon for a while, but by the end of the game he was completely on board with playing more. I won with 64.5 points, with the Grand Fleet player at about 61 and Yengii Jii at about 60 - our previous winning scores have been around the 45 mark. The additonal resources available help to get more research going (we had way more tech out than we have had previously, which was also helped by no one's economy crashing, which I put down to experience. The Kit and K'jas players were a bit further behind but they're still getting a handle on the game and I think they suffered a little from being so indepedent as you miss a lot of value if you think your own economy is 'enough'. It's a fantastic expansion that really pushes you into more mind-bending deals and collaborating with the other players at the board. Making life harder for yourself in this game really forces you to look at the alternatives available, so it's strongly recommended for once you've got a decent grasp of the base game.
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Nov 27, 2023 23:11
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Radioactive Toy posted:I also just recently opened my copy of Bifurcation which I received as a gift a year ago. It didn't have mold, but the card colors were messed up slightly in an older printing and the small brown cubes look black, which could easily trip people up in such a fast moving game. According to a BGG thread the newest printing fixed that problem. I'm thinking about trying to reach out to wizkids but I'm not sure if they would do anything about it. Did you mean the base game? Bifurcation doesn't have any cubes included from what I can see and its style matches the Remastered version of SidCon. The original printing of Sidereal Confluence was a readability mess, and also had the cube issue from memory.
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Nov 28, 2023 04:18
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