I'm going to keep an eye on eBay in the next couple of days and see if I can get a copy of Eclipse for something approximating reasonable. That'll let me bring it to my local group.
Eminent Domain was pretty fun. Apparently, it only actually works with 3 players, but even with 4 it's still an enjoyable experience.
While Eminent Domain is a fun game, after playing Core Worlds a couple of times, I don't think I will ever go back to it.
Still itching to play Eclipse. One of my friends has it, and I've watched part of a game and it looks amazing.
Carcassonne is far from random. If it were random, how is Rym able to win so consistently? Also, if your friends take a long time on their turn, in any game, yell at them and hit them.
I have only played 7 games of Carcassonne in my life, and I've won every one. I've decided never to play it again to keep my 100% record.
Perfect example, Luke. Carcassonne is definitely not a game ruined by randomness. (The anecdote above also reminds me of my wife, who quit playing Pandemic after winning in her first game so she could say she's never lost a game of it.)
Played Carcassonne for the first time with a couple of friends. We learnt two things; 1) Building massive cities doesnt work when your a bunch of dicks, 2) Fuck roads.
Do not fuck roads. What you want to do is always have one road and one castle you are working on at any given time. That way no matter what tile you draw, you have a place to put it to score points.
Played Discworld: Ankh Morpork last night and was very impressed. It's a Martin Wallace-designed Euro game so I expected it to be a lengthy economic engine-builder. I have never read any of the Discworld books, so I didn't have any expectations of theme, although a couple who joined us has read them and enjoyed the game as well.
Ankh Morpork is a simple area control game (map with a blob of 12 or so spaces) that plays in 60 minutes. All actions have to come from playing cards in your hand with action symbols on them, making turns easy to digest. Play a card. Do what it says. Refill your hand and on to the next.
The twist is that there are 7 different potential victory conditions. You are dealt one in secret at the start of the game (max 4 players, so 3 will be put back in the box w/o being revealed). Figure out what your opponents goals are in order to prevent them from reaching victory, while achieving your own condition w/o making your moves too obvious.
Need to play this a few more times but I think this one could have legs. It went over really well with a group that does not typically come over to play anything more complicated than Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne. Having a hard time deciding whether I like this or El Grande more. Not the same game, but the closest cousin I could wrack my brain for.
I've played Eclipse three times now. I think it's the #3 game in my book, beaten only by Puerto Rico and T&E. The only thing that keeps it down is the randomness of the hexes and the randomness of the dice.
Having played the game once with 5, once with 6, and once with 3 players, I definitely like less players more. Maybe because I won the 3 player game. I get the feeling that 4 is the ideal number for balancing between the resource competition and randomness of hex exploration.
You do use more hexes when there are more players, but not that many more. If you get lucky in a 6 player game and draw awesome hexes, you are going to have a clear advantage over someone who draws lots of alien ships and has a slower start. They can discard them, but they still lose the action. With 3 players the competition wasn't fierce enough and we didn't even explore all the tiles. I really get the feeling that four player will be the best, as with most games. I also really want to try two player, out of curiosity.
Also, 5 and 6 player games just take too long, but the book is accurate. It's 30 minutes per player. A 6 player game will take 3 hours and a 3 player game will take 90 minutes. The problem is that teaching the game and setting it up can take quite a bit of time.
How hard is it to learn? Do you need to be taught it, or can it be learned by reading through the rule book?
Is it difficult to teach?
It's about the same as Puerto Rico plus some combat rules and a handful of small but important details. The rulebook itself could be organized a bit better to make it easier. If I weren't lazy/busy I would rewrite the rules.
Awesome, I might pick it up then... Do you think it would be OK with two people? I've been looking for a good 4x board game that scales well for 2 people.
Awesome, I might pick it up then... Do you think it would be OK with two people? I've been looking for a good 4x board game that scales well for 2 people.
How hard is it to learn? Do you need to be taught it, or can it be learned by reading through the rule book?
Is it difficult to teach?
It's not too bad, we managed reading the rules and setup in 45 minutes the first time we played. Second time setup plus explaining the rules to people who were unfamiliar with them took less than half an hour. We are all experienced board gamers though, so your results may vary. The mechanics of the game are pretty standard and logical. There are also videos on BGG explaining the rules so if even one of your group sacrifices a couple of hours beforehand to really get to know the rules that will cut down on the prep time and first game time significantly.
Awesome, I might pick it up then... Do you think it would be OK with two people? I've been looking for a good 4x board game that scales well for 2 people.
Good luck getting a copy.
I'm done buying games for the time being unless something absolutely incredible comes up, I'm waiting for the reprinting in the spring.
I've done some digging trying to find good prices for Eclipse (not happening until the reprint, grats to those who scored it) and Core Worlds. I've been really disappointed on the prices I've been seeing on Core Worlds. Amazons best price is 3 bucks off of MSRP. With prices like that, I'm waiting for my local board game shop to open today so I can call them and try to just get it from them if they have it on hand.
I disagree with Scott about the impact of hex and dice randomness. It's rather like T&E in that the randomness element exists, but it exists equally for everyone, and everyone has the same capacity to mitigate it. Odds manipulation is also an incredibly important part of the game.
I mean, if I draw 6 red tiles in T&E, you're not beating me in an internal conflict. That's it. But you can play around that, and the game is really a test of whoever plays around their luck the best. Eclipse is the same way.
I'll point out that Scott has bitched up and down about the random element in T&E, much the same as the random element in Eclipse. And in both cases, the amount of bitching is inversely proportional to Scott's victory point total. :P
The only way to really know, though, is to play the game a whole bunch more. We've played 3 times with different numbers of players. That's hardly a robust data set. We need to play lots of 4 player games to really figure it out.
The difference between T&E and Eclipse is that in Eclipse, momentum is much more serious. Drawing some awesome hexes with lots of places to put cubes early on provides you with a huge head start that lasts the rest of the game. Once you get ahead of other people in terms of number of ships, science, and/or upgrades it is very difficult for them to catch up without luck of their own.
In T&E you can be off the board one minute and sitting in a monument a few turns later. That fist full of red tiles only helps you once or twice. Then it's gone. That tile that lets you place cubes and the easy discovery tile will boost you for the entire game.
The only way to really know, though, is to play the game a whole bunch more. We've played 3 times with different numbers of players. That's hardly a robust data set. We need to play lots of 4 player games to really figure it out.
The difference between T&E and Eclipse is that in Eclipse, momentum is much more serious. Drawing some awesome hexes with lots of places to put cubes early on provides you with a huge head start that lasts the rest of the game. Once you get ahead of other people in terms of number of ships, science, and/or upgrades it is very difficult for them to catch up without luck of their own.
In T&E you can be off the board one minute and sitting in a monument a few turns later. That fist full of red tiles only helps you once or twice. Then it's gone. That tile that lets you place cubes and the easy discovery tile will boost you for the entire game.
I don't know if the momentum in Eclipse is more serious, or that T&E lets you interfere sooner. If someone gets early temples, for example, they can gain a commanding lead if they're left to their own devices for too long. Also, conquest in T&E can snowball dramatically. Take one small kingdom, and now you have one large kingdom that can smash things into ruin. And if you get completely knocked off the board late in the game, the odds are that you won't be able to recover. So someone else's momentum can totally wreck the game for you, and you won't even have a chance to respond.
However, because we can dick each other over right out the gate, you can stop or slow that momentum. In Eclipse, it's usually at least 2 turns before anyone's dick is positioned properly.
Then again, Eclipse gives everyone the chance to generate their own momentum. I think the key is that you have to decide how to play the rest of your turns based on your first three drawn hexes. No resources? Research orbitals and go for a science victory. That sort of thing. And if you play the humans, you have a very good ability to respond to just about anything.
Your example of someone running away with the game has only happened once, and it only happened because we fucked up the most crucial rule in the game. With the ability to convert resources, you never just get fucked - you might have to suffer a turn or two of inefficiency, but you've still got a shot at winning.
The only way to really know, though, is to play the game a whole bunch more. We've played 3 times with different numbers of players. That's hardly a robust data set. We need to play lots of 4 player games to really figure it out.
I've been thinking about a house rule for Eclipse that region 2 hexes are available only after all region 1 spaces are filled and similarly for region 3 hexes being available only after region 2 spaces are filled.
This helps a bit with uneven momentum since region 3 tiles are th most unbalanced. It also forces players to connect regions and pretty much elimiates the incentive to turtle up by building a long corridor out into region 3 space.
Vassal has just about every game, but is the worst user experience. The pain is so great, it's not even worth the effort to make it work.
I am sad to hear this, as I have had a few friends give good accounts of it at my gaming group. They're not even particularly techie.
It looks like it's all fan-made modules and stuff, is Vassal the problem or is it the crappy modules people write?
Both. Try setting it up, see how it goes. It's one of those things that works, but induces much pain upon the user. Some people just don't care. They don't even realize it's shitty, and it doesn't even bother them.
Vassal has just about every game, but is the worst user experience. The pain is so great, it's not even worth the effort to make it work.
I am sad to hear this, as I have had a few friends give good accounts of it at my gaming group. They're not even particularly techie.
It looks like it's all fan-made modules and stuff, is Vassal the problem or is it the crappy modules people write?
Both. Try setting it up, see how it goes. It's one of those things that works, but induces much pain upon the user. Some people just don't care. They don't even realize it's shitty, and it doesn't even bother them.
Fair enough. I'm quite willing to give it a shot, just need to find some willing opponents.
I'll probably see how they handle matchmaking tonight and might try to scare up a few rounds of something if no one here wants to try it.
This might be a way I'd be able to run a Battlestations game for a few of my geographically distant friends, too. It was such a blast when I ran it before.
Comments
Still itching to play Eclipse. One of my friends has it, and I've watched part of a game and it looks amazing.
I also have the epic expansion. The shrink wrap has been removed from the expansion, but it hasn't even been punched.
It's pretty much never going to get played, and I need the space on my shelf for Eclipse.
Massive cities can work, but you need to build them slow and methodically, and give your dick friends ZERO opportunity to butt in or close it off.
Ankh Morpork is a simple area control game (map with a blob of 12 or so spaces) that plays in 60 minutes. All actions have to come from playing cards in your hand with action symbols on them, making turns easy to digest. Play a card. Do what it says. Refill your hand and on to the next.
The twist is that there are 7 different potential victory conditions. You are dealt one in secret at the start of the game (max 4 players, so 3 will be put back in the box w/o being revealed). Figure out what your opponents goals are in order to prevent them from reaching victory, while achieving your own condition w/o making your moves too obvious.
Need to play this a few more times but I think this one could have legs. It went over really well with a group that does not typically come over to play anything more complicated than Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne. Having a hard time deciding whether I like this or El Grande more. Not the same game, but the closest cousin I could wrack my brain for.
Having played the game once with 5, once with 6, and once with 3 players, I definitely like less players more. Maybe because I won the 3 player game. I get the feeling that 4 is the ideal number for balancing between the resource competition and randomness of hex exploration.
You do use more hexes when there are more players, but not that many more. If you get lucky in a 6 player game and draw awesome hexes, you are going to have a clear advantage over someone who draws lots of alien ships and has a slower start. They can discard them, but they still lose the action. With 3 players the competition wasn't fierce enough and we didn't even explore all the tiles. I really get the feeling that four player will be the best, as with most games. I also really want to try two player, out of curiosity.
Also, 5 and 6 player games just take too long, but the book is accurate. It's 30 minutes per player. A 6 player game will take 3 hours and a 3 player game will take 90 minutes. The problem is that teaching the game and setting it up can take quite a bit of time.
Is it difficult to teach?
I mean, if I draw 6 red tiles in T&E, you're not beating me in an internal conflict. That's it. But you can play around that, and the game is really a test of whoever plays around their luck the best. Eclipse is the same way.
I'll point out that Scott has bitched up and down about the random element in T&E, much the same as the random element in Eclipse. And in both cases, the amount of bitching is inversely proportional to Scott's victory point total. :P
The only way to really know, though, is to play the game a whole bunch more. We've played 3 times with different numbers of players. That's hardly a robust data set. We need to play lots of 4 player games to really figure it out.
In T&E you can be off the board one minute and sitting in a monument a few turns later. That fist full of red tiles only helps you once or twice. Then it's gone. That tile that lets you place cubes and the easy discovery tile will boost you for the entire game.
However, because we can dick each other over right out the gate, you can stop or slow that momentum. In Eclipse, it's usually at least 2 turns before anyone's dick is positioned properly.
Then again, Eclipse gives everyone the chance to generate their own momentum. I think the key is that you have to decide how to play the rest of your turns based on your first three drawn hexes. No resources? Research orbitals and go for a science victory. That sort of thing. And if you play the humans, you have a very good ability to respond to just about anything.
Your example of someone running away with the game has only happened once, and it only happened because we fucked up the most crucial rule in the game. With the ability to convert resources, you never just get fucked - you might have to suffer a turn or two of inefficiency, but you've still got a shot at winning. Is Eclipse on Vassal? That'd be swell.
No Eclipse yet, but this is here, and is awesome.
In all seriousness, if anyone ever wants to play anything on Vassal, I'll probably be in to do it, even if I have no idea how to play.
It looks like it's all fan-made modules and stuff, is Vassal the problem or is it the crappy modules people write?
This helps a bit with uneven momentum since region 3 tiles are th most unbalanced. It also forces players to connect regions and pretty much elimiates the incentive to turtle up by building a long corridor out into region 3 space.
I'll probably see how they handle matchmaking tonight and might try to scare up a few rounds of something if no one here wants to try it.
This might be a way I'd be able to run a Battlestations game for a few of my geographically distant friends, too. It was such a blast when I ran it before.