Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
It might be the class I'm playing, but it doesn't seem that much of a slog to me. The puzzly element of the fight I enjoy more that the legacy stuff at the moment.
How many people are you playing with out of curiosity? We are playing with 4 and it’s just so many enemies in every room to chew through.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited January 2018
The SUSD review mentions that, too. He thought that 3 players is the sweet spot, and that the fourth players adds so much overhead that it doesn't show the game at its best. The four-player version does add more downtime, especially if playing with people who take a long time to puzzle out their turn.
Capped off my annual birthday boardgame marathon last night with a game of Gaia Project, the space version of Terra Mystica. My buddy got it a couple of months ago but this was the first time he'd gotten it to the table.
And, man, I love Terra Mystica, but this is just... better. The replacement of the cultist tracks with the tech tree is the single biggest difference here, and it made for much more interesting choices. In TM, the cultist tracks were basically identical, apart from the end-of-round bonuses you scored based on your standing with a particular cult. Here, each of the five or six tech trees is unique, and almost every step on each tree offers a reward or bonus to your abilities. Maybe the shine'll come off after a few more plays, but I was really impressed.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Capped off my annual birthday boardgame marathon last night with a game of Gaia Project, the space version of Terra Mystica. My buddy got it a couple of months ago but this was the first time he'd gotten it to the table.
And, man, I love Terra Mystica, but this is just... better. The replacement of the cultist tracks with the tech tree is the single biggest difference here, and it made for much more interesting choices. In TM, the cultist tracks were basically identical, apart from the end-of-round bonuses you scored based on your standing with a particular cult. Here, each of the five or six tech trees is unique, and almost every step on each tree offers a reward or bonus to your abilities. Maybe the shine'll come off after a few more plays, but I was really impressed.
I've played it twice recently. Seems really good and tight, but like terra Mystica it's too interactive for it's length for my table. We enjoyed it both times but on Thursday the host's wife dropped by to remind him how much he regretted staying up late the previous week.
Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
Are you my evil twin?
Hahah quite possibly.
Honestly I’m not surprised i’m not huge on Gloomhaven. As someone who loved elegance in design and less is more... well! Gloomhaven ain’t trying to be that.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
Are you my evil twin?
Hahah quite possibly.
Honestly I’m not surprised i’m not huge on Gloomhaven. As someone who loved elegance in design and less is more... well! Gloomhaven ain’t trying to be that.
I'm not shocked it's not working for you either, given what I know about your taste in games.
That said, my group's been consistently 4 for a while. I definitely agree it's slower than with 3, but there comes a point after start-up when things gel as far as teamwork and tactics and the game improves quite a bit. The early going is the worst bit of Gloomhaven for sure.
Would it be worth trying Gloomhaven with 2 players, or is it more feasible / easier to double-up characters and play it as 4?
(Not that I have any plans of purchasing it at the moment, but I'd like to have an idea before I get idle fantasies.)
It's still a perfectly fulfilling game with two, and I'd not recommend trying to run two characters per player (outside of playing solo). Monster placement scales with number of player-characters, and so the 2-player experience is different than the 4-player experience but both are enjoyable. (For example, area of effect attacks will usually be a bit weaker in 2-player, since you'll have fewer enemies and they probably won't bunch up as much, but attacks that do extra damage to isolated enemies will be weaker in 4-player where every room is stuffed to the gills with monsters.)
Trying to manage two characters (in my experience) nearly doubles the playtime, as the complexity of each turn increases substantially when you're trying to figure out how to program two different turns in ways that can combo off each other. (Choosing 2 cards to play out of a hand of 9 is significantly easier than (a) picking 2 cards out of 9 for one character and (b) a different 2 cards out of a different hand of 10 for the second character).
Whew, attempt 2 at April in Pandemic season 2 was a huge success.
After three losses in a row, I'm really glad we didn't open the idiot box. Finding the Haven is what saved us, naturally.
We lost no population that game, three cities gained population, and we have two booming metropoli (but also two infested forsaken cities...).
With the Outrider upgrade in play I feel like we're well placed to recon a new region much more easily next game, but I'm afraid of the next stick in the spokes.
Whew, attempt 2 at April in Pandemic season 2 was a huge success.
After three losses in a row, I'm really glad we didn't open the idiot box. Finding the Haven is what saved us, naturally.
We lost no population that game, three cities gained population, and we have two booming metropoli (but also two infested forsaken cities...).
With the Outrider upgrade in play I feel like we're well placed to recon a new region much more easily next game, but I'm afraid of the next stick in the spokes.
Yeah that particular event is definitely what saved our asses from a very similar fate.
Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
It might be the class I'm playing, but it doesn't seem that much of a slog to me. The puzzly element of the fight I enjoy more that the legacy stuff at the moment.
How many people are you playing with out of curiosity? We are playing with 4 and it’s just so many enemies in every room to chew through.
Three, started at four, but one player had to bow out. During January, while people were away we did a couple of random missions, at various counts. My favourite player count in 3. At 4 the AP came out a bit more, and at 2 it felt (at least with the character combo we were using) that the odds were against us.
What's interesting is that some classes definitely seem to level faster. My character has been in 2 more scenarios than another, but I'm one more game from leveling up, while the other is halfway towards the next level.
Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
It might be the class I'm playing, but it doesn't seem that much of a slog to me. The puzzly element of the fight I enjoy more that the legacy stuff at the moment.
How many people are you playing with out of curiosity? We are playing with 4 and it’s just so many enemies in every room to chew through.
Three, started at four, but one player had to bow out. During January, while people were away we did a couple of random missions, at various counts. My favourite player count in 3. At 4 the AP came out a bit more, and at 2 it felt (at least with the character combo we were using) that the odds were against us.
What's interesting is that some classes definitely seem to level faster. My character has been in 2 more scenarios than another, but I'm one more game from leveling up, while the other is halfway towards the next level.
Yeah, the class I grabbed is zooming past everyone exp wise, but I also plan on retiring him very quickly.
Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
Are you my evil twin?
Hahah quite possibly.
Honestly I’m not surprised i’m not huge on Gloomhaven. As someone who loved elegance in design and less is more... well! Gloomhaven ain’t trying to be that.
But you like Vast? Don't get me wrong, it's a miracle Vast works at all, but it's one of the clumsiest rulesets, with more edge cases and errata than almost any game of its size. "Elegant" is not how I'd describe it.
Vast was amazing, just how all the different players interact is great. I can’t wait to play it again now that everyone understands it better.
Gloomhaven on the other hand was a bust for me. It’s a dungeon crawler ass dungeon crawler. It’s fiddly and slow and ultimately kind of boring. The big picture stuff is neat but the moment to moment gameplay is a slog.
Are you my evil twin?
Hahah quite possibly.
Honestly I’m not surprised i’m not huge on Gloomhaven. As someone who loved elegance in design and less is more... well! Gloomhaven ain’t trying to be that.
But you like Vast? Don't get me wrong, it's a miracle Vast works at all, but it's one of the clumsiest rulesets, with more edge cases and errata than almost any game of its size. "Elegant" is not how I'd describe it.
Yeah elegant is absolutey an adjective I'd use for Vast. It's really lovely, as long as you aren't using any expansions. THEN it's gets crazy complex, almost ridiculously so.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Finally got around to playing Empires of the Void II at the weekend. I'm reserving judgement as we only played with 2 and I suspect it's a game that should be more upfront about not working very well with two players.
It's an odd combination of things, it wants to be a 4X but also an Arabian Nights story generator. In reality it's neither.
You are basically playing a series of Star Trek. You're at the edge of the galaxy trying to establish your own flavour of culture rather than an empire. Most of the planets are inhabited and they've got their own shit going on. Fighting is encouraged (it gives VP) but inconsequential (units just bounce away when they lose rather than dying). The core bit of the game is establishing influence or control with the pre-existing races. Influence is how you become their friends and you gain their special power and can hire their troops. Control means you've invaded and can build things on their planets. The Star Trek thing is particularly relevant with buildings, you can drop these on planets you've conquered and you get VP for having built them but there's no onus to keep control of the planet afterwards. That federation academy is going to help spread your culture regardless of how the Romulans try to rebadge it.
The game has a built in timer which is a deck of power cards constructed from cards that refer to the specific planets in play and one event for each of them. The events are scattered throughout, so at some point something will happen to each planet. A giant monster might arrive, or some kind of fungus outbreak that means you end up trying to quarantine troops there, or they just change government in such a way that makes them more open so you can easily build influence. You play the power cards for their own actions that represent Star Trek episodes/away missions, as part of combat and sometimes as a direct cost to do other things.
The turn sequence is interesting and involves two really chunky satisfying cylinders. One represents whose turn it is and the other the action they've just taken on an action tracker. You move the action cylinder, do a thing, and then everybody gets to do the same thing. Or they can gain income instead. Or do any other action for a cost. It's a strange reversal of the usual variable turn phase system as not being the active player gives you the advantage (outside of a single action which gives the active player an extra secret objective). There's a design diary in the box that I need to read to understand why he did this. Once everybody has followed the action, the turn cylinder moves to the next player and they move the action cylinder to another action (so no repeating the same action twice in a row)
Scoring is also funny. Some things give you immediate VP (every combat victory is 1VP, some mission cards grant immediate VP, etc.) but most VP only happens during "scoring". Scoring happens twice per game and is when you get VP from all the planets you control/are allied with, your research, your buildings and your secret objectives. You'll always score right at the end of the game but there's a mid game scoring that you can control. The middle of the power deck has a "score now" card that means if you haven't scored then you do it at the end of the turn. But you could do it earlier if you like. This is a weird bit of flexibility as it's quite niche how doing your midgame scoring early will net you more points, it basically needs you to have stretched yourself wafer thin so that you then lose control / alliances with all your planets. I'm not sure it's a mechanic that will ever be used.
I think the base part of the game is very strong where you are doing research to improve your powers, conquering planets and building stuff on them, and doing away missions to gain VP. This stuff is all transparent and open. I am a bit concerned that the hidden sources of VP might have a bit too value given how you can't react against them effectively.
Has anybody else played? I'm very eager to get it to the table with more
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Speaking of Gloomhaven, but somewhat further down the line:
We've picked back up and just opened the Moon box. Anyone else have experience with / impressions of / suggestions about that guy?
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jergarmarhollow man crewgoes pew pew pewRegistered Userregular
So what do you guys think about Shadows of Brimstone (City of the Ancients)? Played one game, our group seemed to like it, so I wanted to know what I was getting myself into. My impression is that it's a more thematic RPG, but perhaps less serious? There are various opportunities to be permanently crippled and/or die gruesomely, which honestly has this strange appeal. For example, I rolled badly and the loot that I gathered actually made my nose fall off, penalizing me such that bad events were more likely to happen in town. My character's name had been "El Guapo", which obviously took on a whole new ironic hue. But I definitely recognize that it might be frustrating to have a well-established character suddenly die because you rolled snake eyes in town. Or maybe not! Maybe the game simply pivots into a resurrected or rerolled character? Would love to hear other experiences from the game, especially past the first couple missions.
EDIT: It actually reminds me, strangely enough, of Tales of the Arabian Nights, which through persistent good or bad (usually bad) effects, could maintain a kind of persistent developing personal narrative. Plus the rare but real danger of simply dying if things went unusually awry.
I Looooooove Brimstone. I kinda went nutty on it when it came out. The Wild West Lovecraftian theme just scratches all the right itches for me. Look at BGG for the hex crawl home brew. It's amazing. Also, get poker chips for money.
How far into the missions did you get?
When I was a child, I had a fever... My BoardGameGeek profile
Battle.net: TheGerm#1430 (Hearthstone, Destiny 2)
I played Caverna this weekend in a quick two player learner's game. We both really enjoyed it. It was both satisfying, strategic and silly. Really pleased with the purchase.
I also bought a game to play with my 4 year old called Ice Cold. It's a flick-based game where you play as penguins trying to get fish while running from the hall monitor. It's basically tag, and is pretty fun
Got to play the first scenario of Gloomhaven yesterday. Was pretty fun even if it took us forever (almost four hours between setup, explanation, and playing), mostly due to Analysis Paralysis. I tried to call out the important new player notes I've seen mentioned, specifically that running out of cards is pretty much the only way you can get knocked out, so you want to try not to lose cards early. Still had two of the four players have to pack it up as we were kicking in the door to the third room. A few of us had to lose cards to prevent damage on the first turn, as the army of bandits rushed forward and put a ton of damage on us. Somehow we still managed to clear that last room though, the last player other than me was able to clean it up as the Tinkerer (he'd been saving up all his good cards, I think). For my part I was able to dash in and pick up the treasure chest. Only one person managed to make their scenario goal though - I thought it would be pretty easy to get "start every round with at least one monster in play" if I was aggressive enough, but after taking a beating from prematurely opening the second room, I wasn't able to push through and get the third room open in time.
I will say it felt like there was an awful lot of beef that we had to chop through. When a room has six or eight enemies in it and it's not really possible to drop any of them in a single hit...yeesh.
Rules questions:
- one of the Scoundrel cards has a ranged Pull effect on it. Can I use that on an ally? It doesn't have the Attack keyword on it, but the rules seemed to hint that Pull should only be on attacks.
- can you still apply effects like Poison or Push/Pull if you draw the "no damage" modifier on an attack?
eta:
Oh, another thing two of the players missed, despite multiple explanations and the other two of us doing it correctly, was that you can do a "bottom half" first, and THEN a "top half." That might have helped us do a little better.
I think in the future, I might explain your turn as "choose two cards to play. Of the two cards, choose which initiative number you want to use. When your initiative number comes up, choose one of the eight actions on your two cards to perform, then perform one of the two actions in the other half of your other card."
Fry on
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mysticjuicer[he/him] I'm a muscle wizardand I cast P U N C HRegistered Userregular
I’m 99% sure you apply status effects/non-damage effects even if you hit the X card, yeah.
Got to play the first scenario of Gloomhaven yesterday. Was pretty fun even if it took us forever (almost four hours between setup, explanation, and playing), mostly due to Analysis Paralysis. I tried to call out the important new player notes I've seen mentioned, specifically that running out of cards is pretty much the only way you can get knocked out, so you want to try not to lose cards early. Still had two of the four players have to pack it up as we were kicking in the door to the third room. A few of us had to lose cards to prevent damage on the first turn, as the army of bandits rushed forward and put a ton of damage on us. Somehow we still managed to clear that last room though, the last player other than me was able to clean it up as the Tinkerer (he'd been saving up all his good cards, I think). For my part I was able to dash in and pick up the treasure chest. Only one person managed to make their scenario goal though - I thought it would be pretty easy to get "start every round with at least one monster in play" if I was aggressive enough, but after taking a beating from prematurely opening the second room, I wasn't able to push through and get the third room open in time.
I will say it felt like there was an awful lot of beef that we had to chop through. When a room has six or eight enemies in it and it's not really possible to drop any of them in a single hit...yeesh.
Rules questions:
- one of the Scoundrel cards has a ranged Pull effect on it. Can I use that on an ally? It doesn't have the Attack keyword on it, but the rules seemed to hint that Pull should only be on attacks.
- can you still apply effects like Poison or Push/Pull if you draw the "no damage" modifier on an attack?
- You can't push / pull allies. There are effects available in the game that grant them moves; I seem to remember that the Tinkerer might have one available at some point but if they're in the sealed characters' kits in a couple places.
- Yes, you still do effects on the "no damage," pull.
That first scenario is kind of a beast; from the third forward they slim down a bit in terms of volume of guys, and once you have some extra HP and gear from levels damage management gets easier.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I played Caverna this weekend in a quick two player learner's game. We both really enjoyed it. It was both satisfying, strategic and silly. Really pleased with the purchase.
I also bought a game to play with my 4 year old called Ice Cold. It's a flick-based game where you play as penguins trying to get fish while running from the hall monitor. It's basically tag, and is pretty fun
Those tactile children's games are always so pretty to look at. Our Friendly Local Children's Bookstore has a few on display and it is the section of the store I linger at the longest.
Did the kid enjoy it? What age would you recommend for those kinds of games? Obviously old enough that they stop putting everything in their mouth....
I played Caverna this weekend in a quick two player learner's game. We both really enjoyed it. It was both satisfying, strategic and silly. Really pleased with the purchase.
I also bought a game to play with my 4 year old called Ice Cold. It's a flick-based game where you play as penguins trying to get fish while running from the hall monitor. It's basically tag, and is pretty fun
Ice Cool (sounds like "high school") is a blast. I gave out three copies if it this past holiday season* after having fallen in love with it instantly upon my first play.
I was the first in that game of four newbies to find a use for the jump maneuver. An eye-opener and a crowd-pleaser.
*I actually recommend against this as the box is juuuust large enough to not fit into a standard Priority Mail box.
Yeah elegant is absolutey an adjective I'd use for Vast. It's really lovely, as long as you aren't using any expansions. THEN it's gets crazy complex, almost ridiculously so.
Maybe we all mean different things by "elegant" here. Vast has 5 different rulebooks, multiple poorly defined interactions, and I don't ever get to play it without someone asking a question that makes me check two of the different rulebooks, decide that the question isn't really answered, google it, and see a five page BGG thread arguing about it. I'm one of those serious rules guys, and last time I played it I got the rule about dragon movement through walls while still submerged completely wrong which broke the balance of the game.
The design is cool, and it works, but nothing with that many moving parts is "elegant" in my book.
Yeah elegant is absolutey an adjective I'd use for Vast. It's really lovely, as long as you aren't using any expansions. THEN it's gets crazy complex, almost ridiculously so.
Maybe we all mean different things by "elegant" here.
I’m talking about the game where one person plays as a cave.
Speaking of rules, poking around it looks like the guy who taught us Gloomhaven forgot a rule. That you can discard a card from your hand to negate all damage from an attack.
This is what I get for breaking my rule of never trusting anyone to teach a game, and reading the rules pdf, faq and errata before playing any game for the first time. I was also playing and teaching Vast for the first time that day so my focus was on that.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Honestly, I love Vast but skip it. It's two versions of three additional critters (so 6 total) and they're INSANELY complicated with a ton of additional steps added to setup to make them work. I doubt I'll ever use them.
Mine has four rule books and one collected rulebook. But yeah it's definitely 4 separate games that you need to know how to play while only playing one of them.
Weird, mine has one rulebook and then a reference sheet for each role. I mean, each role only needs two pages of rules so having a separate book for each one seems excessive!
Debating grabbing the expansion and bonus cards for Vast, they hit retail tomorrow apparently.
I’m talking about the game where one person plays as a cave.
Speaking of rules, poking around it looks like the guy who taught us Gloomhaven forgot a rule. That you can discard a card from your hand to negate all damage from an attack.
This is what I get for breaking my rule of never trusting anyone to teach a game, and reading the rules pdf, faq and errata before playing any game for the first time. I was also playing and teaching Vast for the first time that day so my focus was on that.
Not discard, lose. You can lose one card from your hand (or two from your discard pile) to evade all damage.
We missed that rule on our first game too, but it's important to know in order to prevent getting knocked out very early by a powerful opening monster.
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How many people are you playing with out of curiosity? We are playing with 4 and it’s just so many enemies in every room to chew through.
And, man, I love Terra Mystica, but this is just... better. The replacement of the cultist tracks with the tech tree is the single biggest difference here, and it made for much more interesting choices. In TM, the cultist tracks were basically identical, apart from the end-of-round bonuses you scored based on your standing with a particular cult. Here, each of the five or six tech trees is unique, and almost every step on each tree offers a reward or bonus to your abilities. Maybe the shine'll come off after a few more plays, but I was really impressed.
I've played it twice recently. Seems really good and tight, but like terra Mystica it's too interactive for it's length for my table. We enjoyed it both times but on Thursday the host's wife dropped by to remind him how much he regretted staying up late the previous week.
We're trying to trade it away locally
Are you my evil twin?
Hahah quite possibly.
Honestly I’m not surprised i’m not huge on Gloomhaven. As someone who loved elegance in design and less is more... well! Gloomhaven ain’t trying to be that.
I'm not shocked it's not working for you either, given what I know about your taste in games.
That said, my group's been consistently 4 for a while. I definitely agree it's slower than with 3, but there comes a point after start-up when things gel as far as teamwork and tactics and the game improves quite a bit. The early going is the worst bit of Gloomhaven for sure.
(Not that I have any plans of purchasing it at the moment, but I'd like to have an idea before I get idle fantasies.)
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
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It's still a perfectly fulfilling game with two, and I'd not recommend trying to run two characters per player (outside of playing solo). Monster placement scales with number of player-characters, and so the 2-player experience is different than the 4-player experience but both are enjoyable. (For example, area of effect attacks will usually be a bit weaker in 2-player, since you'll have fewer enemies and they probably won't bunch up as much, but attacks that do extra damage to isolated enemies will be weaker in 4-player where every room is stuffed to the gills with monsters.)
Trying to manage two characters (in my experience) nearly doubles the playtime, as the complexity of each turn increases substantially when you're trying to figure out how to program two different turns in ways that can combo off each other. (Choosing 2 cards to play out of a hand of 9 is significantly easier than (a) picking 2 cards out of 9 for one character and (b) a different 2 cards out of a different hand of 10 for the second character).
We lost no population that game, three cities gained population, and we have two booming metropoli (but also two infested forsaken cities...).
With the Outrider upgrade in play I feel like we're well placed to recon a new region much more easily next game, but I'm afraid of the next stick in the spokes.
Yeah that particular event is definitely what saved our asses from a very similar fate.
Three, started at four, but one player had to bow out. During January, while people were away we did a couple of random missions, at various counts. My favourite player count in 3. At 4 the AP came out a bit more, and at 2 it felt (at least with the character combo we were using) that the odds were against us.
What's interesting is that some classes definitely seem to level faster. My character has been in 2 more scenarios than another, but I'm one more game from leveling up, while the other is halfway towards the next level.
Yeah, the class I grabbed is zooming past everyone exp wise, but I also plan on retiring him very quickly.
But you like Vast? Don't get me wrong, it's a miracle Vast works at all, but it's one of the clumsiest rulesets, with more edge cases and errata than almost any game of its size. "Elegant" is not how I'd describe it.
Really? It felt pretty dead simple to me?
It's an odd combination of things, it wants to be a 4X but also an Arabian Nights story generator. In reality it's neither.
You are basically playing a series of Star Trek. You're at the edge of the galaxy trying to establish your own flavour of culture rather than an empire. Most of the planets are inhabited and they've got their own shit going on. Fighting is encouraged (it gives VP) but inconsequential (units just bounce away when they lose rather than dying). The core bit of the game is establishing influence or control with the pre-existing races. Influence is how you become their friends and you gain their special power and can hire their troops. Control means you've invaded and can build things on their planets. The Star Trek thing is particularly relevant with buildings, you can drop these on planets you've conquered and you get VP for having built them but there's no onus to keep control of the planet afterwards. That federation academy is going to help spread your culture regardless of how the Romulans try to rebadge it.
The game has a built in timer which is a deck of power cards constructed from cards that refer to the specific planets in play and one event for each of them. The events are scattered throughout, so at some point something will happen to each planet. A giant monster might arrive, or some kind of fungus outbreak that means you end up trying to quarantine troops there, or they just change government in such a way that makes them more open so you can easily build influence. You play the power cards for their own actions that represent Star Trek episodes/away missions, as part of combat and sometimes as a direct cost to do other things.
The turn sequence is interesting and involves two really chunky satisfying cylinders. One represents whose turn it is and the other the action they've just taken on an action tracker. You move the action cylinder, do a thing, and then everybody gets to do the same thing. Or they can gain income instead. Or do any other action for a cost. It's a strange reversal of the usual variable turn phase system as not being the active player gives you the advantage (outside of a single action which gives the active player an extra secret objective). There's a design diary in the box that I need to read to understand why he did this. Once everybody has followed the action, the turn cylinder moves to the next player and they move the action cylinder to another action (so no repeating the same action twice in a row)
Scoring is also funny. Some things give you immediate VP (every combat victory is 1VP, some mission cards grant immediate VP, etc.) but most VP only happens during "scoring". Scoring happens twice per game and is when you get VP from all the planets you control/are allied with, your research, your buildings and your secret objectives. You'll always score right at the end of the game but there's a mid game scoring that you can control. The middle of the power deck has a "score now" card that means if you haven't scored then you do it at the end of the turn. But you could do it earlier if you like. This is a weird bit of flexibility as it's quite niche how doing your midgame scoring early will net you more points, it basically needs you to have stretched yourself wafer thin so that you then lose control / alliances with all your planets. I'm not sure it's a mechanic that will ever be used.
I think the base part of the game is very strong where you are doing research to improve your powers, conquering planets and building stuff on them, and doing away missions to gain VP. This stuff is all transparent and open. I am a bit concerned that the hidden sources of VP might have a bit too value given how you can't react against them effectively.
Has anybody else played? I'm very eager to get it to the table with more
We've picked back up and just opened the Moon box. Anyone else have experience with / impressions of / suggestions about that guy?
How far into the missions did you get?
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I also bought a game to play with my 4 year old called Ice Cold. It's a flick-based game where you play as penguins trying to get fish while running from the hall monitor. It's basically tag, and is pretty fun
I will say it felt like there was an awful lot of beef that we had to chop through. When a room has six or eight enemies in it and it's not really possible to drop any of them in a single hit...yeesh.
Rules questions:
- one of the Scoundrel cards has a ranged Pull effect on it. Can I use that on an ally? It doesn't have the Attack keyword on it, but the rules seemed to hint that Pull should only be on attacks.
- can you still apply effects like Poison or Push/Pull if you draw the "no damage" modifier on an attack?
eta:
Oh, another thing two of the players missed, despite multiple explanations and the other two of us doing it correctly, was that you can do a "bottom half" first, and THEN a "top half." That might have helped us do a little better.
I think in the future, I might explain your turn as "choose two cards to play. Of the two cards, choose which initiative number you want to use. When your initiative number comes up, choose one of the eight actions on your two cards to perform, then perform one of the two actions in the other half of your other card."
- You can't push / pull allies. There are effects available in the game that grant them moves; I seem to remember that the Tinkerer might have one available at some point but if they're in the sealed characters' kits in a couple places.
- Yes, you still do effects on the "no damage," pull.
That first scenario is kind of a beast; from the third forward they slim down a bit in terms of volume of guys, and once you have some extra HP and gear from levels damage management gets easier.
Those tactile children's games are always so pretty to look at. Our Friendly Local Children's Bookstore has a few on display and it is the section of the store I linger at the longest.
Did the kid enjoy it? What age would you recommend for those kinds of games? Obviously old enough that they stop putting everything in their mouth....
Ice Cool (sounds like "high school") is a blast. I gave out three copies if it this past holiday season* after having fallen in love with it instantly upon my first play.
I was the first in that game of four newbies to find a use for the jump maneuver. An eye-opener and a crowd-pleaser.
*I actually recommend against this as the box is juuuust large enough to not fit into a standard Priority Mail box.
Maybe we all mean different things by "elegant" here. Vast has 5 different rulebooks, multiple poorly defined interactions, and I don't ever get to play it without someone asking a question that makes me check two of the different rulebooks, decide that the question isn't really answered, google it, and see a five page BGG thread arguing about it. I'm one of those serious rules guys, and last time I played it I got the rule about dragon movement through walls while still submerged completely wrong which broke the balance of the game.
The design is cool, and it works, but nothing with that many moving parts is "elegant" in my book.
Maybe we just disagree. It's not a big deal.
I’m talking about the game where one person plays as a cave.
Speaking of rules, poking around it looks like the guy who taught us Gloomhaven forgot a rule. That you can discard a card from your hand to negate all damage from an attack.
This is what I get for breaking my rule of never trusting anyone to teach a game, and reading the rules pdf, faq and errata before playing any game for the first time. I was also playing and teaching Vast for the first time that day so my focus was on that.
... Fuck.
Honestly, I love Vast but skip it. It's two versions of three additional critters (so 6 total) and they're INSANELY complicated with a ton of additional steps added to setup to make them work. I doubt I'll ever use them.
I want those Vast minis.
You can buy those separately I think. At least they came in a separate box.
Mine has four rule books and one collected rulebook. But yeah it's definitely 4 separate games that you need to know how to play while only playing one of them.
Debating grabbing the expansion and bonus cards for Vast, they hit retail tomorrow apparently.
Probably going to pass on the minis though.
That's what I mean, the reference sheets are copy/pasted from the rulebook.
Oh, yeah that was useful for teaching the game but pretty quick everyone was just using their player boards.
Have you played the expansion? Thoughts?
Not discard, lose. You can lose one card from your hand (or two from your discard pile) to evade all damage.
We missed that rule on our first game too, but it's important to know in order to prevent getting knocked out very early by a powerful opening monster.