Exam Day Cometh

I have a very large professional exam coming up next Friday.  I've been spending a lot of my time studying so I haven't had much time to post on here.

I hope to rectify that sometime in the next couple days.  Enjoy Spring everyone!

Innovation Impressions

I just got a preview copy of Innovation in the mail a couple days ago.  I've since played a couple games and here are my thoughts:

Overall, this is a very solid game, somewhere above "good" for me at the moment.

Pros:

The card play is very smooth actually.  Draw→Play→Activate.  The card effects ("Dogmas") are just varied enough to really make you feel unique compared to your opponent.

There is a definite progression through time.  It uses 10 distinct decks ranging from pre-historic to "information age" and there is a huge power gain over the course of the game.

There is also tons of ingenious things thrown into that deck progression too.  Cards have distribution of symbols, and the symbols are concentrated in certain eras.  So some cards that depend on draws those symbols have their power rise and fall gracefully over the course of the game.

There are a couple downsides to me though:

The current rules are a little too abbreviated for my taste.  In particular there are no examples of play.  We messed up a couple pretty important rules in our first game.

The game is largely tactical.  In particular, there are many card effects that force you to play new random cards over what you already have.  Not much choice involved there.  I suppose once you know the decks better you might be able to plan a little bit with what symbols you collect on your cards.

The late game does bog down some.  You are limited to only 5 top cards at once, but those effects get bigger and bigger as you go.  Also, as you are allowed to eventually splay out your cards, counting up who has how many of what symbols gets very time consuming.

There are a few cards that seem a little more powerful than the others.  No more so than Terraforming Guild in Race for the Galaxy though, so I wouldn't call it an issue.

I'll have some more finished thoughts after a few more plays.  Let's just say I think it's leaps and bounds better than Glory to Rome :)

Missing the "Try before you Buy" option

So I've actually been pretty good on the gaming budget recently.  I'm well ahead with some virtual money burning holes in my pockets.

The problem is that I just haven't been out to the local gaming groups to try some of the recent releases.  It makes it very hard to stick to the whole "Try before you buy..." rule when you  haven't been anywhere to try games recently.

In particular, I've really been interested in:

Macao - I do like Stefan's other designs.  And after reading the rules (horribly translated) it does still sound interesting.  It just seems to be a little high on the Bit Count with lots of setup and tear down.  And how strategic is it really?  I mean, it sounds like the players will be doing different things, but much of that is just due to what cards they end up with.  And it's not like Agricola where you get all the cards up front and can make a plan from the get-go.


Vasco da Gama - Yea, I don't like worker placement much at all.  But if you add push-your-luck to it, I just might participate.  The whole idea of the navigation scoring seems pretty solid too.  But it still doesn't sound *that* much like my kind of game.


So yea, the sucky bit is I don't think either of these games will be huge hits for me, but I want to try them dang it :P

Wishy-Washy

There are only 2 games I can think of that I've owned two distinct copies of.  And I've actually sold or traded away my second copy of both games too.  Those would be:

Quo Vadis and Carcassonne the Castle

And funny enough, I think I want to re-acquire them for the third time.

Quo Vadis is easy to explain.  It's just hard to get played.  I switched to the small box version, but the tokens were just too small to play with.  So I'm moving back to the big box.

Carc:Castle is just weird.  I liked it okay at first.  Traded it.  Then I went through pangs of missing it.  Then I was convinced regular carc was better.  So it left again.  Now for some reason I'm itching to try the damn thing again.   Gah.


Call me a fool.  But I think these two will end up back in the closet.

Clean Slate

Well, my big auction is over.  And it feels pretty good to fit all my games back into my game cabinet.  There's even room for 1-2 more if I want to squeeze them.

I've since turned my eye back to those games I already own.  In particular, I was toying around with Friendless' cool game stats page:

http://friendless.servegame.org/dynamic/result/Isamoor

I like to try and get my "Friendless Metric" nice and high most of the time.  Right now it has plummeted to a really low "2".  The metric is: look at your owned games.  How many have you played 10+ times?  Call that N.  Now pick the N games you've played least.  How much have you played the most played game of those N bottom games?


Or in other words: I've played 22 of my games 10+ times.  There are 22 games I've played 2 times or less.  So my Friendless Metric is "2".


So, the quickest way to boost that metric is to play more of my seldom played games.  It generally makes me play and re-evaluate how much I really like those games.

On the flip side, pushing games to 10 plays also lets me judge the longevity of a game.  Sadly, there are a couple games that made it to 11-12 plays, but then puttered out:

Roll Through The Ages is still a great game.  It just feels like we played out the strategic possibilities of the base game.  I enjoyed my couple plays of the Late Bronze Age.  I really just need to make some more print outs of that.

Through the Desert is again still a great game.  It too just feels like I have too much understanding of the relative value of the scoring possibilities.  There's not as much to explore.  I still enjoy it, just not as much as before.

I'm not getting rid of either of the above games, but it will take them a long time to get to 20 plays I fear.

Equilibrium Playtest

Got in a quick game of Equilibirum.  Tested the following changes:


A. The "ALL" cards cost 1, score 6VP and require 8+ of a specific color.

Result?  Very nice.  I really liked them now.  I played a couple.  One of them payed off.  It seemed nice and balanced.  (Not the game bending 9VP from before)

B. Make the "Draw +4" cost as much as you want.

Result?  I liked this.  I used it the only time I actually played it.  I'm worried about the complexity of it though.


C. Allow duplicate permanents.

Result?  Never came up.  I still think it's just fine.  The way the permanents are, you get diminishing returns for each permanent after the first so I don't see any issue in letting people stack them if they really want to.



Quick Session Report:

I tried going a traditional 2-color route with red and yellow.  I played a couple "ALL" cards to test them.  Mainly I just went for efficiently spamming of cheap score cards.  I also played a couple "guess" cards and succeeded on both of them (Not on the head unfortunately)

My wife went all in on Blue.  And I trashed the heck out of her Blue from the beginning.  She played a couple big "13VP for 11+ of a single color".  She stopped way early (27 cards) just to gamble that she'd make it.  (She also had the "1st Pair" cards for a cool 12vp)

Scoring?  Well I did very solid getting just over 40.  My wife?  Only got 10 blue... but 11 RED because she stopped so early.  Doh.  So she scored all her big cards and beat me out by 3 VP.


All-in-all quite a fun game and a nice playtest.

Back on Track

I've done it.  I've put a large number of nice games up for auction over HERE.

Why?  I need the space and I'm in the hole on gaming budget.

What ones were I really sad to see go?

Union Pacific - I really like the idea of crossing Trains with Acquire.  But it just had too much fiddly crap.  The Union Pacific stock was pretty much broken.  And the track cards were stupid and un-needed.  And all that left was just a card game.  And that's a big board with lots of bits to just be a card game.

HomeSteaders - It's not that I didn't like it, I just didn't see myself playing it a bunch in the future and it was worth money right *now*.  My biggest issue?  If you don't comprehend the Magic:The Gathering "Stack", then it's unlikely you'll really understand the market transactions in Homesteaders.  No, the transactions don't actually work like the "Stack".  It just means you need to have a brain that can function like a assembly processor.  Some people do, and other's don't.  Also, I got real tired of pushing bits back and forth.  It was much better than Princes of Machu Picchu, but it did have a similar feel after awhile.

Galaxy Trucker - I enjoyed it.  It just has *so* many damn pieces and parts.  And hey, I've got Factory Fun to fill the same itch.

Anyway, I've already ordered Heavy Rain and Metal Gear Solid 4 to do some interactive movie playing in the theater in the basement.  That and pay off the Crokinole board before it gets here.