I’ve been playing more board/card-y games than RPGs lately, so I’m going to chat about that for a while. More RPG stuff will come. Cthulhutech one-off this Sunday that I’m really looking forward to running, for example.
Anyway, I’ll get my two current favorites out of the way first, and those are Dominion and Race to the Galaxy. Both are fairly straightforward games (Race has a lot of icons but is simple in execution once you know them) that can be played very, very quickly by (notionally 2-6 but for best experience I’d say 3-5) experienced players. I’ve burned through a Dominion game in 15 minutes, and Race in 20, but they usually take more like 30-45; I’m just very impatient.
Great games to have, love them to bits, now let’s talk about Twilight Imperium. This isn’t a review so much as it’s a musing.
TI is a wargame, so block off 5-8 hours for a game right off the bat. While the rules are straightforward, if numerous, the set-up and “furniture” of the game is pretty complex. Also, it has a shitton of plastic spaceships and I am always pro- that. I’ve played it three times now, with 6, 4, and 3 people.
Based on that, I’d say with 4-6 people who all know the game, it’s awesome. Would play again, probably beats out Arkham Horror as my favorite board-game-related way to kill a lot of hours with a bunch of people, though AH is also pretty awesome. With 3 people, there are some scaling issues. Political strategies become disproportionately powerful as it’s harder to build opposition against votes that advantage one person; the “Imperial” strategy (which grants 2 VPs, with 10 VPs required to win, and therefore puts a clock on the game) goes around the table too quickly, giving a notable, though not insurmountable, advantage to whoever went first; the game ends before very many of the Public Objective cards have been revealed, which removes another clock element and leaves players fewer options to secure VPs; and some racial abilities are obviously better in smaller games.
So I probably wouldn’t play 3 again, or if I did, it would be with the alternate Imperial strategy (which has a slower clock).
I am a fan of the races, some more than others. Each has a couple of distinct powers that vary in usefulness and scope, and which are also balanced by their starting positions (some races with crappy powers get high-resource homeworlds and/or better starting fleets). There are a few that could stand to be tuned slightly, but they all play distinctively, which is nice. I’m definitely a fan of the Naalu, who get better fighters (and therefore tend to go with a fighter/carrier strategy), can always retreat from battles (which I should have used to picket my borders more effectively, but didn’t), and always act first in the round regardless of the initiative value of their strategy card (which is fantastic).
Last week I had the Mentek, who have fantastic cruisers and get to steal trade goods. The primary effect of that was that everyone spent their trade goods as soon as possible so I never got to steal any. PS: I still hate you all. But they get a really nice home system and a relatively decent starting fleet.
I didn’t really grok the game the first time I played, so eventually I’ll have to go back and try the L1z1x, who are apparently galaxy-crushing cyberzombies despite the fact that I ended up getting rolled by a bunch of brains in jars.
As with Arkham Horror, I don’t have time to play TI every week, but unlike AH, I probably would if I did.
So I’ve heard people say that the Shattered Empire expansion is basically the “fix” for some of the brokenness of the main game. Were you playing with that or no?
No — we wanted a few “standard” games under our belt before adding more Stuff to it, it being a very Stuff-ful game already. What I’ve seen of Shattered Empire, I like, though.
have you played Small World?
Yea. In two games, I didn’t much care for it. It’s very prone to analysis paralysis; some race/power combinations come up amazing while others are incredibly terrible; I think the VPs should be public knowledge (awarding them is public, but the total is supposed to be kept secret, which really only disadvantages people who aren’t (a) taking notes or (b) Rain Man); and it needs a FAQ badly.
What I think it really needs, actually, is a second edition to clean it up a bit.
Of course, the secret VPs are intended to prevent AP and last-turn kingmaking (the last turn nevertheless was brutally APish). I’m sure the FAQ/rules clarifications are online; they always are.
I’ve found that usually the imbalanced races take care of themselves, especially in a large game with players willing to play ruthlessly. Silly powerful combos get a blanket thrown over their head and beaten with soap, and the crappy combos load up on VP until they are worth taking.
For rule clarifications, the handout doesn’t actually have all the little fiddly bits that the rule book has. It took us a while to figure this out.
It is greatly improved with the expansions, because that leads to more race and power combination possibilities.
The private VP thing is pretty common and a shitty fix to a common problem, but I don’t know of a better one, other than the friendly agreement not to kingmake.