I've wondered about 2 or 3 players with the expansion buildings. Seems like the granary et al could add an interesting dynamic to a lower player count.
I would think that in a 4-player game, there'd be too much interaction for the expansions to mean much.
----
So I own Impulse, the Chudyk 4X-flavored card game. I've played a handful of 2 and 3-player games, and while I don't quite "get" it like I "get" GtR, I can see how it's a solid game. Complex and fun.
This weekend, I played both a 5 and a 6 player game of it. People on BGG complained about the game breaking down at high player counts, but people on BGG bitch about all kinds of things. How bad could it be?
Impulse is fucking terrible at 5 and 6 players. You have so little control over anything in the sector that it essentially becomes a lengthy game of card-drawing.
I'd consider it utterly unplayable at 5 and 6 with the rules as written - the primary issue, I think, is the lack of scaling. I'm contemplating tinkering with an expanded map (one more ring of cards) at high player counts, to see if that alleviates some of the problem. Still wouldn't change the problem of the impulse changing too quickly in those player counts, but it would at least allow for the proper development and exploitation of an Exploration-based machine.
I've wondered about 2 or 3 players with the expansion buildings. Seems like the granary et al could add an interesting dynamic to a lower player count.
I would think that in a 4-player game, there'd be too much interaction for the expansions to mean much.
----
So I own Impulse, the Chudyk 4X-flavored card game. I've played a handful of 2 and 3-player games, and while I don't quite "get" it like I "get" GtR, I can see how it's a solid game. Complex and fun.
This weekend, I played both a 5 and a 6 player game of it. People on BGG complained about the game breaking down at high player counts, but people on BGG bitch about all kinds of things. How bad could it be?
Impulse is fucking terrible at 5 and 6 players. You have so little control over anything in the sector that it essentially becomes a lengthy game of card-drawing.
I'd consider it utterly unplayable at 5 and 6 with the rules as written - the primary issue, I think, is the lack of scaling. I'm contemplating tinkering with an expanded map (one more ring of cards) at high player counts, to see if that alleviates some of the problem. Still wouldn't change the problem of the impulse changing too quickly in those player counts, but it would at least allow for the proper development and exploitation of an Exploration-based machine.
Interesting thought, Pete. The one time I played Impulse was with 6 people and I didn't really enjoy the game and haven't really gone back to it since. Maybe I should try 3-4 players instead.
Played some new games over the last few weeks. Games that stuck out to me were Mogul, Viceroy, and Viticulture. Definitely need to get in more games of Viceroy and Viticulture. Viticulture is akin to Agricola, but with making wine. I prefer it over to Agricola by far. (Alcohol > babies)
A friend also came back from GenCon and showed us the Firefly Shiny Dice game. It's not released to later this year, but it's a standard press your luck dice game that is extremely well matched with the Firefwell universe, thematically. I know ScoJo will enjoy it. It's a light game to play especially with Firefly fans.
Interesting thought, Pete. The one time I played Impulse was with 6 people and I didn't really enjoy the game and haven't really gone back to it since. Maybe I should try 3-4 players instead.
I find the largest element of control in the game comes from exploring and exploiting territory. Command ships around to take actions, and that forms the foundation of an engine. Minerals and techs enhance that, plans are there to give you the ability to deal a death blow. Much like GtR, your path is likely dictated by your initial hand and first couple of cards - the challenge is to see the path you need to take and get there faster than everyone else.
So with 3 players, everyone has the physical room and the actions to actually control enough territory to build an engine.
With 6 players, that isn't the case. Add to that the rapidly changing impulse, and you really lack any control over your game.
With 3 players, everyone will get to use everyone else's actions - so the interactivity actually matters, and you can actually plan your expansion and development with the progression of the impulse.
The extra ring won't fix the impulse length problem, but that's a different hurdle. The other option is that you could play 6-player games exclusively as team games - though you might still want more space.
We play Innovation as a team game with 4. In general, I feel Chudyk's games have "too much" chaos at higher player counts (instead of "just enough"), and the teams open up avenues for clever play.
Between OG.com and 538, I have more than enough board game stats this week... my favorite being this chart of average BGG user ratings, with curves for games published in 1994, 2004, and 2014. Not only is the mean higher for 2014, but the shape of the curve is different.
I would posit that this is largely due to the user base of BGG. The old school users were much more likely to sit and read the detailed rating criteria, that explain what a 5 means versus an 8, etc. BGG is one of those sites that attempts to use the whole 10 point scale. Newer users just pop in and rate things like most people do: using only the 6-10 range of the 10 point scale.
I'd be interested to see the difference in 1s and 10s over those time spans.
That's close to my theory - an influx of enthusiastic new gamers that are in their honeymoon phase are likely to rate everything higher in general.
My own BGG ratings thin out at the bottom end of the scale largely because I base my playing (not just purchasing!) decisions on reviews and rules pdfs. I have a handful of 3s and 4s, though.
I would posit that this is largely due to the user base of BGG. The old school users were much more likely to sit and read the detailed rating criteria, that explain what a 5 means versus an 8, etc. BGG is one of those sites that attempts to use the whole 10 point scale. Newer users just pop in and rate things like most people do: using only the 6-10 range of the 10 point scale.
I'd be interested to see the difference in 1s and 10s over those time spans.
I think there are also two other factors at play here:
1. There are tons of reviews available for games now, so a person is more likely to buy and rate a game they like, because he or she already has information about it already, rather than buying and playing something blindly.
2. The more you play a game, which should be an indication that you enjoy it, the lower you're probably going to rate it. For example: when Dominion originally came out, I would have probably rated it a 9 because I thought it was amazing and there really wasn't anything else like it out there. Now however, after countless Dominion games, expansions, and other games using the same mechanics, I'm pretty burned out on Dominion and I'd probably rate it in the 607 range. This factor could be affecting older games that have lower scores, as opposed to "Cult of the New" games that are getting higher scores.
Imperial Assault is lots of fun. Campaign seems to provide good amount of content. Didn't get a chance to skirmish so I'm not sure how well it would work long term.
San Juan - iPad pass-and-play on a six hour plane ride with a crying baby.
Fresh Fish - occasionally the "modern" rules result in situations where one player can grab premium spots on the board without spending any money. Last game, two players were in unassailable positions with half of the game remaining. Of course, this is the result of careless opponents, and most of the time that careless opponent is me...
Primordial Soup - the water was stagnant on the second turn, leading to a board where everyone turned to predation or parasitism due to lack of safe food supplies. The body count was noteworthy.
Legendary: Predator (new to me) - this iteration of Legendary finally feels solid enough to rate a '7' from me. We played it both cooperatively and competitively, and both are enjoyable games.
Too Many Cinderellas - played all week at PAX, and more over the next week. The best hand is the cat and the old man.
Firefly: Pirates and Bounty Hunters - playing something other than the "New Londinium" scenario, which is a scenario I find thoroughly unenjoyable... the expansions over the past two years have been improvements for me, so I'm glad that the people who own this game have them. I'd prefer to play with 3-4, but still enjoyed playing with 5. Reavers ate my crew, as usual.
Fast Food Franchise (new to me) - My assessment: how rare; an interesting, brief, enjoyable take on Monopoly, even with two players. Anthony's assessment: we should never play this with two players ever again.
Bruges (new to me) - feels like Feld, plays like Feld... although it could stick around because of the different character cards.
Rails of New England (new to me) - it was late, so we stopped after six rounds, just to get a sense of it. The rules (even the revised rules on BGG) are poor, but the game is enjoyable. I've skied in or near some of the towns on the map.
I had a hilarious solo play of Legendary Encounters: Predator today: I was playing two hands and was at the very end of the game, with 3 enemies in the combat zone including the Predator itself.
Third to last turn (Hand 1) - Hand 2 (Radioman) coordinated a card with Hand 1 (Lieutenant) that would let him live even if he took a killing blow; the card specifically said the player would just die at the end of next turn if he was still at his maximum damage level.
The Lieutenant took exactly what would be a killing by having a total value of 9 in strikes, lowering his HP to 0, but because the Radioman helped with that card, he lived to play another turn.
Second to last turn (Hand 2) - Radioman reveals the alternate victory condition to the mission: a card called “The Choppa!” In order to escape on it, a player needs to spend 3 recruitment points to attempt to board it. After spending the 3 points, the player needs to draw a strike for every enemy left in the combat zone, and if he survives, he’s safe and out of the game.
Unfortunately for Radioman, his escape attempt failed and the strikes killed him.
Last turn (Hand 1) - Lieutenant had enough attack power to kill the weakest of the 3 enemies remaining in the combat zone, making the escape attempt slightly easier. As a last-ditch effort, he paid the helicopter cost, and drew his two required strikes. Each one dealt exactly 0 damage, keeping my total HP at 0 and not dipping into the negatives (which would have killed him).
So, because this technically happened before the end of his turn, Lieutenant managed to board the helicopter and win. The Predator angrily shook its fist at Lieutenant as he flew off into the sunset and presumably died on the way home.
X-Com puts one player in that role on purpose. The commander has to coordinate everyone's high level actions.
The "Flight Officer" aka "The guy who runs the app on his phone" can run roughshod over the Commander. The Commander runs the budget and if he screws that up it ends the game really quickly.
Firefly: Pirates and Bounty Hunters - playing something other than the "New Londinium" scenario, which is a scenario I find thoroughly unenjoyable... the expansions over the past two years have been improvements for me, so I'm glad that the people who own this game have them. I'd prefer to play with 3-4, but still enjoyed playing with 5. Reavers ate my crew, as usual.
This was my game and I'll expand on it:
I recently added the expansions "Esmeralda" and "Jetwash" which added two new ships and a some new ways to play.
Esmeralda added "The Blitz" which allows a round of drafting to the setup, and made twice as much equipment available in the discard piles on setup.
Jetwash added the Scenario "Where the wind takes us." Each player pulls 3 random mission cards and put Goal tokens on each pickup and drop point or target. You don't keep the missions you pickec. Anyone can earn a goal token by completing a job on a planet with a goal token. Bounty Hunting jobs that have the destination at a planet with a Goal token count as a completed job. If you complete a piracy job on another player that has a goal token, you steal that goal token. First player to three goal tokens wins the game.
One strategy that was attempted was turning in an existing crew member for the Bounty and a Goal Token. When you do that you disgruntle your entire crew. When a crewman is disgruntled, any player in the same sector can hire the crew away. So if you're going to sell out your crew, make sure it's the winning play.
Of all of the Firefly scenarios to date this is probably the best one for the average to veteran board gamer. Some of the existing Firefly scenarios are either too predictable or too tedious. Having the bounty hunting and piracy jobs also add more player interaction, which was a strong criticism when Firefly first came out. The player that won the game had a bounty hunting crew and ship, and was able to poach the last goal token from another player.
I tweaked the scenario slightly to prevent gaming the starting goal token spawn points and also to incorporate the piracy jobs. (Note if your play group isn't as cutthroat you can leave the piracy jobs out.) However a crew can still jump undelivered bounties without a piracy job.
There's going to be another major expansion that adds two new contacts to the game and expands the gaming area by a third. When that comes out I'd like to try the same scenario and see how it changes.
They will probably turn it into an LCG, which isn't a bad thing. Also, just got my copy of Pandante light and dark in today with the revised rules, and my addon of Flash Duel.
Over the past week, the theme appears to be (new) short games:
Oceania (new to me) - A tiny two player game I picked up at the Mayfair booth at PAX Prime. A decent distraction, and it only cost $3, but I'm not convinced that I need to keep this when I already have so many good 2p games.
Fast Food Franchise - Two games that illustrated different ways to lose FFF - spending too much money and not spending enough money. A loan card can fix the first (at least for the immediate future). As for being too thrifty, turning down a subpar market space might be a mistake depending on your companies - the board gets crowded fast.
The Voyages of Marco Polo - Playing this again after a few months off, and I got worse in the interim. Either that, or "Starts in Beijing Guy" was a bad choice for both of those setups. After we got home, I had to set up the board and play five rounds - alone, while Anthony played Bioshock on the couch - to prove to myself that I remember where points come from. (I do)
Eggs of Ostrich (new to me) - The first Japanese game I picked up at the BoardGameGeek store last week, this is a perfectly good filler that you can only play with three players. It gets bonus points for the character art (which looks like One Punch Man) and the Sexy Ostrich illustrations (#10 in particular)...
The King of Frontier (new to me) - The second Japanese game, and the second tile-laying game this week (after Oceania). It's a good sign when you immediately play a new game four times in a row, and I'm eager to try this with more than two players. No English rules, but there are two mostly-complete translations on BGG.
They will probably turn it into an LCG, which isn't a bad thing. Also, just got my copy of Pandante light and dark in today with the revised rules, and my addon of Flash Duel.
They already announced that they're turning it into an LCG and will tentatively release it at GenCon 2017.
Everyone gathers around. Someone rolls the dice. They have letters on them. If you spot a word of 3 or more letters, you shout the word, and take the dice with the letters for that word. You continue until there are no valid words left. Every die you have is one point. Then everyone puts the dice back, and someone rolls again. Repeat this until somebody has a total of 26 points (one for each letter of the alphabet).
Everyone gathers around. Someone rolls the dice. They have letters on them. If you spot a word of 3 or more letters, you shout the word, and take the dice with the letters for that word. You continue until there are no valid words left. Every die you have is one point. Then everyone puts the dice back, and someone rolls again. Repeat this until somebody has a total of 26 points (one for each letter of the alphabet).
Sort of like Spot-It! the word game.
So its a clone of Kerflip, but with more shouting and a dumber scoring system.
Everyone gathers around. Someone rolls the dice. They have letters on them. If you spot a word of 3 or more letters, you shout the word, and take the dice with the letters for that word. You continue until there are no valid words left. Every die you have is one point. Then everyone puts the dice back, and someone rolls again. Repeat this until somebody has a total of 26 points (one for each letter of the alphabet).
Sort of like Spot-It! the word game.
So its a clone of Kerflip, but with more shouting and a dumber scoring system.
Kerflip is a large game with a box and everything. Word Shout is a handful of dice. It's even smaller than Spot-It! It's probably less than $5 to buy it.
Comments
I would think that in a 4-player game, there'd be too much interaction for the expansions to mean much.
----
So I own Impulse, the Chudyk 4X-flavored card game. I've played a handful of 2 and 3-player games, and while I don't quite "get" it like I "get" GtR, I can see how it's a solid game. Complex and fun.
This weekend, I played both a 5 and a 6 player game of it. People on BGG complained about the game breaking down at high player counts, but people on BGG bitch about all kinds of things. How bad could it be?
Impulse is fucking terrible at 5 and 6 players. You have so little control over anything in the sector that it essentially becomes a lengthy game of card-drawing.
I'd consider it utterly unplayable at 5 and 6 with the rules as written - the primary issue, I think, is the lack of scaling. I'm contemplating tinkering with an expanded map (one more ring of cards) at high player counts, to see if that alleviates some of the problem. Still wouldn't change the problem of the impulse changing too quickly in those player counts, but it would at least allow for the proper development and exploitation of an Exploration-based machine.
A friend also came back from GenCon and showed us the Firefly Shiny Dice game. It's not released to later this year, but it's a standard press your luck dice game that is extremely well matched with the Firefwell universe, thematically. I know ScoJo will enjoy it. It's a light game to play especially with Firefly fans.
So with 3 players, everyone has the physical room and the actions to actually control enough territory to build an engine.
With 6 players, that isn't the case. Add to that the rapidly changing impulse, and you really lack any control over your game.
With 3 players, everyone will get to use everyone else's actions - so the interactivity actually matters, and you can actually plan your expansion and development with the progression of the impulse.
The extra ring won't fix the impulse length problem, but that's a different hurdle. The other option is that you could play 6-player games exclusively as team games - though you might still want more space.
http://opinionatedgamers.com/2015/08/17/are-boardgames-getting-better-an-empirical-analysis/
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/crowdfunding-is-driving-a-196-million-board-game-renaissance/
Between OG.com and 538, I have more than enough board game stats this week... my favorite being this chart of average BGG user ratings, with curves for games published in 1994, 2004, and 2014. Not only is the mean higher for 2014, but the shape of the curve is different.
I'd be interested to see the difference in 1s and 10s over those time spans.
My own BGG ratings thin out at the bottom end of the scale largely because I base my playing (not just purchasing!) decisions on reviews and rules pdfs. I have a handful of 3s and 4s, though.
Planet Steam is also based on M.U.L.E., but this game has the actual license.
GEEKERIES CONVERGE
1. There are tons of reviews available for games now, so a person is more likely to buy and rate a game they like, because he or she already has information about it already, rather than buying and playing something blindly.
2. The more you play a game, which should be an indication that you enjoy it, the lower you're probably going to rate it. For example: when Dominion originally came out, I would have probably rated it a 9 because I thought it was amazing and there really wasn't anything else like it out there. Now however, after countless Dominion games, expansions, and other games using the same mechanics, I'm pretty burned out on Dominion and I'd probably rate it in the 607 range. This factor could be affecting older games that have lower scores, as opposed to "Cult of the New" games that are getting higher scores.
Their solution: Only play those two and instead play a 1 v Many.
To be honest you could say the same thing of all RPGs though.
San Juan - iPad pass-and-play on a six hour plane ride with a crying baby.
Fresh Fish - occasionally the "modern" rules result in situations where one player can grab premium spots on the board without spending any money. Last game, two players were in unassailable positions with half of the game remaining. Of course, this is the result of careless opponents, and most of the time that careless opponent is me...
Primordial Soup - the water was stagnant on the second turn, leading to a board where everyone turned to predation or parasitism due to lack of safe food supplies. The body count was noteworthy.
Legendary: Predator (new to me) - this iteration of Legendary finally feels solid enough to rate a '7' from me. We played it both cooperatively and competitively, and both are enjoyable games.
Too Many Cinderellas - played all week at PAX, and more over the next week. The best hand is the cat and the old man.
Firefly: Pirates and Bounty Hunters - playing something other than the "New Londinium" scenario, which is a scenario I find thoroughly unenjoyable... the expansions over the past two years have been improvements for me, so I'm glad that the people who own this game have them. I'd prefer to play with 3-4, but still enjoyed playing with 5. Reavers ate my crew, as usual.
Fast Food Franchise (new to me) -
My assessment: how rare; an interesting, brief, enjoyable take on Monopoly, even with two players.
Anthony's assessment: we should never play this with two players ever again.
Bruges (new to me) - feels like Feld, plays like Feld... although it could stick around because of the different character cards.
Rails of New England (new to me) - it was late, so we stopped after six rounds, just to get a sense of it. The rules (even the revised rules on BGG) are poor, but the game is enjoyable. I've skied in or near some of the towns on the map.
Third to last turn (Hand 1) - Hand 2 (Radioman) coordinated a card with Hand 1 (Lieutenant) that would let him live even if he took a killing blow; the card specifically said the player would just die at the end of next turn if he was still at his maximum damage level.
The Lieutenant took exactly what would be a killing by having a total value of 9 in strikes, lowering his HP to 0, but because the Radioman helped with that card, he lived to play another turn.
Second to last turn (Hand 2) - Radioman reveals the alternate victory condition to the mission: a card called “The Choppa!” In order to escape on it, a player needs to spend 3 recruitment points to attempt to board it. After spending the 3 points, the player needs to draw a strike for every enemy left in the combat zone, and if he survives, he’s safe and out of the game.
Unfortunately for Radioman, his escape attempt failed and the strikes killed him.
Last turn (Hand 1) - Lieutenant had enough attack power to kill the weakest of the 3 enemies remaining in the combat zone, making the escape attempt slightly easier. As a last-ditch effort, he paid the helicopter cost, and drew his two required strikes. Each one dealt exactly 0 damage, keeping my total HP at 0 and not dipping into the negatives (which would have killed him).
So, because this technically happened before the end of his turn, Lieutenant managed to board the helicopter and win. The Predator angrily shook its fist at Lieutenant as he flew off into the sunset and presumably died on the way home.
I recently added the expansions "Esmeralda" and "Jetwash" which added two new ships and a some new ways to play.
Esmeralda added "The Blitz" which allows a round of drafting to the setup, and made twice as much equipment available in the discard piles on setup.
Jetwash added the Scenario "Where the wind takes us." Each player pulls 3 random mission cards and put Goal tokens on each pickup and drop point or target. You don't keep the missions you pickec. Anyone can earn a goal token by completing a job on a planet with a goal token. Bounty Hunting jobs that have the destination at a planet with a Goal token count as a completed job. If you complete a piracy job on another player that has a goal token, you steal that goal token. First player to three goal tokens wins the game.
One strategy that was attempted was turning in an existing crew member for the Bounty and a Goal Token. When you do that you disgruntle your entire crew. When a crewman is disgruntled, any player in the same sector can hire the crew away. So if you're going to sell out your crew, make sure it's the winning play.
Of all of the Firefly scenarios to date this is probably the best one for the average to veteran board gamer. Some of the existing Firefly scenarios are either too predictable or too tedious. Having the bounty hunting and piracy jobs also add more player interaction, which was a strong criticism when Firefly first came out. The player that won the game had a bounty hunting crew and ship, and was able to poach the last goal token from another player.
I tweaked the scenario slightly to prevent gaming the starting goal token spawn points and also to incorporate the piracy jobs. (Note if your play group isn't as cutthroat you can leave the piracy jobs out.) However a crew can still jump undelivered bounties without a piracy job.
There's going to be another major expansion that adds two new contacts to the game and expands the gaming area by a third. When that comes out I'd like to try the same scenario and see how it changes.
Oceania (new to me) - A tiny two player game I picked up at the Mayfair booth at PAX Prime. A decent distraction, and it only cost $3, but I'm not convinced that I need to keep this when I already have so many good 2p games.
Fast Food Franchise - Two games that illustrated different ways to lose FFF - spending too much money and not spending enough money. A loan card can fix the first (at least for the immediate future). As for being too thrifty, turning down a subpar market space might be a mistake depending on your companies - the board gets crowded fast.
The Voyages of Marco Polo - Playing this again after a few months off, and I got worse in the interim. Either that, or "Starts in Beijing Guy" was a bad choice for both of those setups. After we got home, I had to set up the board and play five rounds - alone, while Anthony played Bioshock on the couch - to prove to myself that I remember where points come from. (I do)
Eggs of Ostrich (new to me) - The first Japanese game I picked up at the BoardGameGeek store last week, this is a perfectly good filler that you can only play with three players. It gets bonus points for the character art (which looks like One Punch Man) and the Sexy Ostrich illustrations (#10 in particular)...
The King of Frontier (new to me) - The second Japanese game, and the second tile-laying game this week (after Oceania). It's a good sign when you immediately play a new game four times in a row, and I'm eager to try this with more than two players. No English rules, but there are two mostly-complete translations on BGG.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/94056/word-shout
Word Shout
Everyone gathers around. Someone rolls the dice. They have letters on them. If you spot a word of 3 or more letters, you shout the word, and take the dice with the letters for that word. You continue until there are no valid words left. Every die you have is one point. Then everyone puts the dice back, and someone rolls again. Repeat this until somebody has a total of 26 points (one for each letter of the alphabet).
Sort of like Spot-It! the word game.
http://www.rprod.com/7wonders-duel/files/rules/7-Wonders-Duel-Rules-US.pdf